Manda's (Amachan) Order of Heimdallr

For Þórhildr, the warlord of my army, I wanted her to ride a majestic beast and went for a Gryphon in this case. The Gryphon is the ‘Griffon Lady’ from Titan-Forge. I didn’t like the rider though so for that I went with ‘Jarl Lathgertha’ from Bad Squiddo Games. This set came with both a mounted and an unmounted version so I also made an unmounted version of Þórhildr.

First off I did have some problems with the Titan-Forge model, some miscasts and such, but all was easily solved and replaced by them. The next difficulty came in with assembly of the Gryphon, this is one of their older, hand sculpted kits and does not easily go well together and building the Gryphon was more work than converting the rider on top. I think my sculpting skills have leveled up quite a bit by doing this.

The wings did not fit properly at all. So I managed to glue one on with a bit of brown stuff in between and then worked the surface of the wing to the body using brown stuff. And then I had to do the same for the second wing.

That was the hard part done, but nowhere near finished. I had to attach the tail, one claw and bit of hind leg on the model, of course these didn’t fit well either so more brown stuff was used to sculpt in the gaps.

I had to get the rider to fit. The Gryphon came with it’s own set of legs for the rider cast on the Gryphon, so I had no option other that to use those. And thus I had to saw a metal miniature in half and glue it on the already existing legs.

I did work her in to the Gryphon so it looks like she belongs on there with some brown stuff. I unfortunately don’t have any separate pictures of this.

The model does come with it’s own moulded ‘Gryphon-on-rock’ base and I attached that to a 50mm square base. I also wanted to add a little Vallhundr, also from Bad Squiddo Games, to the base to add a bit of decoration. So I worked him in with some brown stuff I still had workable. I also made a simple spear by using a brass rod with a plastic spear tip glued to the end of it and glued that into her hand.

With some of the remaining brown stuff I managed to also get a Vallhundr and the unmounted model onto a 20mm square base for the unmounted version and both are now ready for painting.

I’m quite happy with the result, however this built took me a couple of days to get done.

I will add shields I made earlier to the correct positions later once the model is painted.