Clyro Burns, Renegade Bright Wizard

One of the things to get your head round for Frostgrave is that you’re not really playing with a warband, like you would in Mordheim.  It’s about your wizard.  And I agonised over different wizard models for a good long while before settling on the Citadel ME-56 Saruman, for reasons of:

–  I want the warband to be built out of 1980s Citadel Miniatures
–  I’ve got a couple of spare Sarumans (“Sarumen?”)
–  Importing the Lord of the Rings figures into Warhammer proper is pleasing.

“Tell me, friend, when did Saruman the Wise abandon reason for Tipp-Ex®?”

I really do like the 1980s Middle-Earth figures popping up in mainstream Warhammer.  After Games Workshop lost the the Tolkein licence in 1987 a lot of the not-character figures were rolled into the main Warhammer range, like the Noldor Elves into the High Elf range.  Occasionally the named character miniatures pop up in artwork or studio photographs, like ME-1 Gandalf here in the colour section of the Ravening Hordes supplement.

Gandalf™ is a wise and powerful wizard.
Gandalf™ est un sorcier sage et puissant.
Gandalf™ ist ein weiser und mächtiger Zauberer.

To unSarumanise the figure the Palantir hand was replaced with a suitably chunky hand from a Citadel Night Horror.  Saruman’s left hand was flipped over and had a flame effect added from a (gasp!) modern Tzeentch kit.  This anachronism still makes me feel uneasy.

Despite leading a Chaos warband, I made no attempt to make him chaotic.  The red scheme and the age of the figure ties him in enough.

A burning sensation in your palm – classic symptom of carpal tunnel syndrome.

He initially had grey hair, but it looked bad. Too much like Saruman still.  To remedy this I sculpted over his bald patch, and repainted his hair fiery orange.  One of the nice things about figures so old is my own limited sculpted talent doesn’t look as out of place as it would on a laser-crisp modern miniature.

I finished the figure with bone-coloured flames on his robes.  I was hesitant initially as he had flames popping out of his hand – I thought both 2D and 3D flames together would be confusing.  But keeping them a flat colour rather than the blended highlights of the Tzeentch-fire, and putting them in bone rather than a orange colour, keeps it obvious what’s meant to be real and what’s meant to be pattern.

Clyro Burns, looking a little like Donald Sutherland in Kelly’s Heroes.

There he is, Clyro Burns, alongside his 1980s Chaos warband.

I call them “Burns’ Knights”.

Sorry.