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Damn thought you'd done some more marines for a second

I found in addition to doing batches of the leg and torso lengthening, getting singular marines made and painted really helped me with motivation to spend hours on the next one.

Especialy if you then spend a while looking at how awesome they look compared to a now true scale marine

 JoeRugby wrote:
Damn thought you'd done some more marines for a second

No. The project had been packed up for a while as I had a bunch of other things going on in life.

They've been playing Space Hulk though.

 Veteran Sergeant wrote:
I've found that doing several at a time cuts down on the total time. At least the prep. You can prep torsos and legs in batches.

I'm glad you've taken something away from this project. Let me know if you have any questions.

I'll try reposing the legs / arms in batches, thanks for the suggestion.

Actually yes, there was something I'd like to ask: This work in progress is my attempt at a "designated marksman" marine for one of my squads. I wanted to have him looking down the scope of his DMR type bolter, about to fire. As you can see from the front view, the problem I encountered was that I cant position the trigger hand and forearm close enough to the to put the scope in line with his eye, because the chest plate gets in the way. Even after I shaved all the protruding detail off the chest plate, I still couldn't get the pose. I'm beginning to think its anatomically impossible for a marine to use a sniper rifle!

I was wondering if you'd had more success making such a pose?

Yeah, you'll probably never achieve a true "down the sights" look, just because of the depth of the torso pieces.

You'd have to rotate the weapon to cant on an angle. Might try shaving a mm off the interior neck piece so it can be positioned closer.

 Veteran Sergeant wrote:
Yeah, you'll probably never achieve a true "down the sights" look, just because of the depth of the torso pieces.

You'd have to rotate the weapon to cant on an angle. Might try shaving a mm off the interior neck piece so it can be positioned closer.

Will give it a shot on the next one. Thanks Sarge.

Not much of a converter, so I'm not sure how difficult it would be, but maybe try offsetting the scope on an angle like the telescopic sites on old-school musket-era rifles. you would also probably have to lengthen the scope as well. Unfortunately it would definitely have a different aesthetic to it though.

Looking at the posted figure, it looks as if you could possibly angle the head downwards to bring the eyes closer to the scope? Also bringing the arm a bit higher and rotating the wrist a bit might help, although I'm not sure it would look very natural.

@brushcommando Lengthening the scope would be an improvement,

@Soul Samurai Angling the head down would help. I had tried as you suggested raising the firing arm and lowering the supporting hand, unfortunately the chest plate remains an issue. The only way I could see it working is if I lengthened the arms so the gun is held further out from the body. But yes, that would look unnatural too.

Thanks for the suggestions guys. Another alternative would be to flatten the chest plate considerably, but that damages the aesthetics. Tbh I've kind of accepted that I'm only going to get an adequate result with this pose. The figure is just unsuitable for it.

A little sneak peek of what's upcoming.



I've been in the process of building some skirmish level rules for 40K, and some small armies of bad guys (Orks and Tau right now, with Chaos/Genestealer Cult coming) for my Spess Mahreens and Imperial Guard to fight.

Couldn't post the full picture because that model is an EBay rescue that needs to be stripped and disassembled before being chopped up. After all, the name of the blog is "Leave No Model Unconverted" and yes, that means no model.

It'll be interesting to see your take on some of these other armies for sure.

I'm kind of excited to see what I can do with them. I've only gotten started with the prep work at this point, but there's a nice growing pile of Tau and Orks right now that I'm kind of excited to see what I can do with.

In less exciting news, I'm transitioning this thing into a Wordpress blog. I'll still be posting all of the project-oriented stuff here, but I'm going to branch out the 40K content on the blog and collect a lot of the various commentary I've done across the various sites this log has been hosted on, so the blog will end up as a more holistic collection of the what's and why's. Plan for it to have articles on fluff and battle reports (Veteran Sergeant Plays: Dark Verngernce needs a permanent home, and so does the forthcoming Veteran Sergeant Plays: Shield Your Baals: Derthsterm).

Still playing with the format, but you can find it here:

http://veteransergeant.wordpress.com/

And it's got a Facebook Page too.
https://www.facebook.com/LeaveNoModelUnconverted

Now with 100% more Xeno-Heresy!

So I've been in the process of developing an alternate 40K ruleset designed to focus around troops at the platoon-level (with some vehicle support). One of the things that did was inspire me to build up some small (500 points-ish) antagonist armies. This led me to scouring EBay for good deals on Tau and Orks (among other things).

These two armies are something of polar opposites for me. Orks I always wanted to play, because I played Orcs in Fantasy and loved them, despite their penchant for self-destructing (Big 'Uns failing their antagonism roll right in charge range of High Elf cavalry in a tournament comes to mind). The old 2nd Edition Orks were amazingly fun to play against. But when I was younger I only had a limited budget to work with, and I already had basically three armies (and a Necromunda gang). So Orks never made it to the table.

The Tau, on the other hand, I've literally never played a game with or against. They didn't show up in the game until I was on my way out of it, and none of my friends ever picked them up. Originally I didn't like them because of the anime aesthetic (the first gen suit models weren't great either) and the goodie-goodie image. It wasn't until later that I realized the Tau were 40K's adaptation of Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, right down to the separation of castes biologically designed to be ideal for their tasks and the social engineering around The Greater Good that leads every caste to be happy in their role. Seriously, any Tau fan should read that novel if they haven't. Even if you're not a Tau fan, it's a great book. Either way, that realization, and their depiction in IA3 made me decide that they were a great Grimdark addition to the 40K Universe. An oppressive, insidious regime that would be a villain in any science fiction storyline except 40K, where it ends up a "good guy".

Anyway, enough rambling. We're here for little plastic toy soldiers.

So, as with the Spess Mahreens, I had a list of things I wanted from my filthy xenos scum. Obviously they needed to by hardened and lethal looking. They also need to be loaded for bear as well (that's going to be an alternate challenge, identifying the bits I want to acquire for that purpose. Anyone have leftover Ork and Tau accessories they aren't using?). They obviously also need to be converted. That's the whole reason people follow this project, right?

So here's the first Tau Fire Warrior. I put this guy together basically to get a feel for the model.


First tasks with the Fire Warrior was cutting down the Pulse Rifle. The length of that weapon is ridiculous. I wanted make the Pulse Rifle still look exotic and deadly, but tone it down from the Napoleonic Musket length it had. The rifle is almost the same length as the model is tall. Fortunately, this wasn't a complicated process.


This leaves the Pulse Rifle a little longer than the Carbine (though I may modify those too), but also it looks manageable. The Tau have all this technology and they can't miniaturize their longarms? Anyway, I'm pleased with the result. I think it makes the Fire Warrior look more fierce and deadly. I'll need to perfect the process, but the cuts I showed actually work out pretty well, and will only need a small amount of additional filing and gap filling to perfect.

I left off the left shoulder plate. I wasn't a fan of the way it looked. It seems like it would just get in the way. Maybe I'll convert it.

A couple of gripes about the kit. A couple of the arm poses are terrible. There is one that literally only allows you to construct a model at basically port arms. I guess those arms will be donor parts. And I had to clip the left hand off and file/rotate it just to get it to fit correctly with the model. I had seen a ton of pre-assembled Tau on EBay with these really weird left arm poses, and I thought the original owners were just lazy. But it turns out the kit just isn't very good. It's a good thing I planned to chop them up anyway. In the end though, I like the scale of the kit. The Fire Warriors will look good next to my old Metal IGuard unlike the plastic IGuard next to my old metal IGuard (or the plastic IGuard next to pretty much anything. They're so ugly).

I was very excited about the Space Ork. Like I said, I'd wanted to do Sporks for a long time. In fact, opening this Pandora's box has me worried because it could get expensive, lol. Especially because eventually they're all going to have these heads:

So what did I want to do with the Orks now that I finally had them? Well, I want them to still retain their Orkiness, but I also want them to be a bit darker and more threatening. Orks are the comic relief of 40K, but if they were real, they'd be downright scary. Inspired by the novel Fifteen Hours, and those sweet Kromlech heads, the Sporks in my universe are going to be menacing.

Of course, that's going to mean a lot of work. Not quite as much as a 40-part Space Marine model hopefully, but this is going to need some putty. I almost don't want to share my first mock-up because it isn't even close to what I want the final product to look like, but I thought I'd give you an idea what I was starting with.

First is fixing the pose. I want my Orks to stand a little taller, so I'm going to file down and re-angle the neck so they don't just have a head jutting out of their chests. This is mostly to give me more room to work with when posing. A giant head jutting out gets in the way of the arms and weapons, since most of my boyz will be armed with Shootas. Secondly, it will help with eliminating the hunchback look that I think is too exaggerated.



The legs are way to squatty, and not in the awesome space dwarf kind of way. I clipped the left leg and rotated it downward. The final based model will need to be sculpted with an uneven ground so he has something under his toes, but that's a small matter. This looks decent from the front, butthe model's butt will need some gaps filled. The head will need some putty as well to fill in the neck. I may use this as an opportunity to model a hood from the gas mask head. I used the jaw piece as a shoulder plate instead, mostly because I liked the way it looked.

Either way, there's the humble but ambitious beginning of this new chapter of Leave No Model Unconverted. In my "To Do" box are some Killa Kans, a pile of boyz, Nobz and Stormboyz. I've got ideas for some traitorous human scum auxiliary Pathfinders, converted sniper drone teams, and some Kroot.

And of course, here's a comparison shot. I wouldn't leave you hanging like that.


Also, if you've made it this far but perhaps missed the previous post, I'll plug my other new project. I've decided to create a blog that will present the project in a more coherent way, rather than a chronological series of posts like this ends up being.

I'm still playing with the format (so by all means share any feedback with the layout), but you can find it here:
https://veteransergeant.wordpress.com

Also, I've put it on Facebook.
https://www.facebook.com/LeaveNoModelUnconverted

So I've continued assembling some mockups of my Tau and Orks.

I will say this up front. I never realized how lucky I was with the Space Marines. There is light-years more potential in the basic Tactical Marine kit than is present in the Fire Warrior and Space Ork kits. The Tau have a grand total of four arm poses, and since the weapons are attached to the arms, it's a lot more involved to re-pose them.

However, I've dutifully played around with them, seeing what I could do to make exciting models out of them. Obviously I'm working with a lot of the same basic philosophies as I do with the Space Marines. I want the models to suggest movement and/or action. Looking at the model you should be able to know immediately what he's doing and be able to imagine it in a scene. This can be really easy (an aiming model pretty well evokes firing at an enemy), but I want to test the limits of these kits (and of my ability, lol) so I'm going to need models doing more than that. To say the least, I'm a bit underwhelmed by the Tau Fire Warrior kit, but oh well. I only need to do 25 or so of them.

Here are the first 6.


The Tau are a little less fun to construct because of these limitations. At this point, there's very little "conversion" involved here aside from the rifles and the support hands (which don't seem to fit right). And to be fair, I really like the shorter rifles compared to the longer ones, so that alone makes it worthwhile. The "running" guy has had a bit of work done to get the rifle to sit that low, and I plan to put a slight spacer at the back of his torso to make him lean forward a bit more. I want the model to look like it's dashing between cover.


The Orks. Wow. This is going to be more involved than the Space Marines I think. The good news is, I only have to do like 50 of them. Wait, what?

So the more I looked at the Ork models, the less I liked them. Blasphemy against Gork and Mork! But the reality is that they can't be posed (to any reasonable degree) because their heads get in the way, and they all look like they are trying to take a dump. They're all also hunched over. So it was obvious that the stock kit was going to be pretty much unusable in its basic form. After doing the first one above, wow. He needs so much work to be finished it isn't funny, lol. Or, maybe it is funny, since I am doing this to myself. I could stop at any time. I swear.

The reality is though, I like the finished product so much more, and I think the effect is pretty striking. It also opens up a ton of possibility in the Orks while retaining their same iconic look. Either way, like the Tau, I've got six of them worked up. They're all very rough, and will need some gap filling and greenstuffing to fix them.

Three more Boyz with Shootas


A Big Shoota and a Rokkit Launcha.


As you can see, more than a couple of them are standing with a foot up on things. I have a feeling this is going to be common because trying to get their legs re-posed to make them stand more upright leaves a lot of uneven footing. But ultimately, the ability to do all kinds of creative things with the basing will probably eliminate this problem in the end. Right now, they're just standing on bits of sprue.



Either way, how drastic is this effect? Well, here's one of the Assault on Black Reach models.


Anyway, let me know what you think.

Impressive work. Your poses are much more dynamic and believable that the stock poses. I'm not sure how I feel about repositioning the Ork's heads in that it makes them look more human and less like hulking primitive brutes, but that's of course a matter of personal preference, and I can see how much better it is for allowing you to create realistic poses.

Out of curiosity, do you resent the "shortcomings" of these model kits, or do you like that they have room for improvement, as it allows you to create much more unique pieces while customizing them to your liking?

Eh, there's nothing really to "resent" about the kit. It's a bit of a disappointment at the start, but it really just means I've got to take a different approach. I can see why the kits are the way they are. It makes them accessible to more people by simplifying their construction. I mean, 99% of people buying the kits are just going to glue them together off the sprue. No need to overcomplicate things. Like I've joked in the past, my process of doing things turns a 10 part model into a 40 part model. Only a lunatic would do that.

I can see where the Orks do look a little more human, but that may be a trick of the camera lens catching them at a slightly low angle. They still have the hunched over, hulking posture. The heads just sit slightly higher. Their eye line is now more or less on line with their shoulders, rather than the top of the head. Really what makes them taller is the repositioning of the legs. It sets the waist in a more upright position, which means the torso can sit in a more upright position.

If anything, they're even more hulking than the GW models.

More great work Sarge. I would have though Orks & Tau have somewhat less scope for personalisation than a marine or guardsman, but nonetheless you've managed to hugely improve the individuality of what you get in the box and make some figures that truly stand out. It's how I get my kicks modelling too -some degree of uniqueness, whether its a total repose, or just a simple head swap or gun modification.

Honestly, if I didn't hate the IGuard plastics so much, I'd have probably done more of them. Right now a few of the handful I have are going to be sacrificed to make a few traitorous human Pathfinders, since that seems like where the Tau would need the most human expertise for auxiliaries.

I've got some more Orks planned. Going to see how well the Stormboyz bodies lend themselves to infantry Boyz. I''ll probably finish up the Tau army pretty soon actually. Just need to wait for my EBay crisis suits and Tau to show up, then I'll have most everything I need until I can snag a new Broadside on the cheap.

 Veteran Sergeant wrote:
Honestly, if I didn't hate the IGuard plastics so much, I'd have probably done more of them. Right now a few of the handful I have are going to be sacrificed to make a few traitorous human Pathfinders, since that seems like where the Tau would need the most human expertise for auxiliaries.

I've got some more Orks planned. Going to see how well the Stormboyz bodies lend themselves to infantry Boyz. I''ll probably finish up the Tau army pretty soon actually. Just need to wait for my EBay crisis suits and Tau to show up, then I'll have most everything I need until I can snag a new Broadside on the cheap.

I converted my guardsmen with scout legs and heads lol, the cadian legs are so stumpy and the heads SO big

Love the marine checking FB btw

Nice work on both of these; one thing I've personally found with the Tau supporting arms is that they're actually very subtly different. They're effective in pairs with a gun arm on the sprue and you need to keep them together to get the best fit (which admittedly still isn't great).

The other thing would be to mix in some pathfinder models; other than the legs the rest of the components are basically interchangeable with the Firewarrior design, but the newer kit has sharper moulding and a few more options.

The problem is, the Pathfinder models I own are all EBay rescues, so I don't have any of them off the sprue with extra parts. Kinda limits me to the models with the parts they were assembled with. I picked up a few extra helmet heads to get rid of the bare heads (those will end up on sombody's belt as a trophy I'm sure, lol), but that's about it. Though since I got all of them for less than $1.50 per model, it sorta works out in the end, lol.

I did figure out which arms match, but they definitely didn't fit 100% flush even then. It's something I've noticed with the EBay rescues (I have 16 FW on the sprue, the rest of my Tau were assembled when I got them) and in browsing pictures of them online. The Fire Warrior sprues definitely need an update at some point, but if GW still hasn't redone the Chaos Marines ones, well...

Red Corsair wrote:Love the marine checking FB btw

Yeah, that one was basically begging to be made.

So I've been plugging along with some more Orks. The Waaaaagh is growing.

Like I'd said, I'd acquired some bodies from the Stormboyz kit. My hope was that once they were cut free from their scenic base elements that they could be adjusted to have running poses. It mostly worked I think. I’ll probably have to do some work on a couple of them that just kinda look like they are on tiptoes. But for mockups, I think I'm getting close to the effect I want.





Then I wanted to have some Nobz with shootas. This probably isn’t the best use of a Nob, but I don’t really care too much about how good they are in the game, lol. I really liked their Kombi-Shootas, but wasn’t really sold on the Kombi part. So I cut the missiles off. That left the model with a very hefty looking shoota. Good. It’s very Orky. Like you could krump somebody right good if you needed to. I filed down the neck so they could look off to their left (in the general direction they’d be shooting. It kinda helps, and even an Ork wants to be able to see the effects of all his dakka!). Honestly, with the changes I’ve been making to the Ork Boyz, the Nobz don’t actually look that big anymore. They’re definitely thicker, but not taller. The other two figures on the left are from the Battlewagon crew. I set their heads slightly lower than I did the first set of Ork figures after a couple suggestions (including by Soul Samurai here) that perhaps they were too human looking.



The last thing I have on the workbench is a Killa Kan. These are fun little models, but I’m struggling to come up with any meaningful way to covert them. Originally I had wanted to give it a free-standing Torso that could rotate, turning the Killa Kan into a little grot-piloted Battlemech. But the way the model is set up has the body attached directly to the legs. So if I’m going to do that, the process is going to be pretty involved, and the model will end up sitting significantly taller (which isn’t a bad thing, but it’s a Grottlemech, I don’t want it to be too tall). I’ll have to figure out something, because it’s looking painfully… normal.

Wow, that running Ork really pops! I think there might be a piece of artwork like that in the codex that I always liked.

Needs more Dakka

 Desubot wrote:
Needs more Dakka

He's right, strap some more dakka on that can, and maybe some more armour... and some rust... and some grots... just stick everything on it!!!

 Veteran Sergeant wrote:
The last thing I have on the workbench is a Killa Kan. These are fun little models, but I’m struggling to come up with any meaningful way to covert them. Originally I had wanted to give it a free-standing Torso that could rotate, turning the Killa Kan into a little grot-piloted Battlemech. But the way the model is set up has the body attached directly to the legs. So if I’m going to do that, the process is going to be pretty involved, and the model will end up sitting significantly taller (which isn’t a bad thing, but it’s a Grottlemech, I don’t want it to be too tall). I’ll have to figure out something, because it’s looking painfully… normal.

How about making the grot "driver" visible? Give it a little cockpit or just a window in the front where you see him all wired in, or something like that.

I've actually toyed around () with the idea of having my Killa Kans be piloted, rather than be hardwired in, and thus perhaps having there being Grot pilots who are little celebrities among the other Gretchin.

I kinda figure that Gretchin are actually the backbone of Orky civilization, doing all the tasks that keep the Ork empires afloat while the fairly dumb and brutish Ork warriors themselves remain somewhat oblivious to the fact that the only reason they have food to eat, and ammunition to fire, and have fuel to burn, and working space ships, etc is because of the legions of Gretchin who perform these tasks under the supervision of Mekboys. Which, of course, makes the Meks the secret rulers of Ork "civilization", and the mightiest of Warlords simply those cunning enough to have enlisted the aid of enough of the right Mek bosses. Which then gives them enough ammunition and fuel to provide to their Boyzz, which then lets them show off their proppa Orky might in the face of other warlords and bosses.

Hehe, I can now see little Grot Mechwarriors piloting Battletech style Kans. Now that is an idea for my to do list.

While the plans of a Grot-mech are still drafting, I got some Ebay-rescue Crisis suits in the mail. A couple of them need a lot of work as they seem like they were just kinda put together haphazardly. Fortunately one of them was more or less unassembled (only the body and jetpack had been glued together) and for some reason unprimed like the others.

This is another kit that's showing its age and badly needs a reboot. Both arms are static and tucked in tight. The legs are also fairly static which explains why most of the ones I see on Ebay are either standing straight up, or doing jumping jacks.

So I cut it apart.

Nothing revolutionary. Just carefully cut off the lower leg and rotated it. Straightened out the right arm, which will need some cleanup work on it. Then I gave it in a sort of "strafing" pose like it was popping out from behind a building to fire at something.




Kinda wanted to get one together to see what it looked like. The arms and weapons aren't glued. Plan to go back and see what I can do to improve it. Going to disassemble the other ones I have and see what sort of potential the kit really has. Maybe give it some proper hands and let it wield the weapons like a rifle.

You are telling me that You are making everything "tall-scale" and you are not touching crisis suits? Wut?

A fire warrior would obviously not fit in a crisis suit, ever.

To be fair, I never said I was tall-scaling everything. I am not doing the Marine vehicles, for example. Nor am I tall-scaling the Orks. They're just getting taller because I've eliminated the strange "Lunging Quasimodo" thing they have going on if you assemble them off the sprue.

The reality is that the Tau army is being built on a budget. That budget being "I'm not willing to spend a lot of money on this project". To True Scale the Crisis suits I'd need ones off the sprue, and those go for around $15 each minimum. I got mine partially (and poorly, lol) assembled for just under $6 each (with the extra weapon bits on sprues).

So those poor Crisis pilots are just gonna have to be squished in there tight. I am, however, going to re-examine the process. I already rebuilt the one above with Grey Knight Terminator fists and repositioned the weapons. But I want to play with it a bit more before I put a Version 2 picture up.


On other topics, I've not been terribly excited about the Tau thus far. Aside from the aesthetic improvement of the shorter rifle, I haven't really felt like I've been able to do much with the Fire Warriors, and didn't have any Tau models I really liked yet.

Well that's changed. Introducing my Pathfinder rail rifle sniper team:



Unfortunately the optic got roughed up a little, so it needs to be fixed back down. Seems It was made from the little gubbin on the front of an extra Ion Rifle I had.

The left arm on the shooter is from the Hammerhead crewmember (I think. That's what I pried it off of, lol), with the hand clipped off and rotated downward so he's got it balanced on the crook of his arm against his knee.

The spotter's left hand was cut and rotated too so he could hold the carbine balanced on his leg. I also filed the waist on the legs at a flatter angle so he'd sit more upright



These guys came out fairly close to how I'd envisioned them. Once again the left arms of the Tau have proved a liability, but the adjustment I made to the Rail Rifle model is satisfactory. But I wanted to have a shooter and spotter team that would look good matched as a pair. They just need a little bit of cleanup now.