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I wanted to pick up a unit of 10 honour guard for my black templar army, but all I see on GW's homepage is a box of four including Marneus Calgar. Since I neither want three Calgars, nor do I want to spend that much money on a single unit, is there an alternative? What differentiates artificer armor from power armor anyways? If it's just fancy helmets and robes, would sword brethren do the job? Upgrade a unit (which one?) with the templar upgrade kit? Maybe grey knights painted up as templars?

Seriously, orks are so much less complicated, just get boyz, scavenge your bitz box for a bunch of whatever, and you've got yourself a new unit.

Sword Brethren with weapon swaps, extra bling Veterans, whatever. As a rule of thumb, more bling= higher status. Grey Knights bitz are excellent conversion fodder.

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
Sword Brethren with weapon swaps, extra bling Veterans, whatever. As a rule of thumb, more bling= higher status. Grey Knights bitz are excellent conversion fodder.

Yup, GK bits (especially tda) are my favorites. With a little work, I use a gk tda shoulder pad on the right shoulder on my new sword brethren/honour guard. So they have this ornate armour on the right, with a BT pad on the left and these heads. Now to actually get them painted.

http://maxmini.eu/conversion-bits/head-swaps/steam-knights-heads-bits

My 20 honour guard (with another 10 being built) are mostly forgeworld torsos, grey knights legs, misc arms, grey knight or BT/DA swords, and other bits (like loin cloths/capes) from 3rd party peoples like maxmini or anvilindustry.

I really enjoy the slow, careful customization of building HG

Vanguard Veterans, sans jump packs, would be a good starting point. Their running legs, bodies with robes or tabbards from something like the Sternguard sprue, plus weapons and heads from both would make for a pretty obvious veteran unit.

FW Palatine Blades (or whatever they're called) would work well too. I've never understood why the Phoenician faction uses a Roman name for its elites, but whatever.

Throw some swords onto the sternguard kit. The new veteran kits (both stern and van) are overloaded with ornate detail. Just add some gold paint to denote special rank (or however the BT do that) and you are good to go.

Dark angel upgrade sprues are a cheap way to get robed bodies.

Damn auto correct

For BT? I could combine one of the new Sternguard kits, one of the new Vanguard kits and the BT upgrade kit. All 3 of those should give you a good variety of fancy bits to make 10 great looking Honour Guard

The veteran boxes would be good. Maybe the assault marine kit with bits from the Black Templar upgrade kit?

Basically, just pick out ornate bits and pieces. If you have the opportunity to kitbash it all together, do so. The new Vanguard and Sternguard boxes are good as most of the pieces are covered in detail, battle honours, purity seals, that kind of thing. As an example (though admittedly not of much use to you) for my Blood Angel Honour Guard I simply use the Sanguinary Guard models without the funky mask heads and paint them red instead of gold.

For extra robes, it may be worth looking at Dark Angel Veteran pieces as well, just be sure to knife or file off any incriminating icons first.

Lastly - Calgar's Honour Guard will absolutely *NOT* be suitable for your purposes. There are so many small Ultramarine-specific details it'd be too much hassle to go converting and greenstuffing them all.

Blood Angel Sanguinary Guard torso fronts.

Dark Angel Robed bodies.

Wee bit of detail trimming then add bits from the Veteran Box sets.


I used bits websites for the parts, but I loved the results. Especially when using the Company Champion shoulder pads on all of them.

Those sound great. Pics please!!

Kitbash the Sternguard and Command Squad bits with some Black Templar heraldry.

 Super Ready wrote:
Basically, just pick out ornate bits and pieces. If you have the opportunity to kitbash it all together, do so. The new Vanguard and Sternguard boxes are good as most of the pieces are covered in detail, battle honours, purity seals, that kind of thing. As an example (though admittedly not of much use to you) for my Blood Angel Honour Guard I simply use the Sanguinary Guard models without the funky mask heads and paint them red instead of gold.

For extra robes, it may be worth looking at Dark Angel Veteran pieces as well, just be sure to knife or file off any incriminating icons first.

Lastly - Calgar's Honour Guard will absolutely *NOT* be suitable for your purposes. There are so many small Ultramarine-specific details it'd be too much hassle to go converting and greenstuffing them all.

A lot of the dark angels icons are not on the bodies themselves but more the shoulder pads and what not. Honestly to get fully robed space marines this is your best bet because of the lack of work it will take. Though for black templars sword brethern would work great just need to do weapon swaps.

Vanguard veterans with GK weapons [and heavily tailored to their particular chapter] seems good.

 namiel wrote:

 Super Ready wrote:
Basically, just pick out ornate bits and pieces. If you have the opportunity to kitbash it all together, do so. The new Vanguard and Sternguard boxes are good as most of the pieces are covered in detail, battle honours, purity seals, that kind of thing. As an example (though admittedly not of much use to you) for my Blood Angel Honour Guard I simply use the Sanguinary Guard models without the funky mask heads and paint them red instead of gold.

For extra robes, it may be worth looking at Dark Angel Veteran pieces as well, just be sure to knife or file off any incriminating icons first.

Lastly - Calgar's Honour Guard will absolutely *NOT* be suitable for your purposes. There are so many small Ultramarine-specific details it'd be too much hassle to go converting and greenstuffing them all.

A lot of the dark angels icons are not on the bodies themselves but more the shoulder pads and what not. Honestly to get fully robed space marines this is your best bet because of the lack of work it will take. Though for black templars sword brethern would work great just need to do weapon swaps.

The sword bretheren do look great, but I really hate working with finecast after the issues I had with my ork finecast characters (weirdboyz bent out of shape so bad, you couldn't assemble them right, Thrakka having additional "battledamage" on his chest, half-melted-looking kff on a big mek). I'm probably going to get them as squad leaders some day, but I'm not exactly keen on doing modeling work with them.

Thanks for all the answers though, I'm probably going to get a box of Sternguard, Dark Angel Veterans and Grey Knights each and then add the Black Templar upgrade sprue. Right after my wallet stopped weeping, that is