Fallout Miniatures Part Four: BIG Super Mutants!

Not too long ago I write a little post about how to make super mutants.  But as you know, super mutants come in a variety of shapes and sizes.

From left to right: Super Mutant (base model,) Brute, Master, Overlord and Behemoth

The basic super mutant (discussed previously,) stands a head or so taller than a standard human.

Bear in mind that our hapless hero in this picture, Mildly Annoyed Max, is a rather tall fellow.

But as you go up in power (and threat) level, they get larger and larger.  On your tabletop, you will no doubt wish to reflect those differences.  When you put out a larger mini, players react appropriately, perceiving the greater threat from the larger mini.

So for my game, I have five distinct sizes of super mutant minis: basic, Brute, Master, Overlord and, if the situation calls for it, a single Behemoth (but that will be for a separate post.)

Now, obtaining all these differently-sized minis may require some clever shopping and/or modification. Obviously scale is the most important factor when looking for larger minis, and you will certainly want to find figures that are all in scale with each other.  What I did, was to examine my options and select sizes for the different types.  So I have four size categories: super mutants (mostly "Handful of Heroes" Hulks and other clix minis,) Brutes, which are slightly larger, then the Masters, which are even larger, and then the overlords, which I made truly huge, towering over the rest of the minis.

I should also point out that I am of the "go big or go home" school of thought, so I want my super mutants to be imposingly large.

To start with, the brutes are only slightly larger than the stock mutants, and are usually better armored.  I tend to use the slightly larger heroclix hulks for this, and keep the smaller ones for standard mutants.  Most of these require little to no conversion, beyond scraping off the hair and a weapon swap, just like the standard sized guys.

Red Hulk here is larger than the baseline super mutant already, and will make a fine brute, and a credible threat for Starting To Get A Bit Cross Max.

But sometimes, I have a smaller figure, and I want to give it some additional height.  This is especially true with the Hulk figures from the Handful of Heroes Line, as they tend to be rather hunched over and squat, such that I have some raider minis that are actually taller than the super mutants

When you have a mini that you want to make taller, there are a few techniques you can use to add height.  The most common method is to simply build up the figure's base, and hope nobody looks too closely.  Another is to try to twist a crouching mini's posture to make it look taller, or bulk up its shoulders with armor or pads.

But those tricks are decidedly unawesome, so I'm not going to talk about them.  Instead, I'm going to talk about physically adding height to the mini itself.  This involves some cutting, some pinning, and some sculpting, but it's not too difficult, even for beginners.

This method will not only make a mini taller, but can also alter the proportions, making an otherwise misshapen figure look more realistic, which is great when converting comic book style characters into more realistically proportioned video game designs.

Incidently, there is a whole subset of the Warhammer 40K community who do this with their Space Marines(TM) to make them more human-looking.

They call it "true scale" and it makes a real difference, feel free to check it out!

Let's start with a Hulk from the "Handful of Heroes" line.

The ugly one; on the left.

This fellow is the "Hulk as War" version , which apparently happened. I haven't read Marvel in years, so apparently Apocalypse got to the Hulk?  I don't know.  But I digress.  He has some decent armor, that can easily be made to look like scrap armor (the thing on his chest looks like the plate of an old calculator.)  But the freaky tentacle and Jai-alai sports gear gotta go, and he is simply too short to be a super mutant Brute.

So he's for the chop!

Using a craft knife, I sliced the arms off right at his shoulder pauldrons, and selected some new arms to replace them, in this case, 40K ork arms holding an "assault rifle."  Now we look at where we want to add height.  The easiest place to do this is at the waist, so I cut him as evenly as possible straight across above his belt.

This allows me to add a couple of scale inches in height, by creating a gap and filling in that space with putty.  To start, I drill two holes in the upper torso, as you can see in the photo above.  Using two pins instead of one makes the join much more stable.  To make sure that the holes on the lower half match up, I used an old trick of dipping the ends of the pin in paint and then press them where I want them to line up.  Then I simply drill the holes where the paint marks are.

Genius!

Then I have to make sure that the pins are the correct length, so that it leaves a gap of the width I want between top and bottom.  Using green stuff, I fill that gap completely.  You can sculpt that bit of green stuff at this time, but I prefer to let that dry completely, and then sculpt additional putty over that. 

For this mini, I later decided to make him even taller, so I also created extensions on his calves, which are one of the other places you can add height.  I sliced him evenly, re pinned the legs, and added putty which I then went back over and sculpted shinguards (yay shinguards!)

 

This is before I added the shinguards.

The end result is a previously short mini that now stands taller than the baseline super mutants, and is suitable for a Brute.

Complete with freaky "axe-face" helmet and welding mask shin guard (yay shinguards!)

From the back.  You can see the wide belt that hides the 'extension' we made to his waist.

Greater peril for Rather Put Out Max.

The next class of mutants are the Masters, which I feel should be suitably large, edging into the 'giant' range.  For them, I use the biggest of my 'normal sized' minis, notably the bigger Hulk figures.  Sometimes, a figure is still a little lacking in height for my tastes, and so said mini will get the 'Ethan Hawke in Gattaca' treatment.

Then he too gets shinguards (yay shinguards!) and whatever other modifications are needed.

Like a minigun.

Although my campaign is in Texas, and that would mean quite a trek for this fella, I couldn't resist the reference.

But I wanted to make a truly impressive super mutant master, starting with the GW ogre body.  Now, in my previous post, I pointed out that the fantasy ogres are oddly proportioned, being both stocky and rather zoftig.

So this means more modification!  Here is the ogre's body as it comes on the sprue:

The reason his feet look tiny is because they fit into pointy shoes

To begin, I had to get rid of the big hole in his gut, as well as all that extra adipose tissue.  I shaved away his love handles and man boobs, and then filled in the hole with a tissue (it was nearby.)  I covered the hole and the shaved chest with putty and sculpted pecs and abs (I always said the only way I'd get a sculpted physique is if I sculpted it myself.)

I also added the compulsory gas tank codpiece.

Next I snipped off the feet below the ankles.  I then actually scraped off the knee with an Xacto knife, so that the cuffs of the pants will become the band of a knee pad, and the baggy pants become baggy shorts.  This allows me to sculpt entirely new feet and shins, conveniently covered in armor, of course (yay shinguards!)

Then we add appropriate head and arms, taken right from the ogre bulls sprue, and voila!  My super mutant Master.

Everything below the knee was made from putty over paperclip armatures (legatures?)

A better view of his legs, and my attempt at a bumper sword.

Now this is a pretty extensive conversion, so many of you might not want to go to such extremes.  There are of course less work intensive conversions that we will take a look at, but I would like to point out that super mutants are meant to be big and scary.  Spending a little time and effort (but still not too much money,) on a few can pay off when you pop them on the table.

Highly Displeased Max is feeling nervous.

Speaking of big and scary, for my money, super mutant overlords are the second toughest monsters in Fallout III.  Behemoths might be big and scary, but there are only five, and each of them are encountered in a situation where clever strategy and good weapons can help you.  Overlords can be found everywhere once you are high enough level, and they can be found in mobs.  I freaking hate those guys (ghoul reavers are the #1 toughest monsters by the way, because you only ever face them in tunnels, where it is hard to kite them or use a Fat Man.)

So I reckon they deserve a truly imposing figure on the table.  I will probably never use more than one or two of them at a time, so I only require a few minis of them.  Luckily, I had three minis of this guy:

That is Atlas, a member of the Marvel Comics team The Thunderbolts, and before that the villain Goliath.  As you can see from the picture, he is a true giant,  standing at least twice the height of the average mini.

As soon as I saw him, I figured he'd make a great towering super mutant overlord.  The hair had to be pulled out and the head puttied over, and the face needed scraping to get rid of the weird face mask thingy (I know; the 90's, right?)  Then I was free to modify all the various details.

Like giving them 'angry mouth.' 

The straps had to be sculpted, and I thought one of them having a Nuka Cola cap belt would be funny.

As you can see, arm swaps, a clever concealing of the freaky moon boots on one of the figs, and some road sign armor, and now Messrs. Josten and Josten are ready to really ruin some vault dwellers' day.

Now he's Mad.

There are a few other 'giant' minis in the Heroclix line that could be made into overlords as well, such as Black Goliath, Yellowjacket or Super Adaptoid from Marvel, and one or too from DC as well (looking at you, Colossal Boy.)  But you can also find toys and plastic figurines from other lines (usually of the Hulk, or some other hyperthyroid superhero type,) that can be painted up and are the right scale for overlords, since they are meant to be so large.

At this point, I should bring up the skin color issue again.  When discussing super mutants, many tend to forget about Nightkin.  Any super mutant can be converted into a Nightkin simply by palette-swapping them with bluish-purple skin.  Usually one only finds Nightkin of a size comparable with base model super mutants, or perhaps brutes and masters, you can use the same guidelines to whip up a batch of them easily.  But that will have to wait for another post.

I have actually considered casting some mutants of my own in clear resin, so I could make some Nightkin cloaked by Stealth Boys.  Or if I ever see some clear Hulk figures, I will snatch them up immediately for conversion.  Oh well, until them, I will just paint up some super mutant characters in the appropriate purple tones to use as uncloaked Nightkin.

So there you have it, a variety of different super mutants.  Here is a size comparison chart of my various mutant figures.

And the behemoth?  He's around here somewhere…

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