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I am pulling the trigger and doing this project. I was torn between doing a pre-heresy army or a 300 movie inspired army, and I also recently was intrigued by the 28mm "true scale" marines....So I am doing all in one. Also, I have resin Greek tiled bases, and I am using earth magnets for weapon/arm swaps. I plan on 11 termies, 20 tacticals, 10 air assualt, 3 dreadnoughts, and 7 (scratch built true scale for 28mm marines) drop pods. The dreads will also b e highly converted to be correctly scaled as well, gaing about an inch in height. The bits I decided on are High Elf spears, high elf swords, dwarf shields (icons removed), chaos knight helmeted heads (horns removed), and some bear heads of chaos marauders, and several various capes from WH lines. All icons will be removed, studded shoulder pads will be used, and chest armor of tacticals will be "green stuffed" to pre-heresy style (like red scorpions). The tacticals and assualt will be about 1/2" taller, termies about 3/4" taller, and width & girth will also increase by 2mm to 4mm....I did several test models, and they look really good so far!

Any advice or pics that I can see to help me?

If you show what you've done so far, we might be able to help better.

Beork

I'm also going to be reposing them to more dynamic action poses & also adding gun bursts on some too.....My wife and I will paint these up to 8+ out of 10 scale for each mini too.....My wife is a pro artist and we typically get $50 to $100 to paint a single miniature.....

With the dreds I think you'd have to completely redo the bodies and shoulders as they're currently undersized. A truescale dred would need to be at least twice as big as the current one. A space marine should be able to fit into the compartment in the middle of the dred where the little window is.

If you compare the current models you'll see that the dred is only about half the size it should be, the same way that a truescale rhino model would be about the size of a Land raider.

I'd imagine a truescale dred would have smaller firing weapons in comparison but larger ammo hoppers.

But as said before, pics are always nice.

I'm not sure but true scale Dreads would not be able to stand at all, much less punch something while shooting an assault cannon.

This seems pretty cool. Try to get some models converted up so we can see. As inspiration, here's a 54mm Space Marine Spartan

i was going to do the same thing...

a 300 inspired army.

go for Chaos Marauder heads - chop off the horns, add horse hair...

i took a marine body and filed it down and then sculpted (badly) armor to look like Dante (blood angels), also cut the boots and GS'd some toes in...

Marauder arms work well... especially if you're doing truescale marines... that leaves the oversized cloaks, shields and spears.

check out scribor's spartan marines i cant remember his web address but hes on CMON or if you just google "scribor marines" it should pull it up.

Here is a link to give you an idea of what I hope to accomplish

http://www.bolterandchainsword.com/index.php?showtopic=31681

The posted pics here are NOT mine, they are Elusive71

I'll actually add 2mm under foot, in shin, in thigh, 4mm in waist, and 2mm on neck for 12mm extra height and 2mm on left and right shoulders for 4mm extra width, and 2mm in chest thickness....(on tacticals)...

Termies will have about 16mm extra height, 8mm extra width and 2mm extra thickness in chest...

Dread will be 1.5x bigger.....

Dakkadood wrote:I'm not sure but true scale Dreads would not be able to stand at all, much less punch something while shooting an assault cannon.

Why wouldn't they be able to stand?

A good source of inspiration for you might be to check out scibors page. He has several squads that look similar to what you are going for(liek scifi model 41, and scifi team 10). It's just plain inspirational actually.

http://www.sciborminiatures.com/en_,galerry.php

Meph

cadbren wrote:

Dakkadood wrote:I'm not sure but true scale Dreads would not be able to stand at all, much less punch something while shooting an assault cannon.

Why wouldn't they be able to stand?

I think Dakkadood is suggesting it's way too top heavy.........

krazynadechukr2 wrote:

cadbren wrote:

Dakkadood wrote:I'm not sure but true scale Dreads would not be able to stand at all, much less punch something while shooting an assault cannon.

Why wouldn't they be able to stand?

way too top heavy.........

so you're basically implying that if i dreadnought existed in real life, it wouldn't be able to function? :S

with the way im looking at them and there proportions i can see this being the case sadly. eather that or there would have to be some reahter funky counterbalance thing going on inside it.

but then again thinking about it its in space and alot of the places the gravity would diffre, meaning that diffrent planets would hve diffrent pulls as such, so its hard to say, but i feel safe saing no. sorry,

Well, you can generally figure dreads to go on the same proportions as a human. We're plenty heavy, but we make it work because we have light bones and a strong lower body. All you've gotta do is be able to support the upper body, which the Mechanicus clearly already succeeds at with power armor.

You realise that is a game?.. lol.

Plus they are in the 41st millenium.. any stablisation issues or any other problems that would have occurred when designing them would have been fixed and perfected loooong ago. =)

I'm interested to see what the dread will look like in scale.. they are meant to be huge.. almost 3 times that of a marine..

as interesting as your theory is i would have a tendancy to attempt yo proove you wrong, but with allr eligious matters i have found that tryin is disvantagious to both partys....

so i shall let you beleave what you will,

haha , so make a full size marine , and then make a 3 times bigger dread ???

That is .... HUUUUGE ! ! ! !

back on track,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,i was thinking of doing spears with bolters on it like custodes................any opinions?

dread will be 2 inches taller and 1 inch wider and half inch thicker......rhino conversion is bases of land raider model...............

krazynadechukr2 wrote:

cadbren wrote:

Dakkadood wrote:I'm not sure but true scale Dreads would not be able to stand at all, much less punch something while shooting an assault cannon.

Why wouldn't they be able to stand?

way too top heavy.........

What do you base that on? No one knows the relative weight distribution in a dred. Look at a duck, it looks top heavy, its shape requires it to waddle, but it doesn't fall over every five minutes. I assume you think the current dred is top heavy too?

krazynadechukr2 wrote:back on track,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,i was thinking of doing spears with bolters on it like custodes................any opinions?

The Grey Knights have guantlet mounted stormbolters, maybe you could give your Spartiates guantlet mounted bolters and keep the force weapon looking as much like a spear as possible.

I liked the Spartan picture that I saw so far. More pics as the project progresses, I hope?

Okay, so the concept & plan of this project is this:
1. convert all space marines to a true 28mm scale
2. convert them to a mk5 style armor
3. add a spartan / 300 flare
4. use all gw bits & green stuff
5. use earth magnets to make weapons easy to swap
6. add a nickle size slug under bases to add weight
7. add names on the bases (I have small white decal letters)
8. use resin Greek tile style bases
9. repose all to dynamic poses (no repeats of poses)
10. use bolter flashes, cotton (smoke), paint glowing effects for weapons...
11. paint each mini to an 8+ scale or better
12. use real red cloth for capes
13. convert weapons to pre-heresy look
14. scrape off all icons (skulls, wings, etc) for clean "old" look

True Scale portion - Tacticals & Assualt marines - there is a 2mm thick plasti-card that I will add to base of foot, in shin, in thigh, and then I will fill in the cavity of the chest part that conects to waist portion. That waist portion will be built up to be flat. That will add 4mm. Then I will fill up neck cavity too, to raise head 2mm. That'll raise marine 12mm. The chest will have a 2mm part added between front and back, and the shoulders will have a 2mm addition too. So they will be 2mm thicker & 4mm wider... The termies will have 2mm under foot, 4mm on shin, 6mm on thighs (and thighs thickened too), waist/torso connection like tacticals, and neck cavity filled too. That'll raise termies 18mm, and 4mm in thickness, & 8mm in width....Dreads will have "hips widened by 1", legs extended by 1", and arms will go out 6mm each, the body part will have width & height & girth extended by 4mm too....arms of marines will be extended by 2mm too....

Pre-heresy style armour - scraping off all icons, adding studs on left shoulder pad, shin guards, the added waist/torso height will be covered by green stuff and look like the Red Scorpions styled armour, but with abs....

Spartan look - chaos whf helmets (with horns removed), bear heads from several lines, spears from high elf, swords from high elfs, gold armor, red capes, green stuff beards made, the Chapter Master will have a crest on helmet, and sgts too....the bolters will be on the spears like custodes....round shields on left arm (dwarf shields with icons gone)....Some helmets will be tipped back with face showing...

Poses - I like the Nurgle chaos sorcerer posr from forgeworld so one will be like this and with that raised hand will be holding severed daemon head, several other poses have been sketched out too.....

Weapons - bolters & such are on spears, but heavier weapons will be made to look like rogue trader era/per - heresy look

Dynamic - gun bursts (they make those now in blisters, forgot who), blood trailing off swinging spear, jumping through air, etc....several planned out....

Play - Once done, I'll play test as Reg Marines, Black Templars, Khorne, etc...to see what works best....

Here are a few pics to give you some ideas of where I am going

Wow, I looked on the net and found perfect examples of what I intend to do....

That painted one looks really good. Almost more natural than the actual space marine beside it.

Subscribed. I'm excited to watch this project unfold. Stuff like this is the reason I finally joined these forums.

you might have use for these aswell...

http://www.maxmini.eu/store/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=12&products_id=53

Looks liek you got the insperation good luck !