[url]As conceptualized by Death by Monkeys in
http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/214316.page
After clearing through all of the currently released dan Abnett books i thumbed around and ended up finding strike force dercius, as per the above and aformentioned user.
eventually after some gazing(and drooling) i managed to shell together enough cash to get everything ordered and more or less put together(im waiting on about 14 cloaks)
Here lies 64 mostly finished tanith first and only troopers, sub 24 cloaks, with approx 14 fully painted.
it was a fun project so i decided to retroactively go back and put together some information on how you can convert your own squad of tanith guardsmen.
the parts that i ordered were as follows:
-Wood elf Glade Guard hooded heads
-Cadian Lasgun arms
-Cadian Torsos
-wood elf glade guard Cloaks
-wood elf glade guard legs
-Khorne berserker swords
First off you need a couple of tools to make this roll along easily(if not incredibly easy)
you have some wire cutters, an exacto knife, as well as a Dremel(possibly your most used and fantastical tool of guardsmen creating...ness)
the most important conversions lie in your cloak and torso. everything else is pretty much self explanatory
The Torso
if you'll notice, the cadian torso has a collar built up for you to set down, usually, a cadian helmet head.
this presents a small problem when you want to glue down your hooded wood
el..ehrm..tanith heads
the easiest way to rectify this is by dremeling down the collar to make a flatish surface for you to set your heads down on(unless you want to angle them as if craning
their neck in response to some sort of puzzling question)
it will look a little rough and sloppy, clean that up with your exacto. even when that is done it will still look a bit scratched up, however this is negligible
as the cadian shoulders and hooded heads cover most of the scratched area.
the back of the cadian torso also presents a small problem when attaching a cloak, it jutts out a bit which can make fitting the converted cloak(presented later in the how-to)
again you will want to dremel or cut it down to contour with the rest of the torso
from there you will have a solid base to glue on your converted cloak as well as your head
The Cloak
Initially the cloak comes with a quiver attached to it, however this can be easily converted to look like a sword(or tanith knife?) sheathe
for this i used a khorne berserker sword
<--it looks like that
and a wood elf glade guard cloak..be it champion or otherwise
i then used the cutters to get off a majority of the arrows in the quiver
and then i dremeled them down to a flat surface
you may notice on the back of the cloak there is a rounded plastic bit that is usually used to fit into a hole
in the back of a wood elf, i suppose if you wanted to you could drill a little one into the back of your model
but if you are anything like me you just might want to prepare the cape end to attach easier.
so dremel that down to make gluing easier.
next i prepared the hilt that sticks out of the newly emptied sheathe
i cut off the blade part as close as i could to the hilt
and then i dremeled the rest of it down to make a smooth surface.
and then you glue the hilt to the sheathe, and cape to the torso, sparing enough time to dry of course.
i used snakebite leather for all the leathers, camo green for the cloaks, and shadow grey for the fatigues.
your finished trooper should look something like this
or it might look something like this
after painting
you may at some point want to make a sgt with a close combat weapon, which i found interesting, and kind of sloppy(at least the way i did it)
whereas the entirety of the tanith 1st does not carry chainswords, every single trooper carries a straight silver fighting knife. the sgt is no exception..
but he gets a big one, because hes hardcore like that
what i did here( i didn't think about documenting it until after he was finished :( sorry)
was clip off the chainsword end and repeat a progress of cut dremel cut dremel cut until i got something that was relatively straight, and relatively silver(after painting)
i would also reccomend buying the gaunts ghosts metal pack...what would our regiment be without our colonel commisar? or our mad sniper? or corbec
And how could i forget mecha-flame trooper brostin?
(also accepting ideas on how to do regular flame trooper brostin)
a full squad and a half
I also think its healthy to add in some vermin brown(for nalwood) on the lasgun stocks for the original tanith vets. and leave just a grey or metal for your verghastites
If you have a way(or a white dwarf sub) you can check out the 2003 chapter approved listing of gaunts ghosts for some special
rules on gaunt larkin corbec, milo, and dorden
. This could go on...
