Battle Masters: Basic Repairs on an Old Set (w/ poem)

[Kurgan]

In the land of Muldar, o'er the River Quell,
the Battle Masters fought and many fell.

Great armies marched against an evil power,
to win back the land and the ancient tower.
Battle Masters: the game of Orcs and Ogres, Wolf Riders and more,
versus knights, archers, and the cannon's roar!

Command your armies, you must not fail,
it's good versus evil on an epic scale!
Battle Masters: from the makers of Hero Quest.

Quoted from the tv commercial
(check out this remake done by a voice actor here

So I purchased an almost complete BM set on ebay recently (the missing figures and tile are set to arrive sometime next week), and started in on the repairs.

I plan to print out a sticker sheet (a previous owner had taken some of the stickers and adhered them to the box itself, while a few others are lost completely), while a few just need a little glue to adhere them back to their places.

A few of the figures are actually painted (one imperial knight and two mounts for the Lord Knights, it appears with some enamel type paint (they didn't do a bad job at all, I'll have pictures of that eventually).

I also plan to re-print one of the terrain tiles to repair a torn patch.

Using skills learned from past projects dealing with beat up HeroQuest sets...

First repairs include gluing the ripped sides and corners of the box halves.

Next I'm repairing the broken off (and missing) Goblin Wolf-Rider spears (3).

Repairing a broken Imperial Knight lance, and replacing a missing one.

Repairing a Lord of Chaos lance.

Still to do:

Replace missing Imperial Archer bow half (clone the part?).

Replace missing Imperial Man-At-Arms halberd head (clone the part?).

Future Dream:

Get some EU style Dice.

Actually play the dang game with some friends/family.

PS: There's nothing wrong with the Tower, I just wanted to show it assembled. If you follow the assembly instructions it goes together quite nicely.

[Kurgan]

I realize with the spears I could have purchased some GW citadel (warhammer fantasy) spears and trimmed off the hands (usually its the wrong hand) and even trim the spear pole (the goblin spears are really thin), but instead I took some cocktail swords (these go by various names... cocktail spears, party swords, cocktail skewers, etc) that are made out of plastic and whittled them with an exacto knife and clipped them to fit. I used plastic model glue (the type that slightly melts the plastic to attach) and a (non-powered) tiny hand drill to hollow out the "hands" to place the piece inside. One I trimmed the edge and used some vallejo acrylic plastic putty to glue it in place.

One lance I had to trim slightly to insert it into the new socket (won't be as secure as the others). Two other lances that were broken I simply glued in place (I expect these will be quite fragile, so no picking up the piece by the lance!).

For the goblin spears I used plastic coated mini paperclips as the spear shaft. I used green stuff (for the first time, so nothing too fancy... these kind of resemble stone age spear points) for the tips of the weapons. After gluing I applied some paint (not a perfect match but good enough for the first pass).

I also added the saddle, uh, "appendage" peg that allow the Goblins to "ride" their wolves (similar to the knights). I could have removed some pieces of sprue to create these but this is the first solution attempt.

I tried some gorilla wood glue (need to use it up, it's starting to get old, originally had it for another project) this time instead of just the glue stick. I may add cardstock bracers at some point, but my last project didn't go as well as predicted with using that technique alone. This box is slightly bigger than the HeroQuest box as well (and in way worse shape).

More pictures below...

[Kurgan]

More pics of the goblin spear repair/replacement and lance repair/replacement for the knights.

[Kurgan]

Still more pics...!

[Kurgan]

Even more pics... mostly damaged stuff yet to be repaired.

[Kurgan]

Now pics of some of the pre-painted parts below...

[Kurgan]

More pics of painted parts and some more box pics...

[Kurgan]

This should do for now. Not sure when I'll get a chance to print the replacement stickers (had half a mind to try to use a steam iron to remove the ones stuck to the box, although one is clearly torn up... maybe useful for an elite veteran but between battles surely they'd have time to mend their banners).

The rest of the components, while a bit beat up, are in perfectly serviceable condition (the mat is in great shape, but probably needs to be wiped down with a damp cloth).

(Re: Pic below, I think there's supposed to be a long narrow box insert to store stuff in and a big plastic bag for the battle mat. I don't have those but I do have a spare Heroquest inner box so I used that to help organize, plus plenty of zip lock bags!

[Kurgan]

I have some of these on order from Amazon (or perhaps at your local liquor store or cocktail lounge). I suspect they might be too thick... meaning they can be trimmed or moreso I'm interested in the "arrowhead" tips as possible enhancements for the broken spear/lances.

[b_0]

I wonder if those spear replacements worked.

I tried replacing a bunch of missing halberd tops and some bows with epoxy putty after making molds with blue stuff thermoplastic. It seemed to work well enough. I don't have any pictures of that available at the moment. I'm missing one of the tower walls, so I tried to recreate another wall with the same process I used for halberds, but with milliput. I copied the top part of the wall with steps( so it would fit in the top of the tower properly) and the bottom part of the wall with damage(since I didn't want another door, and that's the only non-door wall I have):

I wasn't able to avoid the flaw at the seam where one part of the wall sticks out more than the other, So I'm not sure if I should just go with this and glue/paint it, or wait and look for the missing wall piece.

Some missing goblin swords were replaced with swords from some other miniatures:

The center non-BM goblin snagga is from a very old version (1980's?) of citadel miniatures LOTR.