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Those of yall who have handled the DA models from the starter box, would it be difficult to make the into nilla marines? As far as the details go, would it be fairly simple for an EXTREMELY amateur modeler to file down/clip the icons. Luckily my army does have some of the angel theme going on, so some of the wings are allowable to stay. I see they have the 10man squads on ebay for pretty cheap and Id like to grab some to work on over the break!

It is definitely doable, but it will take a long time... Good luck, though!

Getting rid of low relief iconography such as those found on molded shoulderpads or DV DA is easy. If you've ever used a hobby knife to get rid of the little nub left over from your sprue cutters, it's the same thing. You use the knife blade and slice off the raised part like you're peeling an apple. Just be careful not to dig too deep.

The hard part is getting rid of iconography on things like the librarian's handkerchief, because it has many ridges and folds.

RayND wrote:
The hard part is getting rid of iconography on things like the librarian's handkerchief, because it has many ridges and folds.

Just cut or drill the thingamajick away and resculpt the part. I did that on some other model. One choice is of course just let the iconography stay and say "these dudes have these on, because it's cool". Or "It's an imperial symbol". Or "Because chaos".

I've done it for both the tacs and the bikes and on both it was quite easy to get rid of the swords at least. Imho the wings look ok for nearly every chapter.
It was way easier than I thought at first and not even very time consuming. Just fumble a bit with your hobby knife until you are a bit over the rest of the shoulder pad and then file down the rest.

I've not done it for the Terminators yet tough. I think I will paint them up as Deathwing. The models look just too nice to risk messing them up

Hobby knife, emery boards, 1200 grit wet/dry sandpaper and lots of patience are essential. Also adding bits like purity seals, parchment etc can easily hide any part you wish to hide.

You can easily cut off the shoulderpads with the DA icons and prep the model for your own chapter's pads. The special characters will require more effort to get the other symbols cleaned up but it's all plastic so removing stuff shoudn't be too difficult.

I done a few of these so far (libby, chaplain and terminators), they took a bit of work but in the end I was pretty pleased with the results. I converted mine to be Salamanders, and having Salamander shoulder pads helped a lot, but i'm sure regular sm pieces would work as well.

I can take more pictures of the finished products and works in progress if you want, but the terminators are mostly done;

I'd love to see more!