Common Goblin Models, Hand Weapons have to be Converted?

I've been reading tactics from this site for the last couple of months and have finally settled on an army list to start building towards.

I'd like a largish unit of common goblins in my list with hand weapon and shield. Based on the box contents described on the GW site, it implies that your only choices for common goblins are spears or bows. I'm new to the hobby so would rather not take on a project requiring weapon swaps at this point.

Was hoping that someone who has purchased common goblins could confirm whether hand weapons were part of sprues. Thanks!

you get 8 sprues with 5 gobbos every 2 sprues.
theres 1 hand weapon on 4 of the sprues (for the champion)
the rest is spears and bows.

so youll have to convert.
some people use the spear heads, or cut the spears into swords etc.
or just put your own hand weps on.

but yea it sucks

Thanks for the response. That is disappointing.

Best use is probably Bow+Shield = Weedy Greenguard

Both shooting, "good" armoursave and a parry save, for cheap 4 pts a gob.

Theres an article on Da-Warpath's main page showing how to convert the gobs to have hand weapons, hw/shield ('ard grotz as they were known) were pretty common. Give it a read, its not a bad article.

Arfa da Grate

i bought skaven weapons from hoard o bits and used them on some gobbo's. I think they look pretty good. I could add a picture if youw ant to show how they look. I havent got round to painting them up yet though.

This post has been edited by Snikpik on Dec 13 2011, 09:19 AM

Empire Militia arms work well on Common Goblins too.

I don't see why GW doesn't add an extra sprue with just 20 handweapons on it.

I have converted about 50-60 of these guys. It was in the days before ebay bitz shoppers and I used everything I could get. Some of the best are:

Clan Dwarf models - I even just use the whole arm with the chainmail shoulder.

Empire Militia - I will also use the puffy arm with sword and I think it looks pretty cool. There are a number of other weapons, too.

Skeletons (both kinds) - I know I used VC skellies and used the ball and chain and sword. There is one that is a scimitar that is really cool. Not sure if that's VC or TK. I like the ball and chain. I just put it on a bow arm and cut off the bow!

Skaven - I even got lazy with some and just used the whole army. I filed down some of the fur, but I bet that liquid greenstuff would cover it up pretty well. Or even just paint over it anyways and use it for a back rank!

I've found a few different ways to use other bitz. Sometimes I will just use the whole arm. It's the easiest and some ways it looks the best. Others you can cut off at the wrist and use those weapons. Skaven hands don't look bad. The Skeletons I just cut the weapons off. OK...I admit I did just cut the hand off for one, but it doesn't look right. I use him in the rear.

There is another option. I have found that there are some 40k Ork knives that are all Greenskin-eque. I just cut off the handle and put them on my wolf riders. Let me see if I can get a picture.

Pictures:

Undead Scimitar:


Skaven Arm (possibly old edition):


Empire, Dwarf, Skaven:


Undead, Champ, and Undead (with skellie hand!):


40k loose choppas:


This post has been edited by Groznit Goregut on Dec 13 2011, 02:31 PM

Thanks for all of the great ideas.

stashman, I do intend to run the HW/Shield + Short Bow combo based on reading about the success of several members on this site, so luckily I'll only need to convert about half of the models.

Thanks Arfa for the article, it looks very promising and like a faily easy, if perhaps time consuming, conversion (I'm finding that filing/removing mould lines is my least favorite thing to do).

This is my first army, so I don't have access to a ton of bits yet. However, I'm a long time Mordheim player and should have some extra Mercenary/Militia sprues somewhere. I'll see if the hand sizes match up pretty well.

If not, looks like I'll have to try ebay.

Great pictures Groznit. The undead hands aren't obvious at all to me from those pictures. I had to look hard to see them actually. The one that actully jumped out the most was the smallish empire hand as opposed to many of the other hards which were a little bit bigger than the regular goblin hand.

This post has been edited by Warboss Gorbolg on Dec 13 2011, 03:22 PM

Yes, but that's why there are great ebay bitz sellers like hoard_*_bits and wizardsgames to buy all your bitz. There are a few web stores outside of ebay that sell bitz, but I've found they are starting to only sell sprues lately.

As for the Empire hands, they are smaller, but it's not as noticeable from the table top (I hope, at least!). I just like the puffy sleeves that are used. Well, and I didn't have enough other bitz.

This post has been edited by Groznit Goregut on Dec 13 2011, 07:33 PM

Did these a few years back its my only unit of common goblins (Ice Goblins to be correct). My whole army is blue skinned - they like it cold! I just took any old hand weapon I could find to convert. In 7Th ed you really did well to have the hand weapon and shield extra save - now it gives you a 6+ parry save but -1 on the save now.


Da spida Clan Gobbos wiith Shaman by corixa66, on Flickr

A lot of awesome looking goblins in this thread. They all look great, especially when ranked up as a unit.

The pirate goblin hiding the club behind is back made me laugh out loud. Absolutely love the character in that model.

It's also nice to see some non-night gobbos represented.