My teenage Orc and Goblin army featured a Night Goblin shaman on Cockatrice.  I’ve sold the bulk of the army, but hung onto the Cockatrice out of sentimentality.  Bulking out my Frostgrave Chaos into a Dragon Rampant force demanded a fantastic monster, so this mythological bird resurrected itself from the ashes.

The wings on my Orc and Goblin Cockatrice weren’t the original MM44 ones, but had been nicked from an High Elf Dragon.  I replaced these original replacements with a pair of 15mm Demonworld dragon wings.  Since I was converting the figure with non-Citadel parts, I figured I’d swap the rather dull tail with a scorpion one from the Dark World Manticore.

The Cockatrice torso showing his original yellow paintjob.  He was known as “Lemon Chicken”.

I did plan on him having a Chaos rider, and tried every single mounted Chaos figure in my collection.  However, anything bigger than a weeny Night Goblin shaman looked ridiculous, and the wings and neck all obscure the rider.  So Stingwing is an unbound monster, which also means he’s easier to legitimately field in Age of Sigmar.

Chicken stripped.

Attaching the Demonworld wings, and at a different angle to the original MM44 wings, required hacking away the sockets on the torso and some heavy pinning.  I used three layers of putty to first fill the gaps, then sculpt muscles, and then add fur.

In my efforts to bend the old lead wings into curved shapes I managed to break the left one straight in half.  The metal along the split crumbled, and I had a pig of a time trying to reattach it.  I managed it with pins in the only two places that joined, and a good amount of putty.  Luckily the membranes had very little sculpted detail so my repairs are barely visible.

Anyways, here’s the finished beastie! I went with a mainly flesh, and ran the warband’s signature red colour onto the comb, wattles and scorpion tail.

Cockatrice breaks through a clearing in Mourningwood.

Sadly I have no good photos of the six-way Dragon Rampant game from the Knavecon weekend – I’d borrowed sho3box‘s selfie-stick and only managed photographs of my own arm.

Put in black and white, however, this looks intentionally arty. And you can’t see my Superman socks clashing with the hotel carpet.

The monsters is also an iconic Dungeon and Dragons monster, and will be featuring in some upcoming adventures!

Pazyryk  Banefire and the Thugs in the Matityahu Temple.