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Yeah...

I need some inspiration, what kind of modifications do the marine players out there do? We don't have creative mutations to work with, and aside from poses of my guys slicing up enemies... I'm pretty much stuck as far as conversions go.

If you have ideas, please post them, but what I''d really like would be some pictures of the conversions you've done

As always, thanks, and merry Christmas, Hanuka, kwansa, and that other holiday

... hehe... it's a christmas tree

I don't have any pictures handy but a lot of the opportunities for marine conversions come from creating some of the new units in your own terms. Why not convert your own sternguard using only plastic bitz or a librarian from bitz from the veteran and commander sprues. Or design your own custom shoulder pad design for a unique space marine chapter.

The photos of my Raptor army are pretty bad, so I won't post them unless you really, really want to, but each marine in the army was converted in some way. Here's some of the examples:

- One squad's boltguns were replaced with the metal, drum-fed boltguns from the OOP Scout Bike box
- All other bolters and bolt pistols were given flash suppressors made of short lengths of brass tubing
- All non-beaky helmets were modified with small circles of plastic to make them look like their rebreathers had been modified
- All models were based with a jungle theme - for 3 Assault Marines, I ran wire through a jungle tree up into the Marine's foot, so that it looked like they were flying over
- Numerous head swaps - my favorite for this included the Empire militia bandana head
- All chainswords in the army were from the OOP metal scout "bowie knife" style chainswords
- The Dreadnought had it's DCCW replaced with Ghazgull's Power Klaw

There were others, but those were the majority of them. Let me know if you do want the pics and I'll post them up.

Here are two pics I just took (especially for you) of four pretty easy conversions I did on my marines. Front view and right side view.




The assaultmarines were really easy conversions. In order from left: 1 Added an extra chainsword to the bottom of his chainsword hand. 2 Cut of pistol from left hand and added chainsword. He had his legs swapped for a pair from the tactical marines set and his torso and head turned a bit too far to the left, to make him look like he is bracing to recieve a charge. It's hard to see in the pic, but he is acutally looking to his left, over his backhand chainsword. 3 cut of the left plasma pistol hand at the wrist and twist a bit to make him shoot "gangsta style".

A great thing about modding marines is that there is a _lot_ of plastic bits that are interchangeable with eachother. So mix some stuff up between the tacticals and the assault to make them seem more lively, cut of a bit of an arm here and there to make it point in a new direction. Add scopes and similar details. All these things add upp to make your army look more alive.

The captain got a new weapon. I cut of his sword, added a bit of a highelf lance (from the prince on a dragon model) and a poweraxe-head. I then placed a cut of swordhandle (mordheim I think...) on the scabbard to not make it look empty. His shield was made from an old plain fantasy shield that I added an imperial eagle and a terminator cross to from my bits box.


I'll go take pics of my whirlwind and razorback and post them in a minute.

Here is my razorback, in a pretty gothic style. It started out as the old kind of rhino, I cut of the roof, and took away the front panels. Then added a doorway on the top and two windows on the front. Both from the mordheim sprue. Two old heavy bolters went into the windows. Then two bolters (some old chaos model I think) together with a gargoyle (again from mordheim) as a lookout on top. The top of the exhausts was small demonic heads from mordheim as well.



And here is my whirlwind. It is basically the old whirlwind model with a lot of mordheim bits, and then some imperial stuff from my bit box. The big circular front panel is two stone arches from mordheim doors, with a center made up from a skaven shield and some imperial stuff. It's only halfway painted yet, wich might make it easier to see the parts used.




Doing things in this gothic look allows me to go a bit more crazy than what the usually clean spacemarines looks like. Any material involving inquisitors or mordheim usually have plenty of inspiring pictures and bits to get inspiration from.

Good luck with your army, and please post some pics of your future conversions.

/M

Death By Monkeys wrote:

There were others, but those were the majority of them. Let me know if you do want the pics and I'll post them up.

They sound like creative mods, I'd love to see the pics.
*makes puppy eyes*

Shrike78 wrote:Yeah...

I need some inspiration, what kind of modifications do the marine players out there do? We don't have creative mutations to work with, and aside from poses of my guys slicing up enemies... I'm pretty much stuck as far as conversions go.

The easiest way to make a theme for space marines is to give them the flavor of a culture. Egyptian, Japanese, African, Inuit, Wild-West, Spartan, Roman, Mongolian, Gaul, Chinese, Indian, Russian, French, Spanish, Aztek, Native American, etc. As soon as you pick a culture for your theme the conversion ideas will flow.

The easiest way to do conversions is to use Warhammer Fantasy bitz, so look over the fantasy line for some inspiration and it will come.

What to do with extra black reach captains. His force staff is a templar axe, the top bit is from the raven wing scanner sprue, and the haft is from an ogre kingdoms standard. The flame in his hand is from a building kit



It's a medical dread. The bits are off of fabius bile.



That's an empire general's head with a rebreather sculpted on. Fantasy bits are great for mixing and matching, depending on your theme.

Check out my gallery for more.

Using heads from metal space marine models does it for me. Games day miniature, masters of the Chapter, any of the new special characters, Catachans it's all good

yea specially if you play multiple armies surf for bitz from different armies. long ago i got my hands on some old school eldar. some of the minis (i think warlocks) came with these little cloth looking things. so every marine in my assault squad has that cloth dangling from the right side hip. All my Sgts on up, have massive hammers for CC weapons. (obviously rules wise they count as powerfists and whatnot depending on what im doing) having small things like that really can add some UMPH to your armies

Hey Mellon, great stuff on the whirlwind.

Does anyone have any ideas on making books out of green stuff?

And some sets that come with a lot of torches/Lanterns?

Shrike78 wrote:Does anyone have any ideas on making books out of green stuff?

And some sets that come with a lot of torches/Lanterns?

The empire flagellant sprues come with tons of little bitz like torches, lanterns, keys and bells chains and skulls, and lots of books.

great thanks.

Dr. Thunder, you talked about modeling your army after a society/culture, what would you advise for a chapter that is obsessed with using knowledge to defeat the enemy, and uses primarily lanterns, torches, books, wings, and of course skulls for iconography?

Shrike78 wrote:Hey Mellon, great stuff on the whirlwind.

Thank you. I had great fun modelling it.

Shrike78 wrote:Dr. Thunder, you talked about modeling your army after a society/culture, what would you advise for a chapter that is obsessed with using knowledge to defeat the enemy, and uses primarily lanterns, torches, books, wings, and of course skulls for iconography?

How about ancient greek (~500 bc)? They are famous for their fascination with knowledge and their warrior culture. Or maybe do it in Gallileo gallilei-style. Strange contraptions of wood and sailcloth, and very interesting banners. I can already see the classical "square with inscribed circle with a naked man sumperimposed in spread eage/crusifix-position". Just switch the naked man for a spacemarine in powerarmour and voila, instant win.

Shrike78 wrote:great thanks.

Dr. Thunder, you talked about modeling your army after a society/culture, what would you advise for a chapter that is obsessed with using knowledge to defeat the enemy, and uses primarily lanterns, torches, books, wings, and of course skulls for iconography?

I'd definitely go for a flavor of ancient China. They were all about quality over quantity in their armies and tactics, of skill overcoming strength and wisdom overcoming superior numbers, and were a bastion of scholarly pursuits among a sea of barbarians for thousands of years.

You won't want to follow Ancient China exactly, but a couple shots of cultural flavoring into your conversions and fluff will really make them stand out. For instance, they could reject the Codex written by Guilliman in favor of their own sacred texts, their version of the Art of War.