Space Marine conversions

[cheminhaler]

It partially melted overnight.

I made a set of gargantuan ruins yesterday; the foamboard from proper art shops is much cheaper and comes on a bigger A3 sheet. In fact I got a bit carried away. I'll take pictures of it later.

[treadiculous]

"gargantuan ruins"...

I'm surprised GW haven't already used this phrase.

I am intrigued!

[cheminhaler]

You can get at least 2 large platoons and a command squad in plus a good bell tower at the top for a lone Vindicare assassin.

It's too big to go into someone's deployment zone but it'll be good for the middle of the table.

[cheminhaler]

Dese iz dem rooin'd parkin lot for dem rayza bakks wot dem kanned umies hidez out in wen dey iz rooin dwellin. Dere woz dese girly humies in da parkin lot as well an we ad a party.

- da Rowg Trayda Boss

[treadiculous]

Nice party!

The height means will be good for flyer and super-heavy walker interactions - cover and collisions!

Your top level ruins have quite spikey looking floors, maybe smoth them a little?



I used similar materials back in 98 to make necromunda scenery, we would then attack the walls with pointy things when ever someone was shot at so that the walls became full of bullet holes and chips from shrapnel. kinda like living scenery in that it kept evolving.

It also meant inone game a heavy stubber was able to chew a hole through a wall and start shooting the occupants. Like wise, cover saves provided by walls and balconies would be reduced as the walls were eroded by gunfire.

I miss that game.. we made our own house rules as I coulnd't afford necromunda, we made cover more available and compensated by giving each gun more shots using the sustained fire dice. I remember one heavy bolter getting 17 shots... which was needed as the target was behiind 2+ cover at the start. By the end of 17 shots he was pretty much in the open!

[cheminhaler]

Thanks Tread. I trimmed the jagged bits off the roof.

Those rules sound crazy i might add some battle damage but not too much.

Added matchstick window frames to one ruin and am making another building based off an old wd ork compound blurprints.

[that1guy]

I want to apologize for high-jacking this thread. 


This matter shall be brought to its appropriate designation, and I hope you can forgive my lack of interwebz etiquette. 

[treadiculous]

what hi-jack?

or is this some bizarre time-loop paradox in which the action to rectify the damage is in fact the action which initiates the damage causation in the first place

[cheminhaler]

I briefly saw the original post and it was to do with using dreadnoughts as the basis for a conversion. I was preparing a detailed response but seeing as that1guy edited his post, suffice it to say that I'd prefer to use dreads as dreads. For my local meta the orks would suffer bad if I took a dresdnought heavy list but unfortunately I can't. My current army is restricted to not being able to take terminators, scouts, centurions or dreadnoughts at all, so to compensate I have to spam power armoured bodies at them. My fave elite slots are now vanguard and sternguard veterans.

[Rolling Thunder]

What mm foamcore are you using?

[cheminhaler]

It's 3mm A2 foamboard, which was £2.15 per sheet from the local art shop, for the large ruin. The smaller ruins were smaller a4 sheets I bought on ebay years ago between 3 to 5mm but they were much more expensive.

[cheminhaler]

The ork compound is getting done.

[ElegaicRequiem]

That actually seems really expensive. Do you like that art shop?

[cheminhaler]

Yeah, because it's literally a ten minute walk away and they have lots of useful materials; card, milliput, foamboard, real brushes.

There's no use going to another area - it's too hard carrying the A2 foamboard sheets as it is; they were actually the smallest type of foamboard in there. Contrast that with the 4 x A4 sheets I got on ebay for about a tenner years ago, it just doesn't compare. Postage was included but it was a much worse deal than the art shop.

I'll bet there won't be that huge a price difference when RT gets his sheets but it's taken for granted that living in London is always more expensive.

[Trooper One-Nine-Seven-Four]

Heck, back in the day when I was but a callow youth, foamcore board was the go to product for making buildings for 40K. I still may have some of the ruins and bunkers I made packed away somewhere.

[cheminhaler]

These are my WIP pseudo-skitarii for the doomed Forge world of Alhex Zandringham, made using leftover bitz of Skitarii, empire archers, catachan command squad voxcasters and the crawling horror of stripped and twisted copper cables. They are Biologis Skitarii units, with grafted vat grown legs, jeggings and iron cod-pieces.
Upon recruitment their original legs are cut off and new vat grown jegging legs are grafted on.

[cheminhaler]

Just finished assembling my Onager Dunecrawler.










And here is Mr Slot-head; a pseudo-skitarii alpha made with a datasmith head and empire militia torso and legs. The slot in the back looks compatible with Sega Mega-Drive cartrides but does it work with Japanese games?

[emptyhat]

So with Space Marines and Skitarii you will have all of the grav guns. Should we start calling you Lord Gravy?

edit: Now I'm not looking on my phone I've gotta say I'm digging the wire on your conversions. Next time we'll have to play a game large enough to allow you to field your Skitarii, your Stradaski Cheminhalers, and one of your marine chapters. That or a smaller game that relaxes FoC restrictions to let you field a pick'n mix.

[cheminhaler]

I .. might get some servitors with grav but only because I need to have them for a legal allied contingent. The units seem very expensive but I haven't played with them and reading online comments people say the are good/ OK.

There are loads of not-grav interesting weapons; the eradicator pistol on the dominus, Icarus array/ neutron laser destroyer on Onagers, transuranic arquebus (which has a very long range) and some interesting bits of kit.

My marines have virtually no grav; but devastators will have the option of grav cannons now.
Not sure if I want to ally marines with skitarii because the only useful ones to ally; the Raven Guard, are losing their Scout/ outflank ability, so dragoons/ balustarii walkers seem like a better use of points. If you take 2 dragoon and one balustarius minimum you can outflank with all 3 'units'.

[that1guy]

Speaking of SM conversions. My friend plays BA and I have a bunch small bases from that WARMACHINE game that I got talked into with little satisfaction.... anyway, the small bases for that game are VERY similar in size to the new space marines size.

So I'm using the WM figurines for conversions into 40k & saving him a buck by throwing him the bases.

That aside, your conversions are pretty sweet.  Got anything planned to convert the big bot? 

[cheminhaler]

Jun 12, 2015 20:30:25 GMT -5 that1guy said:

Speaking of SM conversions. My friend plays BA and I have a bunch small bases from that WARMACHINE game that I got talked into with little satisfaction.... anyway, the small bases for that game are VERY similar in size to the new space marines size.

So I'm using the WM figurines for conversions into 40k & saving him a buck by throwing him the bases.

That aside, your conversions are pretty sweet.  Got anything planned to convert the big bot? 

I'm not too keen on rebasing my painted stuff, just the mech army and any future armies. Looking at bitz sites the official 32mm bases are still a bit too expensive compared to the 25s but that will probably change over time and eventually they'll be cheaper on bitz sites than in the gw online store; give it a year or so... All I need to get is 50 or so for the time being but want the official ones; those PP bases are a bit more rounded at the sides, I believe..
My datasmith is the first 32mm base model assembled; that was a good model.

No; I love the Kastelans as the are. The 50s robot look is awesome and they look very similar to the old ones. I have 5 Castellan metal robots from the 80s that I got painted on ebay about 8 years ago. This new design is better; taller and you can pose it with a little bit more variety. I'll try to dig up the old ones for a comparison shot
Not only that but they 'went there' with the whole Doctrina Wafer card. If you look at my 'Mr Slot-head' conversion with the datasmith head; you see that slot on the back of his head?
In the robot's chest before you glue the front panel in place on the upper chest you have to insert a tiny 2mm squared doctrina wafer card into the appropriate slot in the chest. It was fiddly getting it in there with my fingers - next time I'll use tweezers - but MAN! that is weird having to do that.... Really fun as well...
(As an aside I think they only did that for serious converters who make dioramas and such ;it would be good seeing a datasmith reprogramming a robot diorama, with the chest mechadendrites putting the doctrina wafer in pace and the robot with its chest panel open)

[cheminhaler]

So here is a comparison shot of the new / old robots. Hope you like them. The red castellans were purchased on ebay years ago; I didn't paint them but might call them the 'Red Devils'.




And here they are surrounded by hordes of unpainted rough riders. I've run out of stuff to assemble apart from the second robot and all my marines have wrong bases now, so its back to assembling rough riders.




^ the Lawrence Fishburn rough rider to the left of the robot

[Trooper One-Nine-Seven-Four]

I spy an Om-nom-nommer with little footsies!

[cheminhaler]

I almost don't want to glue it to the base to lose the motion of the spider machine spirit.

The 'riders have Curious Constructs parts and some Victoria Lamb heads. I've also uncovered my prize of Mad Robot celebrity heads so there will be Jason Statham and Bruce Willis rough riders as well.

[ElegaicRequiem]

Anything with a spider's spirit should be purged.