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This is the beginnings of what will be a heavily converted army based off the Space Wolves models. I've been working on some sketches and 3d models of sci-fi soldiers of my own creation, so have taken some cues from them in converting sw figures. Basically I'm going for a much grittier, modern-combat crossed with power armor look. Giving them lots of packs and other gear, gun modifications and trimming down the oversize shoulder pads and whatnot. More on that later, as I don't have any completed squads to post up. Yet.

For the moment I'm working on this predator conversion, using a razorback kit and a turret refurbised from a hideously painted and built 2nd hand model. I'm not sure it was worth the time I spent cleaning it up, but I like giving a second life to miniatures. Kind of like taking in a stray dog... It didn't have working sponsons, and I also wanted to make a variation of the predator with hull and cupola mounted secondary weapons -inspired by the M3 Lee and M4 Sherman tanks. Besides sponsons are silly, right? .

This is my first attempt at a serious vehicle conversion so its no masterpiece, but for anyone who wants to know, I built the hull gun mount out of
-a side hatch and heavy flamer mount from a Leman Russ
-a razorback lascannon and sm heavy bolter

The cupola turret took me most of a day and was built using the following:
-plasticard
-2 cut up tank hatches (not sure what kit they're from)
-a guardsman heavy bolter
-a razorback lascannon
-superfine milliput

The storm bolter cupola was made similarly, except with a smaller hatch

The stowage was taken from 2 excellent Tamaya kits that a lot of you are probably well aware of already:
1/35 Modern US Military equipent
1/48 Jerry Can set. (the actual jerry cans in this are too small for 40k vehicles, I ended up using the 1/35 ones instead, but it does come with some excellent oil drums, the bags and bedrolls look well too)


The tank is also fully magnetised, so can be switched to rhino or razorback in seconds. I learned some important things about magnetising in the course of making this.
-Superglue is strong enough to hold magnets but you only have seconds before it sets, so only good when you have a magnet flush to the hole its in. Lacking a dremel, this can be a problem as if the magnet goes into that hole crooked, the part won't connect properly.
-As an alternative I started wraping a small amount of milliput on the back and sides of the magnet and pushing it into the hole. This allowed me to position it correctly with the added bonus that it filled the hole flush to the surrounding plastic. Excess can be removed by cutting, or sanding when dry.
-The problem with this approach is the milliput takes a while to harden, and it behaves like a clay when dry, so where the magnet is not well anchored, the magnet can tear free after a bit of use. So I took to using green stuff on the more vulnerable connections, and it worked a treat. Its plasticity makes it the better option, I'll use it for all magnetising in future.

This is nearly finished -still have to add some small details, iconography, and a bit more stowage and applique (bolt-on) armour to the turret, before I get around to painting it up. Anyway I love looking at other people's stuff on the site, so figured it was about time I put up some of my own! Enjoy & comments welcome.

Killer conversions, good start on one of my favorite traitor chapters. Looking forward to seeing more!

 genom.cor wrote:
Killer conversions, good start on one of my favorite traitor chapters. Looking forward to seeing more!

Thanks, and I'm glad you mentioned that, as I wasn't actually aware a Chapter with the same name existed I'm going for a much darker colour scheme than SW, that's why I called them that. Will have to come up with a new name to avoid confusion.

Another predator customised and all "magged up," including thee side hatches, top plate and sponsons, so I can switch this one out for a rhino or razorback. I also magnetised the non-essential stuff like smoke launchers, searchlights, so this took forever. In hindsight I would have bought a dremel type tool, and saved myself a day of hand drilling. I don't know if it's just me, but even with the moderate level of conversion I've done on this model, I spend an huge amount of time amount of time just lining up parts and filing them down so they fit. They guys in tutorials seem to able to do this stuff in a third the time I spend on it -I can only hope I'll get my speed up with practice.

Enjoyed putting the stowage on this. Most of it was Tamaya stuff, but some scratch built bedrolls out of milliput and carved the pickaxe from spare sprue parts.
Turret gunner is again a guardsman with a sw head swap. Arm holding the binoculars had to be pinned at the elbow, so I conveniently covered the joint in a bandage!

Have to modelling up a squad of my grey hunters next. I'm still not 100% on my colour palette, so being the indecisive fether that I am, going to keep modelling my force and will only pick up that brush once I'm reasonably sure of what I want.

And definately the last tank I'll be modelling for a while, a refurbished 2nd edition vindicator. This one didn't need converting so much as it needed a lot of cleaning up. The paint comes of the metal parts like a treat, but it had been somewhat badly constructed, and man, the hours I spent scraping off patches of dried superglue -and worse still polycement- was painful. But what really annoyed me was the poor quality of the components of this kit. Don't get me wrong, the detail is great, particularely for such an old kit, but the fit of the parts is awful. Two of the metal side skirts were bent outwards, as was the engine plate and the rear ramp hatch. It's enough to leave noticeable gaps so I spent an hour or so very carefuly bending them to a flatter fit. Then when I glued the side to the main hull body. there was a huge gap or "shell trap" at the front and top. You can see the extent of the area I had to fill in with a paste I made from milliput.

I put the usual stowage on, fit a lot of it snugly in the gap between the side skirts and the top plate. Only notable conversion I did on this kit are the headlights, filed down and rebuilt from searchlights, and rebuilding the broken exhausts with sprue plastic.

First squad -some wolf scouts. Excuse the state of them,. Only reason I posted a pic these before spraying was to show the raw conversion work:

Removed some of the pistols and gear on their belts and added some pouches, binoculars, etc.
I made them fur cloaks using milliput. Did this by pressing a thin sheet of it onto the cloaks, pressing it in with warious sculpting tools, shaving away a lt of it until it was barely covering the underlying plastic, and then applying a crosshatch patters with a carving tool.
I didn't like the pose on the sergeant, holding the gun sight seperate to the gun, it just seemed dumb, so repositioned arm by side carrying a claymore-type mine made with greenstuff. Other marine is also repositioned to be propping up rifle while he prepares to lay a mine.
The head swaps, the easiest thing in thoery, proved to be a real pain in the ass, To get them to fit, I had to cut away a lot of rear and side of heads to get them to fit into the scout head socket, and had to repair with greenstuff.

They look quite choppy at the moment but will hopefully be a bit smoother when they're painted.

Finally got some headway on my first Grey Hunters squad. Work in Progress photos below. All my squads will be modelled with some particular action in mind and the idea I have with this squad is the wolf guard pack leader is directing his mens' fire.The first rank of 5 will be crouched and firing and the second rank of 5 standing and firing over their heads.

An idea I had early on with my army was to model each marine with a role in mind, similar to a modern combat squad. So theres a medic who'll have a first aid kit , a designated marksman with a long range type bolter, and a support gunner with a SAW type bolter. Future models will have shortened /CCQ bolters with grenade launchers flamer guys will have tanks on their backs. I find stuff like this adds a good amount of personalisation with relatively simple converting.

I'm giving all my wolf guard very distinctive armour -Sanguniary guard torsos & legs, furs, guarded shoulder pads and "wolfy" helms, as though they are issued with slightly more advanced power armour, as well as purely decorational stuff like fur cloaks.

As mentioned earlier I file down all the shoulder pads to a more practical size..The only downside is it means sacrificing the trim, but I don't mind. If you're going to attempt it, you need to remove more material from the bottom of the pad. Be careful how much material you remove from the neck side of the pad, otherwise you'll get an unsightly gap.

Helmets are all going to be MK6's and Grey Knight helms.

Green-stuffed some pouches to complement what comes in the SW and SM kits.

As for complex converting, wiring and reposing the arms is challenging enough, and the legs is very tough indeed. Drilling and putting the wire through the correct pivot point of the joint is especially important, as otherwise you end up with a skewed limb. (e.g. I discovered that the knee joint should pivot very close to the front and not from the centre of the knee, otherwise it creates an undesirable gap.

So here's the first 6, minus the canvas backpacks, a few trinkets and bullet / scratch marks I'll eventually give them.

I'd also like to give a thank you to Veteran Sergeant for his excellent modelling blog, which provided great instruction on how to make some of the poses. http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/437416.page

Suggestions welcome.

Finally...first squad modelled up. First rank fire! Second rank fire!

And the start of the second squad, which I'm modelling to be advancing with weapons ready, on the lookout for the enemy...

2nd Grey Hunter squad finished. Had a lot of fun making these guys. Theme of the squad is: Front rank advancing cautiously, weapons aimed. 2nd rank holding position, scanning terrain, chatting on radio. The medic is carrying some sort of a space marine equivalent of a defribulator, or maybe its an advanced medkit with a cable and a big spike on the end of it...okay I admit it -I modelled it and I don't know what the **** it's supposed to be!!

A bit of wrist repositioning (green stuff an wire) and shoulder joint re-angling (by filing and adding plasticard) required to achieve the poses, but it's getting easier with repetition. The gun modifications are a mix of scratch built components, gw scopes, and some of the excellent resin gun modifications by Anvil Industries. The shotgun and sniper rifles 2 of the guys are carrying count as bolters for the purposes of gameplay.

I'll be building a 3rd squad of hunters which will be magnetised to be used as blood claws too, but going to get cracking on my thunderwolves next.

I really like the look of your streamlined power armor; it's refreshing to see somewhat more realistic MEQ. That being said, some of the helmets look a tad oversized (even by 'heroic scale' standards). It might just be the angle, though. I'm excited to see these guys painted up. Have you made any choices on an exact color scheme yet?

 youidiotkid wrote:
I really like the look of your streamlined power armor; it's refreshing to see somewhat more realistic MEQ. That being said, some of the helmets look a tad oversized (even by 'heroic scale' standards). It might just be the angle, though. I'm excited to see these guys painted up. Have you made any choices on an exact color scheme yet?

Thanks for the feedback, good to know someone appreciates the 2 days I spent shaving down 40 shoulder pads!! (it was surprisingly tricky). Yeah, I guess reducing the pads emphasises the body / head proportions. It's definately noticeable on the "wolfy" helms I've used for my wolf guard. I could compensate by heightening the torsos a bit byadding plasticard at the waist joint.

Yep, I'm pretty fixed on a muted, much darker sw scheme
-grey-black with a blue tinge for the main armour
-black for cabling and possibly trims
-leadbelcher with rust effect for any bare metal,
-brown and /or bone pouches
-forest green and bark brown cloaks
-variety of shades for the furs
-limited amount of red pick-up, possibly yellow, mainly because I need something bright and it looks excellent in contrast to grey-black)
-mostly very pale skin
-battle damage and mud on the armour using black and leadbelcher
-some mud on the lower legs and feet
I'm still deciding on some elements, and need to learn tehniques like glazing.

I'm hoping to a achieve something akin to this:



Cheers

My 1st IC -a wolf priest. Lacking a decent model to use for a wolf priest, I took a look around at the other chaplain models with aim to converting them. Stumbled across the Legion of the Damned Sergeant and it was love at first sight lol. Chopped the power axe blades off and used bits from a 3rd party ork grenade to make a power maul / crozius. Reduced the size of the shoulder pads. Shaved off some skulls and other Damned iconography and added some wolfy ones and medical pouches. Magnetised a sanguinary guard jump pack (much prefer their reduced profile to the regularones) and also magged an apothacary backpack to fit him. Pretty straightforward and was fun to build.

It was also my first experience working with finecast resin -can certainly see why it's the brunt of so many complaints. With all the flashing and bent weapons its about 2x the cleanup time as for a regula plastic model :( and that's not to mention the bubbles and a warped face grille on one of the other marines in the pack.

I like the look of the plasma pistol but but debating whether to magnetise it to be interchangeable with a bolt pistol on account of the former being so overpriced for so long...

Thunderwolf Cavalry WIP. The first of 2 squads of 3. I modeled these guys as though they're hacking, and smashing at enemies as they ride into / by them. All fairly straightforward reposes -wrists using wire and green stuff, shoulders re angled to body by filing and/or using a wedge of plasticard. I was particularly pleased with "Slash" who's leaning over in the saddle to slap someone in the face with his wolf claw. I made the claw using a spare bionic thunderwolf paw, shaping a wrist socket and replacing the claws with lightning claw blades. I'm not a fan of the OTT size of stock powerfists and lightning claws. They look fine on terminators, but a little silly on models in power armour.

Apart from my usual shoulder pad reduction, I added some 3rd party cloaks. I've also drilled holes in the hands -the finished models will have reins. Scratch building a few storm shields for them too.

As with almost all of my models with close combat weapons, I've magnetised the weapon arms for ease of changing loadouts in the future (and to save money).

2nd Thunderwolf unit. Whereas the first squad is modeled to be already in the midst of melee, hacking and slashing, these guys are closing the distance hosing down their targets with bolt pistol fire. I used some sanguinary guard angelus bolters (counts-as bolt pistol) as thought a wrist mounted weapon made sense for a rider, so as he could keep both hands free.

As with the first squad I'll be modelling reins for them to hold once I decide on a suitable material. 2 of each of the squads of 3 will also have storm shields on the arms holding the reins -thus the poses I've stuck the arms at.

2nd Thunderwolf unit. Whereas the first squad is modeled to be already in the midst of melee, hacking and slashing, these guys are closing the distance hosing down their targets with bolt pistol fire. I used some sanguinary guard angelus bolters (counts-as bolt pistol) as thought a wrist mounted weapon made sense for a rider, so as he could keep both hands free.

As with the first squad I'll be modelling reins for them to hold once I decide on a suitable material. 2 of each of the squads of 3 will also have storm shields on the arms holding the reins -thus the poses I've stuck the arms at.

1st Terminator squad, amed for anti-infantry work. The stock wg terminators are gorgeous models, so only thing I wanted to change was to give them a bit more sense of motion. This squad is dishing out the pain in close combat, so guns lowered and blades swinging.
Simple wrist reposes (wire & greenstuff)
Shoulder re-angling (platicard).
Hip poses (some required greesnstuff)
Grey knight termie helms, because they're cooler!
Only time consuming conversion work was the fuel arrangement for the heavy flamer. Thought the tanks hanging from the back of the gun looked a bit uingainly, so chopped them, put on an imperial guard backpack tank, and rerouted the plastic hosing to connect to this.

As with my twc, some of these guys are missing their shields, because I haven't finalised how I'm going to go about making them yet

2nd termie squad WIP these guys kitted out for more of an anti-armour role, and whereas the first squad are posed swinging about in melee, these lads are unleashing hell from a distance. Apart from the usual shoulder and wrist reposing (there's usually something small I want to improve on the positions of the arms), I converted the heavy weapons guy to be holding the assault cannon 2 handed. I'll give it a smoother finish and a handle of course. The storm shield is from Puppets of War, I prefer the more functional appearance to the gw shields, as nicely ornate as they are.

All arms magnetised. I found I needed to use 3mmx1mm mags, 2mmx1mm were unable to hold the arms in raised positions -they kept slipping down.

Finishing decking out my tanks, and undercoating them. I might actually finally get around to painting them one day...

Nice builds. Looking forward to seeing paint - I much prefer seeing a grittier paint style instead of the cartoon blue-grey of modern times.

I just am not happy with sponsons on a sci-fi tank, so I went back and altered my other pred. Different weapon layout to the first one, this time the MGs are coaxial and in a remote control mount near the driver hatch.

A heavy tank I''m working on. I don't like sponsons on my tanks, but they do look good on a land raider, so in the end I settled for mounting the main armaments in the turret and pintle, and replacing the sponson lasers with MGs. The turre began as a spare chassis front from FW legion basilisk kit. The main weapon, intended to be a heavy laser cannon, is converted from an Ork bomb / missile.Much plasticard was harmed in the making of this! I have yet to add bolt-on plating, stowage and some peripherals.

Finally finished the Growler. Pleased enough with it,a bit rougher looking finish than I intended, but given the amount of parts I had to butcher and splice, I'm ok with that. I could have added rivets and divided hull panels but tbh I just reached a point where I wanted to move on to something else. 100 hours is enough time for one model I think.

Combat Walker (anti-tank loadout). Twin laser cannon, hull mounted ATGM launcher, cc weapon,smoke grenades. The model is converted from an "Ajax" Siege Strider by Mantic Games. A nice looking model, with the exception of the weapons, which look oversized and unrefined compared to 40k weaponry (which says a lot really). So they got swapped out.

One thing I've learnt from this project is the value of adding gun mantlets when converting. The point where the original model's arm joined the new laser turned out a bit choppy (see 4th picture), mainly because the hard plastic of Mantic models was tough and messy to cut. But hey, stick a big flat shield over it, and who'd ever know?

As with most of my other units, I'll be making a second one with an anti-infantry configuration.

Good stuff!

On the sideways pictures - that's usually an iPhone issue. The Dakka image attachment software can't read the phones code that says which way up the picture is supposed to be (because Apple changed it some time ago and made it difficult to code for). There's an easy fix - before you upload the image, open it in an image editor, make some small change (adjust the brightness, crop it, or just rotate it 360 degrees if you don't actually want to change anything) and then save it. The image will now be saved with correct orientation information in the code, and will be upright when uploaded.

I really should make an article to link to for that instead of typing it out each time...

 insaniak wrote:


On the sideways pictures - that's usually an iPhone issue.

I never would have guessed it was the phone, thanks for the info man

Assault squad. Fairly straightforward -1st rank fighting in a defensive shield line, 2nd rank running forward to counter-charge and dish out the pain. The Forge World boarding shields are a great piece of kit, particularly the way arms can be posed to poke weapons through the loophole of the shield.

Sean! I'm in the internet too!! been staring at this army for about an hour fair play

 orangebrushminiatures wrote:
Sean! I'm in the internet too!! been staring at this army for about an hour fair play

Cheers Alan. One of these days I'm actually going to paint something!