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hey everyone. I'm assembling a tactical squad and i just realised it doesnt coome with heavy bolter bits! I was thinging of trying to convert a tau burst cannon ( as i have a ton lying around) for the purpose. would this look too out of place? or would it be cool?

Go for it man. As long as you arent playing any official tourneys and do a good job it would look awesome. I got a few converts of my own if you want to take a look.

By that do you mean it wouldnt be tournament legal? It would be a conversion, i wouldnt count it as a burst cannon and i'd make an effort to make it at least look like a heavy bolter variant.

Im not too familiar with tourney rules but some places can be really anal about models and how they appear from what ive heard and seen

Presumably your army isn't Tau and so doesn't include tau burst cannon , so at least there's little confusion, you can just tell opponents that any burst cannon count as heavy bolters.

But yes, some tournies and opponents will moan.

It's also not very fluffy, unless you have an ork loota army which has good reason to loot Tau weapons.

Unless you're going for some sort of looter/scavenger theme, it would be much simpler and safer to get some actual heavy bolters

well my SM army is going to have a theme of being scraped together from former members of differnt chapters. Their armour will all be painted the same, but each mini is going to be unique in some way, and im toying with giving them different insignia on their shoulderpads. Needless to say, these arent your normal "Foar the Imperium!" marines. Anyways, with that explanation I could say that the burst cannon heavy bolter would be a deviant pattern developed by traitor forces, or even a 'refurbished' burst cannon. The statlines for the weapons are almost the same. It would just be a bit less powerful and a heavy weapon instead of an assault weapon (which, technically a burst cannon might as well be anyways as anything carrying one is relentless or a vehicle). I figure a renegade techmarine would tinker with a broken burst cannon to get it working again and end up with the equivalent of a heavy bolter.

Sounds fine to me. I have one on the front of one of my Russes (background here).

wow that looks really good! I think i'll go ahead with it

I would be inclined to try and imperialise it a bit. Keep the front end worky bits as before, but try and make the main body of the weapon a bit boxier.

i'd have no problems with that conversion. personally, i think it looks more like an assault cannon but the IG don't have access to that weapon.

I was planning on doing something along those lines. maybe i'll cannnibalise a plasma gun or meltagun to get parts for it.

well i used a shoota as a heavy bolter due to tghe fact that they are about the same size and if it looks good dont sweat it no one will call you on it

Ive used them as assault cannons before (2 burst cannons put together so it has 8 barrels)

to make it work as a heavy bolter then it would need some work, its a whole different design.

however, if i was to play someone who was doing this i wouldnt have a problem aslong as i was aware they were HB's.