Tutorial: How to convert a Imperial Knight into a mounted Battle Standard Bearer Wight King

I made this tutorial a long time ago and published it in a Spanish forum electronic magazine. You can see the result of this tutorial in the picture below.

If you keep reading you will learn how I make my mounted Wight King carrying the Battle Standard for my Warhammer Vampire Counts army.

Bits used in this conversion:
- Legs, body and arms of a plastic Imperial Knight
- Horse from a plastic Imperial Knight
- Banner and pole to hold the banner of the 7th edition plastic Grave Guard.
- Shield from the 7th edition plastic Grave Guard
- Spear from the 7th edition plastic Skeleton Warriors used as a lance
- Head from the 7th edition plastic Grave Guard, one with a winged helmet if you want to follow the description of a Wight King given in the Vampire Count Rulebook.
- Metal horse head like the ones that were used in the horses of the 6th vampires (optional)

I also used Green Stuff to hold everything together and make some special details.  

I used the metal horse head as I have it and didn't have any use for it but it can be done without it using a plastic horse head.


First we are gonna file or cut away all the imperial or "Sigmar" like details from the armour chest, as the Wight Kings are warriors from before the empire was built.

Now we are going to change the arm holding the lance so it seem more dead. I cut out part of the armour and glued part of the skeleton warrior spear arm in its place (I marked with blue lines where I made the cuts in the picture below).

As it seemed weird to me that the straps of clothe of the spear where flying as if the horse where moving backwards I decided to change its direction.

I pinned both parts with a piece of metal wire.

Initially I didn't think of doing anything to the other arm as it is covered by the shield but I end up changing a little bit its position so it didn't cover so much the body of the model.

Latter it is time to prepare the banner. As you can see the model hasn't any free arms so I intend to hold it to the horse bard. for that reason I cutted away the arm that holds the pole and file the fingers.

Then I make some holds with a knife and/or a hand drill in the Wight King armour, you can see the holes that I made in the painted model.

After all the steps above, we now have all the pieces ready to assembly and make the details that we want with Green stuff.

I decided to sculpt some vampire like teeth in the chest armour as it was too flat.

I glued the banner pole to the horse bard and simulate the union by making a couple of metal pieces and hold by rivets with Green Stuff. I also made a decorative ring with green stuff in the pole where the skeleton hand was holding it.

To join the head to the body I tried to make a couple of vertebrae with Green Stuff. In the case of the Wight King I did it directly without any internal structure like a piece of wire metal and the result is not great.

Latter, when I convert 10 more imperial knights into Black Knights, I improved this process. Before Putting the putty in the neck area I made a couple of holes with a hand drill and join the head to the body with a metal wire leaving some distance between then. After that I sculpted the vertebrae and as you can see in the picture below the result is way better.

I also added a couple of spikes to each shoulder pad to break a little bit more the imperial knight look.

Gluing all the pieces together we have the Wight King that you can see in the pictures below. I decided to paint the bard and the armour with rusted like brass and iron colours as it seemed appropiate to represent the pass of the years inside a damp grave and the materials used in the age where this warriors where a live.

I hope you liked this post and found it useful!