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I was wondering how you'd do it as I've got a lot of unpainted assembled aobr marines and aobr terminators from a previous collection but prefer grey knights' playstyle. Is there anything I can do to make them become grey knights without not being welcomed in a tournament or gw store?

There is no physical way I could think of turning standard tactical Marines from AoBR into Grey Knights. The Terminators could be done by using Grey Knight Terminator arms and weapons, but that's sort of obtuse and will look pretty lame.

it's true, the models just aren't detailed enough to be grey knights, and making the heads is a real pain. my advice would be to sell the marines on ebay, and use the money to start your grey knights

If you have to ask then you don't have the skills to do it frankly. This would be a hard conversion job for an expert. The hardest part would be modelling the weapons given that the AOBR marines have arms that are positioned to hold bolters or flamers and could easily look silly if given close combat weapons like the force weapons used by the GK.
I wouldn't get hung up over the detail on them, that's easily resolved with a bit of card and greenstuff and the right paintjob, who says that the GK have to have those shaped helmets only right? But the weapons pose a problem.
The flamer could be converted to be an incinerator, the captain could be used if the bolter was either replaced or used as a counts as storm bolter, the sergeant could also be converted and maybe the missile launcher could be modified or replaced to be a psilencer or psycanon but then you're left with the general marines. Obviously the Dred can be used with a bit of extra work.
You'd have to replace the powerfists on the termies with force weapons somehow, but normal termie armour is different to GK termie armour which is similar to what librarians use as it has a built in psychic hood. Depends on how much compromise you want to make but I'd say choose another army to play or sell them as suggested above.

I chopped all my regular termies into convincing 'grey knight' style torsos and helmets, no pics here at work for ya. That said, my converted termies are still regular termies weaponwise, either stormbolter/fist or THSS. Converting good looking termie arms will result in simply buying GK termie arm bits, and at that point just buy the very nice GK kit.

There is nothing wrong with vanilla marines and termies, I have a very good 1500 point marine list built out of 2 boxes of AOBR marines.

As for PAGKs, you can convert them but not with your limited AOBR marine bits from the sound of it.

For terminators, you'd really just need to give them swords or halberds. The sergeant can be used as-is. For the guys with power fists, drill out their hands and have them holding a weapon (which you can make yourself with greenstuff or something).

For power-armored guys, the main problem is that you have to get rid of the bolter and replace them with storm bolters and swords/halberds/whatever. You could probably chop up the arms and give them the same treatment as for the terminators.

Making conversions that _look_ like the standard GKs would be a massive amount of work.

But if you can give them the appropriate weapons and equipment (halberds, storm bolters etc), I see nothing wrong with using normal marines to count-as GKs. Converting your own counts-as psycannon etc could be a modelling challenge though...

As with all counts-as conversions, the important points are: matching the size of the GW equivalent, and making any counts-as weapons and equipment really obvious as to what they count-as. Stick to that, and most opponents won't complain.

Agreeing with the above, using AOBR to make grey knights simply isn't going to fly.

Of course, that being said, there's nothing to stop you from painting them up like GK. There will be clear wargear issues, but if you can find some sort of clear way of determining who is who and armed with what, you could get away with playing an AOBR-GK army with your friends. Tournament is a whooooole other issue.

I agree - AOBR isn't going to work for you, that said, if you don't want to have the marines, you might as well sell them or use them to test paint schemes on. Sorry, but it's not going to work.

I feel like you could do the Terminators if you bought a box of GK Terminators, then use the spare arms from that kit with some extra bits to make the AoBR Terminators sorta fit in. Will still look pretty ghetto though.

I agree with WAAGH, sell them on ebay and pick up some actual grey knights.

You know what?> I think we are all forgetting things here....

Lets look at actually converting them to GK.... What is ESSENTIAL to make them convincing?

The only thing is wargear...

SO:
you could try re-arranging the hands, if possible, so that they cradle a storm bolter, and simply file down the insides of two bolters until, when glued together, they look like a storm bolter. From there you just need to create a power weapon, and append it where you want, be that as a side-arm, strapped over the back, or apended like a bayonet.

I mean, if you want to get real with GW stuff, the current venerable dreadnought is a lie: real veneravble dreadnoughts would look like those ugly bulbous things GW first came out with. What I am essentially getting at is: if I can paint my models however I pleaase, then I am also at liberty to build them however I please, in so far as WYSIWYG holds true. So... It looks like this is more viable.It might be more expensive than going out and getting grey knights, in te same stroke, it may also very well cost less if one knows how to handle kneadadite and plasticard.... There is nothing that says your models have to look perfectly identical to those manufactured by GW, they just say they have to be FROM GW to participate in tourney, and adhere to WYSIWYG.

Missile Launcher could conceivably be modified to look like a shoulder- mounted psy-cannon. Shove some piping down the launching tube and put a hopper on the back, or a belt running to a drum hanging from the waist.

Actually, I am looking at this and it is starting to look more attractive. I think alot of us are forgetting about just what the hobby is about, and I think some of us need to realize that, especially with continuing price-rises we need to find a way around to get back to playing and being creative with what we have. It might take some getting used to for everyone else to play with such a heavilly converted and representational army, but as far as I'm concerned, the challenge in doing this, as well as the personalization that goes into the army is appealing.


I don't know if OP is up for the challenge, but I actually want to see this done now. It does actually seem quite viable to me--a challenge for sure, but I think it would be a blast. There are obvious issues in terms of wargear, especially for terminators, but this does look doable.

Of course it is doable, the point is, can the novice modeller do it without it looking like complete gak.

the same can be true of going out and just buying grey knights. You can buy them, and once finished with them, have them look like gak...

Badly painted minis are not the same as minis that are badly painted and badly modelled. Heck with that logic you could buy the minis, paint them perfectly and then get hit by a bus before you can use them so why bother right?
Come on, there's nothing wrong with attempting a project but if you have to ask how to do it before attempting it then you don't have the ability to see it through properly. It's like people who ask online about how to write a story, what to call it, what the characters' names should be, what time it should be set in and so on. If you don't have the story in your head to begin with you should not try and cut and paste one together. Modelling like writing is an artform, it's not just a case of a quick fix so you can turn a into b.

Likewise though, sometimes one or another person has an idea and they want to band it around for sanity's sake. I still stand by it that it is actually possible... they won't look anything like GW GK, but they would still be GK

poda_t wrote:Likewise though, sometimes one or another person has an idea and they want to band it around for sanity's sake. I still stand by it that it is actually possible... they won't look anything like GW GK, but they would still be GK

You see, if you were saying converting standard Marines to GKs, I could almost buy your point of view. But Black Reach Marines? They have static arms cut off at the wrists so they hold guns VERY close to their chests. There's just no way to make it work. You'd have all these goofy Marines holding halberds and such comically close to their bodies, and lacking the physical space to hold a stormbolter.

poda_t wrote:Likewise though, sometimes one or another person has an idea and they want to band it around for sanity's sake. I still stand by it that it is actually possible... they won't look anything like GW GK, but they would still be GK

Until I see it done I don't believe it can be done well enough to make the effort worthwhile. Let someone prove me wrong and post the results here.

I have made some black Reach marines as my heavy weapons dudes.

Cut the left arm just below the shoulderpad so you can move the now cut arm around. Take the wanted GK heavy gun, for example psycannon and the gun holding right hand. Glue right hand to AORB marines right arm as you would do with a normal bolter. Cut and glue the left hand to the arm and gun so that the hand is where it should be and the arm fits nicely between the hand and the shoulder. The arm should be moved a little bit to the left so it fits.

The books on the shoulderpad you can make with a greenstuff mould and the name strip on the other shoulder can be done with greenstuff like so: |><==><| You push down from top and bottom where the arrows(?) meet to create a feel of a parchment nailed to the pad. Scrolls work too, but they are a bit harder.

As for the heads, cut the marine's "nose" away starting from in front of it's ears to the middle of it's nose. You should have a sharp arrowhead like nose. With greenstuff create rounder cheeks and push holes, lines or what ever to the cheeks near the nose.

Put tiny sandwich boards around their necks with the name of their unit and wargear. Better yet, do that with AoBR Orks.