I love the miniatures hobby including gaming, painting and collecting miniatures, which is just as well as I have been doing all of those things for at least 45 years now. One of the aspects that I enjoy most about the hobby is converting or kit-bashing miniatures to make something new and unique. Six years ago, back in 2018 we launched (via Kickstarter) a set of rules and a range of miniatures based on Albedo featuring anthropomorphic animals. Since them we have occasionally released the odd pack containing heads and tails with, for example berets, Sombreros, Stetsons, dark age helmets, fez and cloaks to enable modellers to take a 28mm plastic kits figure and convert it into a unique anthropomorphic version.

We have 40 new heads sculpted wearing British & French style Napoleonic Shakos, Bicornes and Tricorne. These have been sculpted on to a wide range of animal heads including cats, dogs, foxes, otters, rabbits, rats and many more. The idea is to use these to convert some Napoleonic or Pirate miniatures to paint, collect and play some fun skirmish style games. I’m planning to use my converted figures to play Blood & Plunder, Sharp Practise, Combat Patrol, Pulp Alley and Drums & Shakos amongst many other possible games. As well as being a fun, tongue in cheek diversion, these quirky converted ‘critters’ are a great way to introduce some young relatives into miniatures gaming!

Conversion packs are cast in metal. Each pack contains 12 heads and 12 tails.

Here’s a few conversions that I have done using these ‘critter bits’.

Last week I put a quick set of conversions together using some of the excellent plastic Gunfighters from Great Escape Games together with some animal heads with Sombreros from the Critter Bits CB11 – Mixed Sombreros set. We have four animal heads available wearing Sombreros (Dog, Ferret, Hare & Cat), the CB11 set contains 12 heads and tails (3 of each type).

I’d love to be able to add lots more sets to the range based on different genres and different animals, for example it would be great to do an ACW kepi & slouch hat.

Here a couple of examples of using the Tricorne heads. I have used them with Frostgrave Ghost Archipelago bodies and arms. I think they make great pirates of highway critters!

These conversion parts are on Kickstarter at the moment, click here to take a look at my ‘Critter Bits Campaign’, the more support we have, the more packs we will be able to release.