Warhammer 40k Conversion Modeling
September 25th, 2011 by Lodur

This is a guest post from Carson. Warhammer 40k is a game that has been loved by geeks and model enthusiasts for over two decades. The game pits army versus army with you as the commander. Part of the fun is gathering and building your models. Conversion has always been a big part of that, and something that has always drawn player to the game. Conversions can be as simple as adding bits to a model or completely rebuilding it from the ground up. Making the models unique to your army. Carson takes us through his journey through his first conversion.

I’m new to Warhammer, and miniature war gaming and painting in general. I’m an amateur, I have no idea what I’m doing. I bought my first box of marines about four years ago, a little package of three snap together models and the very basic starter kit of paints from Games Workshop. I painted these three marines so many times that the detail disappeared. They sucked, fiercely.

So how can I say that I’m new to this? Well due to space restrictions and moving I simply had nowhere to paint after that initial box and only recently unpacked things again to find that my brush was ruined, my paints hard and dry, and those three marines in more pieces than when they’d been on the sprue.

While unpacking I discovered two boxes of terminators I had purchased and put together with no knowledge of what was allowed and what wasn’t. This resulted in a handful of models with about two weapons too many, ones they’re not allowed to equip and just plain weird combinations. What guy with a rocket pack doesn’t need a shield? I decided that this time I better make sure the money I’m investing goes to models that are legal to play. Enter the Dark Angels codex. For those of you that are not aware Dark Angels are somewhat unique in that they don’t have to field regular troops with the right HQ choices. Or rather, that they can play other forces as troop choices; Belial, Master of the Deathwing allows for terminators to count as troops or elite choices and Sammael, Master of the Ravenwing allows for Ravenwing attack squadrons to be played as troops or fast attack choices.

This allows for a lot of flexibility in your army’s composition; or in my case, a lot of really bad ass looking terminators marching up and down the field slaughtering everything in their path! Or at least that’s what I envisioned when I picked up the box. Unfortunately because I lacked any knowledge of how the game was played at the time I just ended up using the biggest, meanest looking pieces on the models. This led to two squads I couldn’t use and my current situation- starting from scratch.

The first thing I did was check the rule book for my options. Before long I knew I wanted an Apothecary in one of my terminator squads. For those of you who don’t know a terminator apothecary acts as a regular terminator (he retains all of his standard war gear, in this case Thunder Hammer and Storm Shield) and adds a narthecium and reductor to that list. These provide two distinct advantages, the narthecium allows any unit within 6” to ignore one failed save per turn with only a few limitations. This is the bonus we’re interested in, the reductor prevents casualties within 6” of the apothecary from being counted when deciding if a morale test has to be taken in the event of 25% shooting casualties. Both strong bonuses.

Games Workshop does not produce a terminator apothecary model, or make bits available to easily convert one. In fact, very few kits actually include a narthecium or a reductor model! This is unfortunately a fairly common theme that shows itself frequently once you start getting past the very basic war gear choices and standard armies.

So where would I get these pieces from? I’d make them myself of course! One of the best rules of Warhammer 40K is ‘what you see is what you get’ which basically says if it looks like it, it is it. So while I needed something similar to a narthecium, I didn’t need that exact bit, nor did it have to look exactly the same as long as it’s relatively clear what it is.

My first step was to locate a picture of a reductor to base my conversion on. Every time you do a conversion do a few image searches with different terms to find out what you’re trying to make. Unless your codex provides a clear example this is the best way to find out what you’re aiming for. In this case I needed something that had a needle for extracting the geneseed and a cutting implement for getting into the armor of marines to do so. Fairly simple, right?

The next step was to figure out how I was going to get it. What makes a good base to work from? What extra bits did I have lying around or could easily get my hands on?I had a few Dark Angels upgrade sprues with chain swords (cutting implement) and an attack bike antenna that I sharpened into a somewhat over sized needle. Now all I needed was a base to attach these to. A simple option would have been a power fist, or a chain fist but I decided to go with the chain sword for my cutting implement and I settled on a terminator heavy flamer for the base. I did this because it comes attached to an arm with the right armor type for a terminator and because it gave me the a fluid chamber and tube look I wanted.

Once I knew what I wanted to use to create my reductor I began deciding where I wanted to cut all three pieces to get something that looked ‘natural’ once it was together. The antenna I cut quite a bit shorter than it was, and on an angle to give it that needle look. The chain sword was snipped to be a little longer than the needle and the heavy flamer was cut in two places, just above the barrels to give it a guts go in guts go out look to it once the needle was attached and a bit behind and below that to attach the chain sword so that they came about even.

After deciding where to attach each piece I filed the cuts so I would have nice flat surfaces to ensure a good hold. Unfortunately because of the nature of glue sometimes you have to hold it while it dries or it ends up a little off centre, just be patient! Another problem is that wherever you have glued two small pieces together it’s going to be very fragile, so remember to be careful! I recommend using the stronger plastic glue even though it takes longer to dry. The reason for this is so it can stand up to the filing needed to at the joints to get a smooth finish after the glue has dried. This step can make the difference between an obvious, poor conversion to one that looks professional.

The second piece I had to make was the thunder hammer because I needed it to be left handed and they all come pre-attached to right handed arms which was much easier to do in some ways. All it took was the hammer head from one and the pole from another weapon I wasn’t using that normally I sat in the left hand. Just two quick snips, some filing and then a lot of sitting around holding it while the glue dried. Patience!

Once the glue was dry and I had filed it as much as I felt safe it was time to figure out the pose I wanted. Because I wasn’t using arms and weapons typical to the body things didn’t quite fit right at first. But a bit of filing, such as removing some of the adornments from the weapons, and the removal of a tiny piece of the flamer let everything fit fairly well. I had trouble getting the pole from the hammer out of the face of the terminator without placing it right in front of the reductor and eventually had to settle for a less than perfect, though better position slightly above the head. Modelling clay or green stuff -a two part solid epoxy sold at Games Workshop- can help immensely when trying to get a different pose by propping up the arm a bit.

I added the storm shield to the side of the reductor at this point as well since if it’s not on the model it doesn’t have the save it confers in the rulebook. I placed it on the reductor instead of slung over the back as originally intended because I couldn’t get proper contact to attach it there without more heavy conversions which I simply wasn’t up to trying. it would also have left my apothecary without a place for his narthecium.

The narthecium is essentially a glorified first aid pack. It’s a couple of tubes connected by smaller tubes connect to a box with buttons. I wanted to give mine a bit of a more 21st century look though so I used the backpack from a Ravenwing attack bike and attached the actual narthecium piece to the side. If I hadn’t have the narthecium handy I would have simply used the back pack and made sure my opponents knew what it was before we started each game.

I didn’t attach the narthecium right away as I wanted to prime the model black and it white so it wouldn’t be such a pain to get that white medical look on it later. I placed it on the top/back of the terminator armor to keep the vents open for aesthetic reasons but could have placed it anywhere it would stay put really, even at the feet of the model, as if it had just been used.

With that the only thing left to be done was paint it, and with my procrastination being the best (worst?) it’s ever been it may still not be painted. Doing this conversion really reinforced a few things for me though, such as not being too scared to try. These models are not cheap, the bits can be rare, but if you have a good idea sometimes you just have to try it or your army will never really be as unique as it could be. To me that’s one of the beauties of this hobby; because of my apothecary, no other army will ever look like mine.