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I'm interested to see what you come up with. I don't really consider this thread "mine", so if you want to post them here, feel free. I actually enjoy seeing what other people do with these ideas. It wasn't like I was the first one to come up with adding plastic card to Space Marines to make them taller. The only thing I can think of in this blog that is 100% "mine" is the bolt pistol.

Heck, when somebody on B&C said they were going to use my home-brew chapter icon for one of their Deathwatch Marines, I thought it was awesome. I feel like 40K is a community property. I'd think it was awesome if somebody decided they liked my Chapter's name and color scheme and painted their army with it. I wouldn't be worried they "stole it".


In fact, here's the tutorial for the bolt pistol. I realized I'd never put it here on Dakka.


The Horatius Pattern Bolt Pistol.



So have you ever wondered why the bolt pistols don't fit in the holsters that are on the Marine sprues?

The answer is Games Workshop doesn't care. However, the new answer is because they are holding the Horatius Pattern Bolt Sidearm. A defensive weapon, it was named after a legendary Space Marine hero whose troops held a bridge for a day and a night against an onslaught of Orks before reinforcements could arrive.

The Horatius pattern bolt pistol has been sliced down the center, with the inside faces filed down to make the weapon skinnier, the front sight trimmed off, and the magazine shortened. It's not a perfect fit in the holster, but it is close enough for heroic scale work, lol.



The barrel doesn't actually flare. That's just a trick of the camera angle.

How's it made?



1. Clip the grip, magazine and magazine well, top sights, barrel, and targeter nub off.
2. Like so.
3. Slice evenly down the middle. Following the mold line does the trick.
4. File the middle down to slim the pistol's bulk.
5. Glue halves together.

Obviously the pose is up to you, but the pose above was made as such:

1. Gunner arms from vehicle sprue. Cut right arm free. Carefully cut the thumb off the top, then reattach on the side of the hand.
2. Take a bent elbow support hand. Slice the hand off, rotate, and reattach. You may need to cut the arm under the shoulder pad too and rotate.

This pistol also makes an excellent weapon for Imperial Guard characters since it actually looks like something they could lift in one hand. Or for Sisters I imagine.

I knew that was you! (Hardly required massive insight on my part, given that it's in your signature...)

I just cheat, and use these:

Well, your technique works very well on Chaos Marines, I can assure you.

The first 4 members of the Fatewalker squad, reporting in!



They are a real pleasure to build and I doubt I will be able to go back to normal-scale Marines after all this.

I like it! I especially enjoy the usage of those Raptor helmets on regular guys.

Also, how Brother Mitrik is staring sassily at the viewer while pointing, like "Why are you there? Be over there!".

Haha. Get through doing 50 or so of them and let me know if you're still enjoying it.

Every single guy I do has to be rendered from 5 parts (legs, torso, 2 arms, plastic card sheets) down to 22 component parts minimum.

/sigh

And then assembled.

I figure the average bolter Marine I do is assembled from 35 individual pieces, 30 of which are obtained by cutting other pieces apart since all of my pouches are individually placed, and the grenade clusters are split apart and individually placed.

Two things hold me up on this project. Lack of fresh ideas for poses, but mostly just assembly fatigue, heh.

I actually picked up a lot of unassembled Chaos Marines because I used to play Chaos back in the old days when the Alpha Legion were cool (Pre-Dan Abnett). Yeah, I made one. The rest will probably be given to my buddy if he decides to play with us again (his old Chaos army disappeared when he moved to Alaska for a bit). I do hope whenever a new Chaos Marines kit comes along, they kill those awful bolters with the belt feed. Belt fed bolters would take three arms to reload the way they're set up. Lacking a third arm isn't always a problem when it comes to Chaos Marines I guess, but it seems incredibly inefficient.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Frozen Ocean wrote:
I knew that was you! (Hardly required massive insight on my part, given that it's in your signature...)

I just cheat, and use these:

I don't think Anvil existed when I started, and I already have enough holsters and loose bolt pistols for the project. Those seem cool, but I just bought the holsters in bulk from a bits seller for like ten cents a pop at some point. People ask how I have so many pouches and grenades. When you can buy a lot of 100 of them for ten bucks, they're easy to accumulate, heh. Then I have all the ones from the sprues too.

Well done VS. That does bother me from time to time. You've worked out a very convincing workaround. The 'how-to' is really well done too. It's quite labor intensive, but… you know - for the hobby! The positioning is amazing.

I love these marines, every time I pop by to check them out I get the urge to do more of my own this way. First guy turned out alright, if a bit unfinished, but I just don't have the artistry/anatomy sense to make such great poses and have things look right.

Still, great fun to check out from time to time

Oh, I know. There are plenty of things wrong with the CSM kit - but the bolters have always been my biggest issue. They're also only kind of belt-fed; the belt is sort of awkwardly dangling out of the bottom of the weapon, and doesn't actually go anywhere. It's just weird. Lucky that Loyalist bolters are about 5p each from bits sites (like helmets), though, and it's fairly easy to chop off the Imperial icons.

Don't get me wrong, I really like the look of your bolt pistols! My solution up until getting those from Anvil was just to simply not put holsters on guys and pretend they produce them from the same place they get their chainswords, grenades, and ammunition - (war)hammerspace. I love Anvil's blank power armor chestplates more than any other bit, though, just because it saves me so much time in carving off Aquilas and the like.

I'm looking forward to getting in to this, but it won't be for a while yet.

My favourite bolters are the non-belt CSM ones, though. They look really good.

With the ladyfriend out of town for the holidays, I sat down and prepped some more models. Best to let the plastic card fully bond otherwise I end up re-gluing pieces, so it's typically a two step process for me.

So maybe at some point I'll have some more figures assembled. I've actually put together some cool ideas and some accessories. Eventually I might even assemble them.

BTW, if you live in Australia and so cant get get plasticard, you can do this upsizing with green stuff And liquid green stuff.

I haven't found a clean/smooth way to cut the plasticard to the point that I wouldn't need LGS yet anyway. Greenstuff would be an interesting option to vary the height on the fly, though I assume the plasticard is a bit steadier to work with.

 GrimDork wrote:
I haven't found a clean/smooth way to cut the plasticard to the point that I wouldn't need LGS yet anyway. Greenstuff would be an interesting option to vary the height on the fly, though I assume the plasticard is a bit steadier to work with.

Cut it a little to big. Sand paper it down.

A bit of a trans-generational preview of my eventual Battle For Macragge battle report.

What is wrong with that nid?

It's age is showing?

Looks like he's saying "do I look like dave to you? THAT guy over thEre, he's dave donkey-cave.

 whalemusic360 wrote:
What is wrong with that nid?

It's one of the original Hunter-Slayers.

Basically the predecessor to the Termagant from Rogue Trader.

love this blog, I've always hated how the 40k troops all have the sames pose, I always have a few guys non-converted but the rest usually are some how. Of course with tau, i don't need to "true scale" them at all....

True scaled a Termie, used the same card thickness. Works well. Less noticeable than on normal marines since they are so big, though. And consumes a lot of bags, might have to get more soon.

Pics?

Also, merry Christmas etc!

 Frozen Ocean wrote:
Pics?

Also, merry Christmas etc!

Happy holidays!

Pics will come later, I prefer to build a lot of stuff and then upload pics of it all in one go.

But disassembling my already-built Termies so that I could build them was a nightmare. For some reason the chest-legs joint was a place where I had glued very very well. It takes a lot of swearing, blood, tears, and torn-off other parts of the model to dislodge it. One of them even was so mutilated he could not be saved. The plastic of the -legs- snapped while the glue joint held.

I will need a new box soon...

(Still worth it!)

Aaand up you go.

Not only does this thread display excellent models, it also inspires others to do the same, which is something not every project does. Therefore I think it needs more attention!

 BrotherHaraldus wrote:
Aaand up you go.

Not only does this thread display excellent models, it also inspires others to do the same, which is something not every project does. Therefore I think it needs more attention!

agreed.

Be happy, Sarge. Your work just indirectly inspired my GK buddy to start truescaling his models as well. I did the first one for him, he loved it.

It's contagious!

now i feel all sad having found this.........your sir are an amazing converter..... now i'm glaring at all my marines with disdain going "your too short!!!!"

So you guys have been left out of the rotation for a while as I decided whether or not to continue this plog here. But, since the P&M crew has always been really good, I figured I'd at least continue this because there's no point punishing everyone for the sins of a few.

So this guy was in pieces for like three weeks until I finally assembled him.  A little amusing back story. The head and torso were an old model which I had apparently glued together with Sovereign Glue. No matter what, that head wasn't coming off. But it was a usable torso with an eagle, and it also had a "Devastator head" on it, meaning it needed a heavy weapon if I was going to use him in my Battle Company. I tossed around doing another missile launcher (I still need at least one more), but then I thought about a multi-melta. But how to make a Marine looking left with a multi-melta which is set up to be held right handed? So I envision this guy stacked up on a wall, or some other kind of cover, about to turn the corner and blast something, and has turned his head back to see if his squadmates are ready to charge once he's blasted whatever is around the corner.  



The multimelta was an Ebay save, and had been slathered with two thick layers of paint, lol. It didn't even 100% strip on the first try, so I've actually been scraping a fair amount of it off with a hobby blade tip. 
 
His wrists also need to be finished since the angle that I wanted the multimelta to sit at was far greater than the available wrist actuator. Might have to resort to green stuff finally, lol.
 
The weapon needs some work before I finalize it, but I'm pleased with it. I wanted to use one of the multimeltas from the old school tarantula kit since the are slimmer than the current generation ones, but I couldn't find any of them. :( Found the Tarantual itself, but not the guns.
 
 
The second thing isn't a full model, but instead the concept for my new bolter. 

 
I shaved off the nonfunctional front sight post, then moved the barrel in line with the charging handle, while positioning the targeter nub underneath the barrel instead of over it. I kinda like the look of it. I've been fighting with the idea of what bolters to use. I don't like the default plastic ones because they are too thick. I don't like any of the Forgeworld ones for a variety of reasons. Mostly because I'm too picky.


Based off the ruggedized frame of the standard Godywn-Pattern Boltgun, the Invectors Chapter Forges on Cerceus IV created the Cerceus-Pattern Boltgun in M35. Elevating the barrel and feeding mechanism served the dual function of simplifying the internal mechanism which increased reliability, and allowing the use of higher capacity sickle magazines without increasing the overall dimensions of the weapon. The increased recoil caused by the higher bore axis can be problematic for regular human troops, howvever it has proven manageable for the genetically modified Marines of the Scout Company, and is fully compensated for by the power-assisted battle plate worn by the line companies. The weapon features the standard targeter array linked to the Marine helmet's auto-senses, and protected flip-up sights are contained in the weapon's housing for unassisted aiming. While relatively uncommon, the Cerceus-Pattern can found service in other Chapters in the Ultima Segmentum.

I've also had a fair number of ideas for Marines carrying supplementary weapons for a while. Some may remember the one with the looted shuriken catapult. I wanted to create a Marine who was carrying a grenade launcher. Ultimately, the pose I wanted didn't work since my Marines carry so much extra gear already. So this was a compromise. The other problem is that 40K weapons are just so gigantic, even scaled to my taller Marines.


 
He's also armed with the Cerceus pattern bolter. The pose was created with the idea in mind of eventually mounting him on a hollow base and have him stepping down into a puddle of... some kind of to-be-determined liquid. I used a Chaos shoulderpad, filing off the decorative Chaosy bits, and then bending the skull so it appears to be hanging naturally. The grenade launcher is simply the Cadian launcher with two bolter grips glued onto it and its aquila filed off.
 
Ultimately the grenade launcher, game-wise, is just a decoration.

And then there's this surly bastard.

He still needs a lot of work. He was assembled using an old set of legs that were repurposed when I pulled apart a second generation model that needed a waist/leg extension. The legs took a bit of damage in the process that will need to be corrected, and I think I think I may cut the feet free.
 

 
Added this after I took those pics. Pic didn't turn out great, but it's a talon from a Carnifex.  

 
This guy obviously another veteran of the Tyranic Wars (in the fluff sense more than the rules-sense). Took a bit of fiddling to get him into the more aggressive pose with the heavy bolter (and amusingly exposes the lack of detail on the inside of the weapon), but it gives him a much more open stance with a "hose 'em down" look.

Yeah, life returns. Hopefully long lasting and frequently updated life.

Spectacular work. Amazing attention to detail and great, inspirational posing. Love it. Please keep it coming.

In reguards to your bolters, I total agree with the fact that it seems slowed for the barrel being down so low. I too have moved it up, and made then the same way.

And again great work on your marines. Lots of character, and cant wait to see some paint with your paint scheme.