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A friend is constructing an abhuman imperialis militia army. He likes the veer-myn range (seen here: http://www.manticgames.com/mantic-shop/warpath/veer-myn.html) and is considering using the rat ogre equivalents as ogryn, but since these abhumans are very technologically advanced, he wants to make the troops by headswapping the skaveny heads onto van saar, cadians, scions or another "clean" force. Anyone have experience doing this kind of non-human to human headswap? What should we look out for?

Biggest hurdle off the top of my head (pun intended) would be head location. Ratmen, like Orks, tend to have a neck set lower on the torso. The connection point is behind the face, not below it. If you just stick em on human bodies they'll be looking straight up. Bit of creative drilling and a dab of Greenstuff tends to fix it moderately easily though.
Good luck!

I have done a very similar conversion project for my renegades and heretics using Veer-myn, Victoria Miniatures Beastmen (https://victoriaminiatures.com/collections/broolian-beastmen) and various IG parts.

With the regular Veer-myn I learned a few lessons:
-The heads are comically large, even compared to Cadian bubble-head. The models come with a lovely, bulky torso that fits well with the head.
-The torso have bulges on the side to attach arms to, but if you cut/shave these flat they fit GW human arms perfectly (I used catachan arms).
-Human legs look super-weird on a Veer-myn torso, so I ended up just sticking to an arm-swap and I liked the result.



I built my Ratgyrn pretty much straight out of the box and love them. They scale basically perfectly with the old metal Ogryn. I'd wager to guess converting these with newer plastic Ogryn/Bullgyrn parts would be really easy.



If your friend is just looking for abhumans in general and would like some infantry that matches GW human scale a little better, Victoria Miniatures beast men are scaled perfectly. You can basically swap their parts freely with most Imperial Guard parts.



If you have any questions or want any more part/model comparison images, let me know. I love working on projects like this.

InquisitorKnickers wrote:
I have done a very similar conversion project for my renegades and heretics using Veer-myn, Victoria Miniatures Beastmen (https://victoriaminiatures.com/collections/broolian-beastmen) and various IG parts.

With the regular Veer-myn I learned a few lessons:
-The heads are comically large, even compared to Cadian bubble-head. The models come with a lovely, bulky torso that fits well with the head.
-The torso have bulges on the side to attach arms to, but if you cut/shave these flat they fit GW human arms perfectly (I used catachan arms).
-Human legs look super-weird on a Veer-myn torso, so I ended up just sticking to an arm-swap and I liked the result.

Spoiler:

I built my Ratgyrn pretty much straight out of the box and love them. They scale basically perfectly with the old metal Ogryn. I'd wager to guess converting these with newer plastic Ogryn/Bullgyrn parts would be really easy.

Spoiler:

If your friend is just looking for abhumans in general and would like some infantry that matches GW human scale a little better, Victoria Miniatures beast men are scaled perfectly. You can basically swap their parts freely with most Imperial Guard parts.

Spoiler:

If you have any questions or want any more part/model comparison images, let me know. I love working on projects like this.

This is so helpful! I'm a little hesitant on the armswap idea though; the main thing we want is to get a high-tech look for these guys, since he's combining abhuman helots with survivors of the dark age. We're aiming for a three-caste system, with the more rat-like being more physically powerful but of lower social status; officers will be made largely from Delaque gangers while the nightmares look even more perfect as Ogryn now that you've given the scaling comparison.

I just finished a trio of Skaven Guardsmen, with Plague Monk heads and legs, and Shock Trooper torsos and arms. The unpainted models can be seen here. I followed a tutorial by Eric Sexton I found a while ago. The conversion requires a bit of cutting and greenstuffing, and I think the legswap is pretty much mandatory to get the body in a pose where the head sits in its place naturally.