Mantic Fanatics

Cross posted from the Mantic Forums after I realised I'd be more likely to get a response here:

Just opened my parcel from Mantic to discover they've accidentally sent me a bunch of bolt thrower crew instead of a troop of scouts. Oops! Easy to do, especially at this time of year, and I've already sent them a message about it.

But, consider, what if I didn't ask for replacement scouts? What could I do with these orphaned crew? The possibilities could be endless, unencumbered by pre-conceptions that they must be scouts. I certainly have no use for extra war engine crew, I only have one war engine and 12 crew for it would be... excessive. They'd all by fighting for a turn at shooting it.

Perhaps some message runners, as pointless table clutter? Twilight Kin assassins pretending to be bolt thrower crew? Perhaps a base for converting a bunch of heroes from? Medics? Water carriers? Some appropriated orc and dwarf weaponry could make them Palace Guard.

Any suggestions?

Use some of the bits-n-bobs to arm them and make a troop of scouts,spear,bow.....

Not sure about you, but I've got a pint jar half full of extra arms, heads, and countless elven corpses.  Seriously.  Corpses.  Now there's the useless figs.  Reminds me of some of my coworkers

Oddly enough, I had the exact same thing happen to me ages ago.  You probably got an old pack from back when non-gamers were packing all their stuff for them.

So far, I haven't really decided what to do with mine, but I haven't looked at it with any focus yet.  I'm still hoping to get my dwarves all painted up.  They are definitely good to use if you have any spare arms from other elf kits though.

But these are virgin troops! Just turning them into scouts seems dull. But you're right, I've probably got the bits to do that.

Corpses are useful! Sort of. Mount one or two on a round base, flock it and put a dice sized square of masonry/dirt/whatever on it and you've got a funky (and entirely unnecessary) damage point counter. As you get (on average) one corpse for each of your units you should have more than enough for purpose. Or use them as wavering markers. For a nice effect on heroes, trying jamming a mound of corpses from another species on their base (might have to rely on people letting you be a little flexible with base size for that one though).

I've actually thought about converting them with some of my skellie bits.  Like having skellies ripping their way out of corpses.

Ah! That could look good. Or maybe have them being gnawed on by those skeleton rats to make the counters more interesting?

I've started adding to my units by including fillers such as the dead elf, drunk Dwarf etc. It packs out the unit meaning less actual models used, meaning more units.

I like your idea of using them as medics, water carriers, messengers etc. Those would make the units look totally unique.

Well, having counted the contents of the Crazy Christmas Bag, I have 6 scouts in there. So four of these could be turned into scouts to bump that up to a full troop.

I have enough bits to convert an army standard bearer out of another.

And I could do with a prince or two.

The rest it looks like I'll turn into messenger/water-carrier/medic things!