Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Hi guys I'm looking for some space marine conversion ideas, but not the normal kind, I'm talking about like specialist equipment and things like that.
E.g xendarc's shoulder mounted combi- weapon or veteransergeant's wrist mounted aexis system. You know what I mean? Thanks in advance.

It helps to have some idea of what you want your marines to be doing, or some kind of background for them. Coming up with "conversion ideas" in isolation is difficult and can lead to an untidy look to your force.

Conversions can be as simple as changing the angle of a hand to be giving hand signals or a weapon swap to a full dissassembly and rebuild of a marine with custom sculpting.

Guitar wire is excellent for cables, coils, braids, coolant cables etc. Basecoat and then wash.

Look on eBay for Imperial Guard bits

Simple one would be a servo arm gun arm with a plasma cutter for a pistol.

wrist weapons are all over Blood angel stuff. and grey knights

i think veteran sergeants pm blog has a ton of cool hax.

Another fun combi-weapon idea is to have the 1-shot special weapon integrated into a servo-skull or cherub which you could have floating by your marine or sitting on its own little base as a shot token (maybe, idk, some people might not be able to handle that reppin' a combi-weapon)
Be sure to give your marine a bolter too

 Flinty wrote:
It helps to have some idea of what you want your marines to be doing, or some kind of background for them. Coming up with "conversion ideas" in isolation is difficult and can lead to an untidy look to your force.

Conversions can be as simple as changing the angle of a hand to be giving hand signals or a weapon swap to a full dissassembly and rebuild of a marine with custom sculpting.

I'm looking for equipment stuff. I don't know hot to explain it more.

Do you mean ways to convert regular weapons and equipment so as to achieve a unique style or look without overly altering or deviating from the aesthetic of the original device/weapon/thing?


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Here's an idea,
Wrist Mounted Auspex, pipboy style

 Xendarc wrote:
Do you mean ways to convert regular weapons and equipment so as to achieve a unique style or look without overly altering or deviating from the aesthetic of the original device/weapon/thing?


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Here's an idea,
Wrist Mounted Auspex, pipboy style

The first one. Thanks xendarc

I'l bump this once and then make one that makes sense.

For my CSMs I want to do a champion with Lightning Claw, Power fist and combi weapon. To represent the combi weapon I'm planning on doing one of the arms with an integrated pistol and the other arm with an integrated bolter.

Perhaps you could do something similar?

nareik wrote:
For my CSMs I want to do a champion with Lightning Claw, Power fist and combi weapon. To represent the combi weapon I'm planning on doing one of the arms with an integrated pistol and the other arm with an integrated bolter.

Perhaps you could do something similar?

Sounds like something I could try out. Undercuff or over-cuff? (outside of arm or inside)(palm side or outer side)

 the shrouded lord wrote:

nareik wrote:
For my CSMs I want to do a champion with Lightning Claw, Power fist and combi weapon. To represent the combi weapon I'm planning on doing one of the arms with an integrated pistol and the other arm with an integrated bolter.

Perhaps you could do something similar?

Sounds like something I could try out. Undercuff or over-cuff? (outside of arm or inside)(palm side or outer side)

You seem pretty eager to try new things out and think outside the box a little, which is great however questions such as "undercuff or over-cuff" are not ones that can be answered by anyone but yourself. figure out what appeals to you and then make it to a standard in which you feel good and accomplished about your work. Don't let a simple either/or dilemma stem your artistic influence. If you're unsure of which approach to take then experiment with both.
Use blu-tac to 'preview' before committing to a pose or style that you feel completely satisfied with.
Once you've figured out what you want it's a simple matter of putting in the work to achieve what you desire.
Hell, with enough determination, effort, and design one could make even a helmet-mounted bolter look good, as unusual as the idea sounds...
Well it might appeal to some with distinctly unique tastes... not unlike myself

Peace

Helmet mounted bolter... Hang on *a loud banging Is heard, followed by a string of curses*
Nah I can't do it. With the bolter, I think itl look weird under cuff, so if decide to do it (probs on my auspex marine) I'l do it over-cuff.
Got any more ideas xendarc; you're like a gold mine. I'l have to post pics of my plasma castor. I went for a more disposable look than you Thoe. With out the wires and with a small mounting "platform" rather than just cutting off the thing for tactical version, dev version is the same as yours and assault variant is mounted in the actuel shoulder pad ( which is cut with a knife to make a tiny alcove that the pistol is Put on (no scope/arm thingy))

Check out anvil industries miniatures, as they have spec ops marines. Past hat, you really need to learn to use your words to be concise about what it is you want, because "gear" can be interpreted in very different ways. Do you want a mechanics marine army? Black watch? Someone with a lot of tokens like space wolves or salamanders?

I've removed the claws from a lightning claw and replaced with with needles. It looks pretty cool. (And makes people think twice about picking up my minis without asking!)

Many hoses/cables/feeds can be replaced with a cool spooled wire effect. Take a pipe cleaner and burn all the fuzz off with a lighter. The remaining twisty wire makes a great replacement piece for such gubbins. (The dread in my gallery has just such an alteration on his flamer.)

Storm shields/combat shields can be replaced with more colorful ones from the Warhammer fantasy line. Again, my gallery has some neat pics of terminators with lizardmen shields for their storm shields. Warhammer fantasy weapons are also a great place to look for some flavorful alternatives.

I've often thought ork bikers got the coolest looking rides. I think the front of space marine bikes are begging for decoration. Spare heads, or better yet, masks like from the chaos vehicles, would make great figureheads for them.

Hope some of these ideas help you out. Good luck!

other options include filing off the rims on your marines' pauldrons. (filing all of the details off, actually, as it will make the armor look older, and any added equipment stand out...) Once filed down, the pauldrons receive the utility belts/equipment much better, though you'd probably want the SM scout equipment... you could try designing your own weapons, so, missile launcher, melta gun plasma gun, etc.
I once bought a box of necrons explicity for bionics, but, they need extensive cutting down since necrons are much taller than marines and guard.
The terminator crotch pads are actually fairly well shaped to be glued onto to regular marine arms. You ought to be able to attach gear and equipment to the insides of the armor plate. The fancier shield-shaped ones can be used to swap out knee pads after a bit of filing away... raiding the BA command jump infantry box (whatever they're claled) should also yield all of your wrist-mount bits, but then you might be able to get wrist-mounted SBs from a GK set as well.
Chainsword+2 wee bits of plasticard and some filng and cutting, and you have yourself a chain-bayonet for your bolters.

Man, with marines it's hard to single out any one thing that you could do that hasn't been done already. Truescaling is an obvious conversion recommendation, but it's very work intensive so if you want a project army that's where I would start. I would start by asking yourself what type of a force you're building. For instance, are they siege breakers, ship to ship boarding experts, do they all get dropped out of their thunderhawks at low altitude without a jump pack, that sort of thing. Once you come up with a theme, it will be easier to select the right kinds of equipment, conversions and third party bits to make it a reality.

Ok I think I get it now.
The theme is: modded. They maintain their individual sets of armour so lots of Mark mixing and stuff. Plus integrated weapons if you have any ideas for that. And I don't know, just general stuff from interesting combi weapons to cool ways of representing omni-scope.

 the shrouded lord wrote:
Hmmm... Theme... Well they do a lot of ship-to-ship, so integrated weapons would be useful. They do a lot of desert/mountain fighting. Um... They prefer long to close range

So, they're long range, short range, desert fighters, ship boarders...
Could you possibly be more vague?

For example. My Imperial Fist army is the Combat Engineers of the IF so they have a lot of techmarine looking guys. Even the sergeants have mechanicum shoulder pads, helmets, servo arms and such. That's a theme. Its clear and makes sense.

Tell us your theme and we could do a whole lot more to help you.

Ok I think I get it now.
The theme is: modded. They maintain their individual sets of armour so lots of Mark mixing and stuff. Plus integrated weapons if you have any ideas for that. And I don't know, just general stuff.

It may not be quite what you are thinking of, but one of the simplest conversions I do is to my sergeants / guys with combi-weapons. I give them a bolter in one hand and plasma pistol in the other (for a combi-plasma). It looks cool and makes sense that the one-shot weapon is a small off to the side weapon like a pistol. As long as they can't actually be equipped with that configuration there should be no confusion.

A final idea I had was to integrate the combat knife into the armor somehow similar to the old PC game Republic Commando. In the game, when the commando punches a small vibro blade comes out of a wrist/hand mounted piece and slices into bad guys. That was one of the coolest melee attacks in a game in my opinion and it has stuck with me ever since. It could also make sense with the sort of "close-quarters" mod you are looking for. Here's a pic for reference:

Well, if you were feeling froggy, you could use the idea i had some time ago (decided to not get any marines though so i never did it)

Space Cows

Replace all the heads with minotaur-esque heads (helmet or not) and rebuild the lower legs to be digitigrated rather than normal. That means they walk on their "toes" so they look like they have a second, backwards knee just above the foot.

Bit of work since i also couldnt find any minotaur heads of the right size to use, so you would probably have to scratchbuild them all, but it would definitely be unique lol

 Vineheart01 wrote:
Well, if you were feeling froggy, you could use the idea i had some time ago (decided to not get any marines though so i never did it)

Space Cows

Replace all the heads with minotaur-esque heads (helmet or not) and rebuild the lower legs to be digitigrated rather than normal. That means they walk on their "toes" so they look like they have a second, backwards knee just above the foot.

Bit of work since i also couldnt find any minotaur heads of the right size to use, so you would probably have to scratchbuild them all, but it would definitely be unique lol

Been done:
http://www.dakkadakka.com/gallery/8810-.html

Remember chris' pistols in alien 4? I'm gonna do something similar on my terminators. A bolter on each side of the hand with a central trigger to represent space- storm bolters.
Also, I'm thinking of using a few pieces to make a "heavy bolter harness" abut like the heavy weapon guys in avatar.

Why not go the Smart Gun route like in Aliens2?

 Slayer le boucher wrote:
Why not go the Smart Gun route like in Aliens2?

Dude that's looks like a good idea. Thanks.
I'm gonna look up some of the equipment used in the alien franchise. Still looking for ideas guys! Keep it coming.

 the shrouded lord wrote:

 Slayer le boucher wrote:
Why not go the Smart Gun route like in Aliens2?

Dude that's looks like a good idea. Thanks.
I'm gonna look up some of the equipment used in the alien franchise. Still looking for ideas guys! Keep it coming.

I never thought of doing that either. Also converting Tank and aircraft crew to look visibly different could be good. You could convert them to resemble Modern Pilots or give them more tank related equipment.

Aliens is a MAJOR influence behind a ton of the stuff in 40k. Space Hulk is basically Aliens but with Terminators and Genestealers haha.

The Smart Gun is cool. It already resembles a heavy bolter a bit. Gunnery Sergeant Harker is a good example. For Space Marines you might be able to build up a sort of harness similar to the Ork lootaz.

or just, you know, bionics that connect directly to the heavy bolter, 'cause the guy had his entire arm ripped off by tyranids back on 'namaran LXI.

could also use starcraft as your source of inspiration: the fire bats and marauders are hilarious (Yeah I got all 5 fingers! 3 on this hand, two on the other!)

Starcraft is a fun source. I've done a Terran force for a counts-as Deathwing. Firebat below