Basically I want to start an army of Arnor but use the range of miniatures available to Minas Tirith. I figured this would be fairly easy as the models are almost identical apart from the white tree on the shields and breast plates. I recently used the same idea for some Dol Amroth troops (scraping off the trees and painting on some Swan-boats free hand), shown below, but I'm not too happy with the results. This time I want to emboss the designs on the shield but therein lies the problem, I don't know how to do it. So my question to you guys is how can I emboss the designs on the shields?

You could shave the tree from the breast plate, and, if you could get one shield (by buying a warrior or by posting in the supply forum) you could use instant mold an green stuff to make lots more

I'm confused, a mould of the shield or just the design on the shield? I don't really fancy changing the entire shield of every model!

Oh well, i meant to create a mould of a whole (and maybe the hand holding it too) arnor shield, use it to duplicate it, then swap them for the shields on your warriors of minas tirith

There may be a way to do this with less work, but, looking at the arnor and minas tirith warriors, the only big difference is the shield (and the ring around the helmet (not compulsary, but these would be relatively easy to sculpt, I should think)).

You don't have to go with my idea, I'm sure that a more expirienced hobbyist (such as Sid, DMS or UKFB) will soon answer this post with a much better idea.

Anyway, hope this helps,

LordElrond

That sounds like a lot of work!!! And some of the WoMT shields are sculpted on in a way that would make them really awkward to remove. But thanks for the suggestion. And I don't really like that little bit of cloth around the helms anyway, they look too bulky and they're just odd.

I would go the instantmold route, make a one piece mold of the original, and then dremel all the womt shields flat and lay on your cast replicas, or make a two part mold of the Arnor sheilds, cast that, clip all the Womt shields off for use on another project and add the new ones. You could even cast the heads if you wanted to get really accurate...but they might look too big on the plastic WOMT bodies.
The easiest way would be an alternate paint sceme with minimal effort, but it won't look that great. The Gondor shields are do easy to file down, or modify I'd go that route with the castings

I was going to paint them Arnor green anyway. Only problem is I have no experience with casting!

I don't either but I know how to because of videos on you tube

Of course, of course. The source of all knowledge.

Instantmold is super easy, you just make the mold, roll out your greenstuff then put it into the mold and press, instant copy. Let it dry, then use the mold again, and when you're done with that mold you just reheat it in hot water and use it again for something new

Would it be very illegal to just mould the whole model? *Disclaimer, I probably wouldn't do that.*

Not for personal use, its fine. Its if its for profit, or if you brought them into a GW to play that you would run into problems. I've got a project I'm planning, where I'm using instantmold to replicate the numenor parts and using it to convert my womt into Numenorians. That way they're store legal. Base figure is GW plastic, details are custom made

How would they know? And I never leave the house so that's not a problem!

Don't know, just that its unethical, back before all the metals were finecast, if an opponent noticed a "metal" model was lighter then he should be that'd be one way to be busted if they wanted to push the issue

think of casting your own models as pirating a video game/ movie.

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Instamold or a casting kit seems like the most viable methods of replicating the shields... I can't really see any other options

also, I reckon it's fine to cast your own stuff... so long as you don't sell it and you only use it in your own place (and especially not in a GW)

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I really don't want to be chopping off whole shields though, especially not for the likes of this guy

You could moul the two ends ofthe arnor shield and only cut away both ends (half of the shield) and scratch off the white tree and replace it with the design on the arbor shield, or just scratch off the white tree and paint on the circlely thingy (the design on the arnor shield), as the shields are near enough the same shape

Something I've seen done for 40k (boo hiss etc) is to shave off the iconography then use a brand to put a new mark on. It does recess rather than emboss but for quick painting you could use a wash to bring it out and it would look consistent on all the models.

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This is a conversion I'd like to attempt in the future, as I'm not a fan of the Arnor Warrior minis and with them being metal and expensive, much better to convert Warriors of Minas Tirith, in my opinion!

I saw a conversion on this site that was pretty good, replacing the platemail skirt for cloth using green stuff and also using green stuff to put chainmail on the arms...

Add this to the shield tips and maybe some tweaks to the helmet (not a fan of the weird cloth band, but certainly easy to make a WoMT helmet look like Halbarad's or a RotN's

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