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The latest addition to my Imperial Fists army is a lowly space marine sergeant, leading his tactical squad, and supported by a Las/Plas Razorback. The sergeant himself uses the kneeling devestator legs, the Terminator librarian Combi plasma with a stormbolter mag rather than the ammo belt the weapon came with. he has on his belt guard frag grenades, Marine krak grenades and what i guess you could call stasis grenades from if i recall correctly the assault marine sprue.

Every member of his squad has a degree of repositioning done, alternate heads from different kits and they are festooned with grenades, pistols and so forth. And because they don't make them, i had to convert the Razorback itself to have a TL plasmagun.

Still unpainted it is a stark contrast to the rest of my relatively plain army, and almost all of the marine armies i face are assembled straight from the box with relatively few extras from other kits, and in most cases (as with my army) they don't even use the extra little detail bits you get with the kits.

How many other people have noticed the same thing? do you prefer to play with plain models, or convert your entire collection? and i guess the follow on question would be, why?

My entire traitor guard in progress army is either converted or kitbashed to some degree which would mean...

3 x 10 man Infantry Squads
2 x 6 man Special Weapon Squads
1 x 10 Man Veteran Squad
1 x 5 Man PCS
1 x 6 man HWS
1 x Primaris Psyker
1 x Tauros

Made with Ghoul, Zombie, Cadian, Forgeworld, Renegade bits

And most of my marine sergeants/characters are conversons

I recently started, but actually chose my army because of the modeling options. The "Looted Wagon" has no actual model but instead you must get a tank from somewhere and make it orky. So I have an IG Manticore with trukk pieces all over it and an ork in the drivers seat.

I also made a weirdboy by putting the skull where the head should be and by cutting up a bunch of weapons to give him a staff.

Most recently I made an ork warboss on a bike and made the bike a tricycle by putting two of the trukk wheels on the back.

I have also noticed that at the gamestore where I play, almost everyone has at least a few, if not a lot of kitbashed and custom models. The gaming group isn't that big and its not a GW store so there are no real GW tournaments nearby. This may allow for more people to do custom work without fear of not being able to field the model.

Nearly all of my Mantis Warrior infantry models are heavily converted. The only exceptions being my old metal sniper scouts which don't really give you much in the way of options. Some of my vehicles are converted as well.

2x Corsair Princes
2 Void Dreamers
16x warlocks (10 on bikes)
2x rangers
40x corsairs (20 with jump packs)
1 Warp Hunter
2 Nightwings

and probably a few more in there. Also, my entire DKoK army only has 1 GW tank and 0 GW infantry.

I did little conversions on most models of my previous army. When I am able to hold models again I'm going to be doing a fully converted army of Ultramarine Tyranid Hunters. And I think you mean melta bombs, not stasis grenades?

20 combi plasma conversions to my sterguard.
One conversion Beamer for my motf. Made mostly out of necron parts and a dread lascannon.
A double track wide predator.
A dread twin linked autocannon that I made out of bits and pieces.

I think that's all of them

I rather enjoy working with the GW range to develop interesting and unique models. It's almost a problem solving exercise in my mind. There are so many types and styles of model in the range that I'm pretty sure you could make pretty much anything you could think of.

All of my Dark Angel force is converted heavily to look like Starcraft Terran units, so about 18 terminators in all plus vindicator, 3 hoverbikes, an ATV type attack bike, 2 dreadnoughts, 1 land speeder and something that can either be used as another land speeder, or a Nephillim as well as a Storm Eagle converted out of a valkyrie and a storm raven. Link in my .sig below to the p&m blog.

Infantry

Ravenwing

Storm eagle



Most of my Guard are also converted with 2 russes based on the chimera chassis with predator turrets and sponsons, 4 chimeras with predator turrets, 2 hydras made up from a variety of models and head and weapon swaps on the 30 or so non-kasrkin infantry models. Also done a bunch of rough rider counts-as using cadians in digitigrade exo-suits. Also linked from my .sig below.

Tanks


Infantry


Rough riders



I've done a few bits and pieces with my old Tau army, but I haven't fiddled with that since my poor student days, so there was limited time and cash for much converting.

I've kitbashed a lot of the combi-weapons my troops use.

My orks have a number of kitbashes, but nothing major.

That's about it.

So far just two. Did some conversion work to give my Sister Superiors a combi-melta and combi-flamer respectively. The combi-flamer actually has the end of a brush for a promethium tank. Looks surprisingly okay.

Want to do a lot more, though. Going to try and do something to make my Canoness look quite unique (not sure what yet), and tanks will get extra bitz like fuel tanks and banners.

Also going to give purity seals to any regular troops that distinguish themselves.

 Melcavuk wrote:
My entire traitor guard in progress army is either converted or kitbashed to some degree which would mean...

3 x 10 man Infantry Squads
2 x 6 man Special Weapon Squads
1 x 10 Man Veteran Squad
1 x 5 Man PCS
1 x 6 man HWS
1 x Primaris Psyker
1 x Tauros

Made with Ghoul, Zombie, Cadian, Forgeworld, Renegade bits

And most of my marine sergeants/characters are conversons

Sounds awesome. I'd love to do a traitor guard army at some point in the distant future, they must be so much fun to convert. Just because the possibilities are (nearly) endless.

All 47 Necron Warriors and 10 Immortals of mine have the exact same pose and stand upright instead of being bent over, so that's some converting done

Plus: 5 Deathmarks used by Necron Warriors + plasticard.

Marines still remain my favourite things to kitbash/convert just because of the sheer number of kits available from GW/Forgeworld for them, with anything human oriented coming second singe between WFB and 40K they have a great number of kits too. Painting a ridiculous amount of traitor guard however is the kicker that follows the joy of converting them, even having done a decent number (by my standards) I still have a shelf full of unpainted/only primed models.

Pretty much every single model in my army has some degree of conversion done to it, except the termagants, but even they will have their tails bent when I get the chance.

-3 sets of 3 warriors, each with a different tail biomorph. 3 have a stegosaurus tail, 3 have scything tails, and 3 have feeler tails. They're also all magnetized, and some have their tongues cut off to make it appear inside their mouths.
-I green stuffed the zoanthope's bottom vents to be more in line with the top 4. One has a dynamic pose as well.
-My mawloc has extra spines running the entire length of its body, added with green stuff.
-Malanthrope is unmodified...for now.
-And lastly, I have a kitbashed and converted Harpy. Essentially, it is done, though I have more aesthetic green stuff work I'd like to add later. Consists of a tfex head with horns removed, trygon chest, and tfex abdomen. Flyrant wings, of course. One of the scything talons is also modified to be stretched out. Gun arms magnetized, with the left arm being modified to actually be a left arm (kind of funny how all nids are righties).

Not only does this add a bit of individuality to my army, but it's also fluffy due to nids constantly mutating to find the most efficient biomorphs.

I started mostly just painting the models I collected in different colour schemes to avoid painting the same colour over and over again and I developed some fluff for the army to explain why it included different SM chapters and then races/species and this led to models with more and more modifications and kit-bashing. The more bits I've acquired the more I've been mixing from one species to another and now with more confidence in putty work I'm pushing myself to modify the next model by a greater extent than the last.

So, aside from the early models, everything in my collection is modified one way or another.

It's good to have a mix though, as the more outrageous ones stand out more when stood next to the more normal looking ones.

About halfway through a Battle Company where every model will have been converted to my 32mm Tall Scale, and custom posed.

It's a lot of fun, and my project log has been fairly popular, but so ridiculously time consuming that it's been a slow rolling project since 40K isn't even close to a top priority for me.

Excluding Black Reach and Dark Vengeance where I only converted the DV sergeant I kitbashed mostly all of my Exorcists by mixing in DA and BT conversion sprues and Grey Knight parts. Some higlights are:
- My Honour Guard made with DA robes and Grey Knight weapons and helmets
- More than half of my non-AoBR Terminators have Grey Knights Terminator helmets, the Assault Sergeant even got a converted tabbard (from before the Deathwing Knight box)
- My Storm Talon got his awkward chin turret removed, got Land Speeder Assault Cannons instead and his wings exchanged.

When I was starting out, I painted and posed my models exactly like the box art...

Quite a few. Between having three different Belials, using alot of leftover loyalist parts to bulk out my Chaos marines, built two old school Rhinos from PVC and original tread sections, modified a lot of models for better poses, constructed severl pieces of custom terrain, built three mycetic spores and a Doom for my nids, I am considering making an old-school Thunderhawk.

In the day of the metal models, kitbash wasn't as common.

Now, its hard to resist to use the bitz-box to improve newly built models...

So kitbashed are about 30% of the plastic models.
Converted, maybe that "shrikes wing" squad using PA lightning claws, altering the weapon config of Tanks to built Vanquishers and others without FW parts, creating new Tanks based on the Baneblade/Shadowsword kit, saving the StormRaven from its fate with a few CoD pieces, adapting historic models to 40k, creating a bike-riding command squad with TH and shield and banner out of non-PA parts, a scout bike squad made before scout bikes were available, etc.

Tons of spare parts and plastic and alu and filler easily available reduces the limit of creations a bit.

Finecast could stop people like metal has.... Say NO to finecast.

Converting is one of my favorite parts of the hobby, and it shows

Orks:

Minor conversions (headswaps, arm swaps, extra bits)
- About 15 ork boys.
- AOBR nob w/powerklaw.
- AOBR nob w/cybork body and Big Choppa.
- AOBR nob w/cybork body.
- Five AOBR deffkoptas w/Big Shootas.
- One AOBR deffkopta w/Buzzsaw.
- Fifteen skorchas - AOBR ork boys with skorcha arms and bits.
- One AOBR warboss - reworked bosspole, shoulder pads.

Major conversions
- Six custom meganobs - Plasticard armor, nob bodies, bits from various other GW kits.
- Two "rat rod" warbuggies - kitbashed ork trukks.
- Three warbuggies, original kits revamped with bits from the trukk, warbike, deffdread & burna bommer kits.
- One "mad max" warbuggy - Kitbashed ork trukk.
- Six biker nobs - heavily modified ork warbikers with nob torsos, plasticard, trukk, deffdread and stormboyz bits.
- One "StuG" Looted Wagon - Old Rhino with plasticard, battlewagon, Leman Russ bits.
- One "Lem'ork Ruzz" Looted Wagon - Leman Russ with plasticard, Battlewagon bits.
- One Biker Boss - heavily modified warbiker with trukk, deffdread, AOBR and dakkajet bits.

Dark Angels:

- AOBR Termies reposed and modified with Deathwing bits.
- AOBR Sergeant reposed and modified with company veteran bits.
- Ten AOBR Tacticals - shoulder pad heraldry removed.
- RT-era Predator, former ork looted wagon. More a de-conversion than a proper conversion actually, but still a true PITA to carry out. Probably my most time/work/cost-intensive project so far.

Traitor Guard:

- Over 15 CCW cultists reposed and modified with FW and Cadian bits.
- Three HWTs with FW bits.
- One Colonel - Catachan legs, Chaos Knight torso, FW arms, Empire Flagellant head & assorted bits.

 1hadhq wrote:
In the day of the metal models, kitbash wasn't as common.

Good lord, I don't know how many blades I ruined back in the old days converting metal models, lol. Of course, that was the era before the massive spread of the Interwebs, so there weren't a bajillion resources online to tell you "Um yeah, this thing will cut metal like super easy, duh", heh.

I have my Grey Knight Librarian with peices from the Grey Knight terminator kit. His shoulder has the shield, wrist mounted stormbolter, and nemisis force weapons all magnetized for his convenience.

Wolf Lord on thunderwolf has a simple powerfist from an assault marine kit since it goes on the other hand.

I also have two reaper mini female elf models being moded up for use as Eldar Farseers, one will count as Eldrad for rules purpose. I got the idea from a picture uploaded here on dakka. I will be using peices from Eldrad for the one to count as him (staff, sword, and helmet). The other will get whatever weapon I like from the new codex when I get my hands on it.

I also have a marine sgt that has a bunch of parts from 3-4 different kits. I didn't have a sgt for another squad so I just made one from scratch, he looks horrible as he is my very first conversion.

Every single model in my Daemons of Chaos army is converted in some manner...

Units like the Pinkies, Flamers & Screamers have decorative bases utilising bitz from Wood Elf Dryads + Green stuff for example to make it look like roiling, chaotic terrain is sprouting up about them...

Unit champs & Heralds are all kitbashed from Tzeentch knows how many different models...

Then there's the themed 'counts as' units that are scratch-built in order to keep a mono god theme going... for example Exalted Flamer + Spawn torso/heads/bitz + green stuff = Firewyrm of Tzeentch (counts as Beast of Nurgle rules-wise)

Plus bitz of dead Space Puppies, Dark Angels, Grey Knights & Eldar littered across bases depending upon which god's troops/characters... (ie; Khorne units have SW's & GK's, but Tzeentch has SW's + a few Eldar, etc...)


Yeah, I'm a little crazy.

i play orks.. i got way to much kitbashing.. and i'm now making Cyboars

IG Basilisk converted into a looted wagon is the highlight of my small ork force right now, complete with Big Shoota (stubber and boyz bits) and a Rokkit Launcha (Hunter Killer Missile on a sprue stick.)

I hope to do some work mixing Warbosses to get the desired look I want, but can't yet, but soon...

I lost count...

...I have no life. :(

10 Scibor paladins.
Mordrak and his ghost knights I modeled them hovering w/ no legs and painted them ghostly
Custom Brother Captain Scibor
30 warrior acos --- various models with weapons cut off adding chain swords and las pistols or bolters
Doom
8 Spore Pods
1 Dread Knight modded not to have the baby carrier front that I hate
4 Harpies 2 HVC and 2 Standard - I shoulda just magnetized these
5 Custom Chimeras
8 Custom Inquisitors -- like the one with 2 Venom pistols. One with a Hell Rifle b/c none come w/ Hell Rifles. Another w/ a conversion beamer ect..
2 Custom Flyrants b/c they didn't have models when i made these
3 Custom Tervigons b/c they didn't have models when i made these
Custom Death leaper b/c he is way cool
Custom Death Marks from Rifts Robots
Custom Warriors - Some Dr Who Daleks I bought
Custom Crypteks
Custom Monolith w/ LED lights
2 Custom Tech Marines w/ conversion beamers
10 deathcult assassins 1 Power Sword as normal and the other weapon is an ax for the Ap 2
3 Custom Carnifexs
10 Grey knights in PA from reg marines w/ GK weapons
A custom Storm Raven Made from a terminator HK
3 Custom Dreadnoughts b/c none come w Autocanons

Those are all the ones I can think of here at work I'd have to look at my models to see which others are mods.


I think it is safe to say moding models is my favorite part of 40k. I bought Ghost ark bits (the 7 shaped pieces) to make a Necron aegis defense line. Working on that now. I really want to LED light all my Necron warriors guns but the task seems daunting and a lot of work!

My entire unit of sternguard have been converted, since I lacked any combi-weapons, I had to scratchbuild my own. All the vehicle upgrades (my multimelta on the Land Raider and the flamer on my dread) are home made, my Vulkan He'stan is a scratchbuild, my sergeants in every tactical squad are converted to make them WYSIWYG, and I have a few extra models here and there with some custom work on them. I vastly prefer custom builds to buying bitz I don't have.

I play Orks, so quite a few including;

Looted Rhino
Looted Land Raider with Deff-Rolla
Looted Dark Eldar Raider with Ork Pirates
Looted Necron Doomsday Ark
several custom Big Meks
custom Warboss on Warbike
Ork Buggy - well, Orks driving a Land Rover
Deff-Kopta turned into Deff-Plane

My SM bike squad and captain uses the generic kits plus the chaos biker kit, DC, SG, GK, BT and DA boxes. I've just got my hands on the SW box and FW goodies for the next three squads.