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Having immediately fallen in love with the Asterion Moloc model from Forge World, I have decided to use him as the basis for a "counts-as" Lysander for my Space Marines. While using him as Lysander is hardly the most thrilling or novel of ideas, most 40k players have heard of Lysander and have some familiarity with his rules, making him more suitable for pick-up games than it would be if I were using the lesser-known rules for Moloc himself.

So, to begin with, we have the following:


Now, I am not a master sculptor, nor even a particularly skilled or patient modeller, so I'm trying to create as simple a conversion as possible. To that end, I plan to snip of the spearhead of his weapon,and replace it with a hammer head instead. The question therefore becomes: what hammer to use?

I'm currently debating whether to use the head of one of these:


or whether to make my own hammer in the style similar to the following, which I found on the blog "23 Lines":


I'd love to hear everyone's opinions on these two ideas, and if anyone has a different suggestion, please let me know. A third possibility would be to give him some sort of mace or crozius head instead. My problem so far is that I haven't found a mace head I like enough to use. If anyone has any ideas on that, I'd be happy to hear them also.

Now, I have one final issue with this hammer conversion: Moloc's pose. One of the things I love about him is the dynamism is his pose as he lunges forward with his spear, but this pose does not lend itself naturally to the carrying of a hammer instead. I therefore plan to stick a spike of some description on the end of the hammer, to make it credible that, rather than swinging the weapon in an arc, he is punching forward with the head to stagger his opponent instead. I don't want to make this spike too large and OTT, not do I want it to look too small to jab with, or too slender to withstand being used as a spear by a man in terminator armour. I want something that looks more or less like the following:


Sturdy looking, but not overblown. The problem is finding a stud or spike the right size for the job. Still, I think it's doable.

So yeah... thoughts, anyone?

Now I do not own this model but it looks as if you could rotate the shoulder about 100 degrees up do his hand is above his head and it looks as if he is just about land a blow with his hammer. If that is not possible you may be able to cut the shoulder but I do not know.

Drew14 wrote:Now I do not own this model but it looks as if you could rotate the shoulder about 100 degrees up do his hand is above his head and it looks as if he is just about land a blow with his hammer. If that is not possible you may be able to cut the shoulder but I do not know.

If this is possible, that would be one awesome looking model.

i personally would use the 4th cap from the right for the tip of the hammer. i think that would look badassed!

love the idea of using him for lysander though, i need to find something to use for him in my ultras army, and i am debating between the actual lysander model, this forge world masterpiece, or the space hulk captain. due to the costs of using the forge world model, i will probably end up using the space hulk guy, but i would love the chance to use this gorgeous thing

Drew14 wrote:Now I do not own this model but it looks as if you could rotate the shoulder about 100 degrees up do his hand is above his head and it looks as if he is just about land a blow with his hammer. If that is not possible you may be able to cut the shoulder but I do not know.

You're not actually the first person to say that, the manager at my (relatively) local GW suggested a similar thing, albeit with a mace rather than a hammer. I don't have the model yet (a friend of mine picked up the Minotaurs characters set when he was at some tournament thing at Warhammer World last week, but I won't see him til this coming Saturday) so I can't experiment with poses, but I intend to have a good look at him once I do.

Using my incredible draw package editing skills, I have produced the following approximation of what I'm thinking of doing:


Truly, I am an artistic genius.

I think he would be perfect for that.

ghostmaker wrote:I think he would be perfect for that.

I hope so! The good news: I just found out that, for reasons best known to the packaging people at FW, my Moloc has come with an extra right (spear) arm! Worst case scenario, and I butcher than beautiful spear to make an silly looking failure, I now have a spare to give me a do-over. Hurrumble!

Where did you get that first hammer you posted? I'e been interested in getting a hammer like that but the only model I've seen with it is coteaz and I don't want to shell out the $20 for him just for the hammer.

IndigoJack wrote:Where did you get that first hammer you posted? I'e been interested in getting a hammer like that but the only model I've seen with it is coteaz and I don't want to shell out the $20 for him just for the hammer.

I believe it's one of Maxmini's mechanical hammers. That particular image was taken from Ebay, which was where I started off looking for suitable hammer bits to match the look I wanted.

IMO having the End of the spear still there is just silly, I mean the spear is more or lunging/throwing and therefore needs to be long, but a hammer with a long pole on the end wouldn't be practical in war... I suggest you shorten the handle end of it. Just my two cents

Yeah the long the pole, the harder it is to heft, yes a space Marine is strong but the principle of Levers means at 1metre he's lifting a ridiculous weight. Shorted the Haft and Tail and make the Hammer Head a Daemon hammer size (e.g Massive).

mwnciboo wrote:Yeah the long the pole, the harder it is to heft, yes a space Marine is strong but the principle of Levers means at 1metre he's lifting a ridiculous weight. Shorted the Haft and Tail and make the Hammer Head a Daemon hammer size (e.g Massive).

I agree with him, perhaps you can do something like this (rude photo edit with a mouse xD)

I love that Dark except I would try to repose the arm to make it look like he is swinging the hammer. (see previous post)

Yes, I was trying to give a visual idea on the hammer's lenght (I'd actually like it even shorter, but it'd be a shame to not use that lovely pommel).

I actually like the idea of where the Hammer is, as if rather than swing it, he's gonna Jab it end on into an enemy's face , like a giant blunt spear "TO THE FACE!".