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I'm all about making Necron models as cheap as you can get them, but the new Immortal/Deathmark kit is very, very nice and almost, almost enough to make the last installment of my tutorials obsolete. While I would normally just use Warriors and convert them into a close analog, there's so many bits leftover after assembling your 5 Immortal models that it's a crying shame not to use them not to mention easier than scratch building.

Now, at my son's behest I assembled the Immortals with Tesla Carbines because everyone knows new shiny = cool, awesome, and the absolute bestest just like 'ole uncle Geedub says. This leaves behind 5 Gauss Blaster arms - without the matching left arms that go with them - and 5 Synaptic Disintegrators, along with the Deathmark heads. I'm going to use the Blasters with my Warrior-to-Immortal conversion (link above) but I need to make sure the warrior's left arm is long enough to match up to the blaster's left hand. Otherwise, that's 5 Teslas and 5 Gauss' taken care of with a box of Immortals and a box of Warriors. That leaves the Deathmark guns, torsos, and heads.

Which brings us to the meat of the Tute! It bears saying that the tools used in the Immortal conversion are also used here, but mostly the sharp hobby knife, plastic cement, and greenstuff.


Armor Plate for the Legs


The Warrior's legs are a little weedy for Deathmarks, which use the Immortal "chassis". My first conversion left the legs un-plated and it looked a little wonky. I started with 1/4" square thin plasticard, probably 1mm thickness but it's hard to tell because I use For Sale signs instead of the expensive stuff. From the squares, I trimmed off three of the corners, sliced two of the corners off at the mid-point to the trimmed-off center corner, and squared off the larger center plate by cutting off the last corner. Here's a diagram:



The grey bits are the plates, the red bits were trimmed away. The plates were then glued on the Deathmark legs as shown above. Don't like it? Make your plates any way you'd like.


Deathmark Torso Prep



First, there's a tiny lip around the waist socket of the rear Deathmark torso that you'll need to shave off before gluing some plasticard where shown. If there's any card hanging over the edge of the torso, wait for the glue to completely set and use your knife to carefully trim the excess.


Warrior Torso Prep



Since we've got the Deathmark's rear torso bit, we only need the front Warrior torso bit. It's got a semi-cylindrical neck bit that helps it fit into the Warrior's rear torso bit that's just going to get in the way, so trim it off, but keep the top that supports the head! There's a tiny lip just under where the head sits and a sharp knife can make an incision perpendicular to front of the torso, then clippers can easily snip away the rest, making a clean, precise cut.


Add some Greenstuff



Mix up a small pea's worth of greenstuff and separate it into thirds. place one third on each of the two card plates on the sides and the last third in the center of the chest piece just below the neck socket. You'll want to flatten it some, but don't mush it too much! It's going to act as adhesive and gap-filler as well as cushion/buffer for the front chest bit, as shown in the next step.


Front + Back



The Warrior neck bit should be your guide since it slides right into the neck socket on the Deathmark's chest bit. Also, keep in mind the chest bits need to be centered to one another - check the arm sockets to make sure they're lined up and look even to one another. Once you're there, press the bits together until the greenstuff squishes out just a little as shown in the second photo above.


Clean up your mess!



Since the Warrior's torso bit is a little smaller than the Deathmark's, we'll use the squished-out greenstuff to smooth the join. Simply use a lubricated tool, like a Color Shaper (I used the round chisel, perfect for this job) or a sculpting tool and smooth the GS towards the front of the torso to minimize the size difference. Make sure to smooth out the bottom as well, cleaning up any gap that may be left. Don't worry about the arm sockets yet, they're coming up.

At this point, it's a good idea to let the greenstuff cure completely so you don't get fingerprints on it, accidentally squeeze the pieces more, or slide the bits out of alignment. Go watch a movie. Or a few episodes of Big Bang Theory, Fringe, or Firefly. Work out. Paint some of that mountain of gray plastic waiting for you. Play a game. Just walk away from it!


Are you done waiting?




Has it been at least two hours?? If not, go set an egg timer or something, jeez. Oh, you say it's set? Okay then! The next step is making a neck. Immortals and Deathmarks were taught good posture at finishing school, but Warriors never went and as a result they are very slouchy, much like the cast of Caveman. Find one of the injection posts on a sprue, they're the round bits that stick up on flat edges, and cut it free. The one above came off the Immortals sprue.

Next, slice it as neatly as you can with your knife to about 1mm thickness. The one above is a little big at 3mm diameter and would probably fit better if it were 2mm. If you've got plastic rod, use that, or even better a leather punch on 1mm card. Finally, glue it right on top of the neck bit, making sure it's as level as you can get it.


The Head



Glue on the head. Probably a good idea to make sure the neck is completely set before doing this.


Greenstuffing the Arm Sockets



You'll need a little more greenstuff to fill the arm sockets so the Deathmark's arms will seat properly. You might be able to just glue the arms in if you're patient and have the manual dexterity of a master thief. I don't. Hence the putty. Use just enough to fit inside the socket, no more. You'll want to press the end of a paintbrush or color shaper (lubricated!) into the ball to spread it and make a sort of new socket for your arms.


Add the Arms



Add a dab of glue to the wrist of the left arm, then get them into position in the sockets while the greenstuff is still semi-soft and sticky. Things might mush up while getting them just so, which is okay because the next step is to clean up the socket.


Fixing the Arm Sockets



Going back to your color shaper or sculpting tool, press the greenstuff around the ball joint of the arm to clean things up and get a little better adhesion out of the putty. Make sure not to disposition the arms too much and if you do, carefully move them back into place. At this point, I stick the assembled torso on a bit of blu-tack and let the arms cure into place. Yup, another 2 hours of waiting.


Tab "A" into Slot "B"




Glue the torso onto the legs. Additional greenstuff in the waist socket might help here, but glue was enough for me. Hold the torso in position on the spinal column longer than you think you need to because the torso is fairly heavy compared to the surface that's supporting it's weight. The final touch would be a bit of guitar wire to replace the spinal column-to-head bit, but I'm leaving that up to you guys. I might add it before these fellas see paint, but my son is happy with the conversion as it stands.


Scarabs aside, this leaves me with two complete Warriors, and five each of the rear torsos and heads, and 10 gauss flayers from the Warrior kit. If you've got some extra bases I'd say make them into Reanimation Protocol counters. As always, feedback and comments are appreciated, so let me know what you think!

Very nicely done. I dont have the Necrons yet, the deathmark arms wont fit warrior torso without GS?

The arm ball joints are spaced a little too far apart for the warrior's arm sockets, Luna. At least that's been my experience. The greenstuff really helps them seat properly, but if you were able to adjust the angle of the arms enough they might fit with just glue.

Do you have any comparison shots so we can see what your end product looks like compared to the "real deal"?

Sorry Silver, my pre-order only included one box of Immortals, so no "official" Deathmark models. However, I can get shots of them next to Immortals which is probably just as good. I'll get those up later today.

I am a big fan of green stuff because it helps in making new models out of extra bits.

Okay, so here's the comparison shots or warriors, the new Immortals, and Warrior-Deathmark hybrids:




As you can see, the Deathmarks stand about as tall as a Warrior, but the cowl on their backs makes them about as tall as an Immortal. However, these Deathmarks are a bit on the hunchie side because their torsos leaned forward when being glued, in addition to the stance of their legs. Not too bad and really only visible when this close - just sitting on the table to take their photo, I couldn't really tell the difference between their heights. I do wish the leg plating were a bit smoother, but that's completely my fault for using thicker card, not filling gaps, and/or aligning the plates well enough.

The conversions are so well done, you would think that is how they came from the box they are so good. I am sure once you paint them, they will look even better.

Very nice , i have a question can you do it with lychguards and pretorians, i mean in the box come a lot of weapons , 2 diferent torso, 2 diferent heads , and as i see you only need legs, a few arms and front chest !

budafashion wrote:Very nice , i have a question can you do it with lychguards and pretorians, i mean in the box come a lot of weapons , 2 diferent torso, 2 diferent heads , and as i see you only need legs, a few arms and front chest !

If you put a lot of work into it i'm sure you can, however, lychguard and preatorian torsos are much larger than a warrior or immortal. I've taken the spare praetorian bits for making some cheap crypteks.

Sunoccard wrote:

budafashion wrote:Very nice , i have a question can you do it with lychguards and pretorians, i mean in the box come a lot of weapons , 2 diferent torso, 2 diferent heads , and as i see you only need legs, a few arms and front chest !

If you put a lot of work into it i'm sure you can, however, lychguard and preatorian torsos are much larger than a warrior or immortal. I've taken the spare praetorian bits for making some cheap crypteks.

I'd agree here. The main problem with using this conversion for Praetorians/Lychguard is that the legs are very hunchy. If the warriors stood upright more, I'd say go for it. I've cut and repositioned warrior legs before to make a warrior stand tall, but it's a pain and you're better off buying the legs separately from a bits site.

That said, I think using the warrior legs with Praetorian bits would make great crypteks. I don't have a box of them yet, so I don't know if they share torso fronts. If they do, then the warrior-torso conversion above would probably work with them. Add some greenstuff cloaks, maybe a beard or two and you've got yourself a nice looking Royal Court.

Gavin Thorne wrote:

Sunoccard wrote:

budafashion wrote:Very nice , i have a question can you do it with lychguards and pretorians, i mean in the box come a lot of weapons , 2 diferent torso, 2 diferent heads , and as i see you only need legs, a few arms and front chest !

If you put a lot of work into it i'm sure you can, however, lychguard and preatorian torsos are much larger than a warrior or immortal. I've taken the spare praetorian bits for making some cheap crypteks.

I'd agree here. The main problem with using this conversion for Praetorians/Lychguard is that the legs are very hunchy. If the warriors stood upright more, I'd say go for it. I've cut and repositioned warrior legs before to make a warrior stand tall, but it's a pain and you're better off buying the legs separately from a bits site.

That said, I think using the warrior legs with Praetorian bits would make great crypteks. I don't have a box of them yet, so I don't know if they share torso fronts. If they do, then the warrior-torso conversion above would probably work with them. Add some greenstuff cloaks, maybe a beard or two and you've got yourself a nice looking Royal Court.

Praetorian torso backs are much larger than a warrior's. I really didn't need to do any real conversion work, I used warrior legs and full torso, with the staff of covenant from the praetorian and added the praetorian head on top. I'll link pictures tomorrow.

Great tutorial, as always! To be honest I sort of was sad, a little, when the plastic immortals came out. I know that's stupid thing to say, but I was so pleased with my converted immortals from your previous tutorial - such a sense of accomplishment.

Ouze wrote:Great tutorial, as always! To be honest I sort of was sad, a little, when the plastic immortals came out. I know that's stupid thing to say, but I was so pleased with my converted immortals from your previous tutorial - such a sense of accomplishment.

same here.

I know how you guys feel! Thanks for the sentiment!

I'm putting paint on this batch of deathmarks, the immortals from the box, and the converted immortals using the gauss blasters from the plastics kit.

The converted ones are definitely smaller than the new plastics, not as finished looking, but still nice. Just knowing how much $$ I've saved making them gives me a warm fuzzy.

Thanks for the tutorial. I think I will have to do this as well. I already have nearly 100 warriors, and all built. I wish I had some new ones to play with this a bit. Thanks again for saving us some extra money.

Props man. I am going to give this a go. Thank you!

tallerguy wrote:Thu, Nov/27/2730 06:05:34 AM

Wow! Posts from the FUTURE!!! My tute is going strong 718 years from now! Talk about necro-ing a thread...

Also, thanks for the feedback!