Notes: One of the earliest conversions I did using the new marines. Bearing in mind my lack of experience I tried to keep things simple, so as not to mess up my favourite character. The right arm was cut above the elbow to angle it away from the body, and the left hand was turned 90 degrees at the wrist. The power staff was made from the generator of a marine power axe, minus its blade and handle, with the gun barrels from an old model of the German warship Tirpitz stuck on. The segmented barrels looked right for the staff, which is supposed to extend from just the handle to its full length. Cutting the storm bolter away from the plastic Terminator arm was a little tricky, as I hadn't really done a lot of that sort of thing before, but the only unwelcome damage (the rear of the weapon lost a little from the bottom) didn't show up once it was glued in place. The hollow of the neck was filled in and painted black, with a silver rim to represent the edge of the armour. The torso is the Tactical marine whose chestplate has just a skull, with no eagle wings. The skull and a small plug-in port were cut away, leaving the chestplate free to be painted. I took a lot of care to get this right, particularly the face - I was working with the slight difficulty of already having a mental image of Stephanie, so I had to get the miniature as close as possible. The patterns on the armour are all based, in one way or another, on Xena: Warrior Princess. Most are from Xena's armour, while the chestplate pattern is from the Amazon Queen outfit. [Character bio] |
Notes: Another conversion based on the new plastic marines, which I love generally. My first real conversion was Chase, wearing a jump pack, and I did this conversion both to update (my inexperience showed in the earlier version) and to leave the jump pack out given the complications of using one in the current edition of 40k - I wanted Chase to be able to have a command squad. There wasn't really a lot of work involved in this one. The right arm was angled away from the body by cutting it above the elbow, and one of the spare bolt pistols from the Tactical marine sprue was added in place of the usual bolter. The left arm was cut away at the elbow and replaced with the Eldar power fist, as Chase's custom power weapon - not as powerful as a real power fist, but not so slow either. The skull-and-wing on her shoulder, cut from the top of the banner pole, was a feature of the earlier conversion I wanted to keep. The hollow of the neck was filled in, in the same was as I do with all the female marines I make, to allow the Escher head to sit in place properly. [Character bio] |
Notes: A relatively simple conversion, but one which took a lot of experimentation to get the right pose. The legs were gently twisted until they were both on the same level - not easy, it took a few tries and there were moments when I wondered if I'd have to get a new miniature and try again. The phase sword arm was twisted 90 degrees along the length of the arm from shoulder to elbow, bringing the flat of the blade into view from the front. Apart from these changes the only modification was to bend the ponytail down after cutting it away from the sword arm, and replace the damaged end that had been cut with the plume from the hilt of the Berzerker chainsword, with a little skull on the end. [Character bio] |
Notes: I'd always wanted to use a Battle Sister for Vail - the hairstyle is right, and the armour looks very sophisticated in comparison to marine-standard power armour. The use of the heavy bolter miniature meant that there was no need to cut the basic miniature, as the arms were separate. All that needed to be done was to flatten down the left knee and right shoulder plate, which both had the Sororitas fleur-de-lys - the left shoulder, with the winged 'I', was perfect for the Inquisitor. The Guardian arms were just convenient parts, but they turned out to be fortunate choices - the armour flares slightly around the wrists the same way the Battle Sister armour does around the ankle on the legs, making the arms fit right in when painted in the same way. The pistols went right into place, and the Eversor backpack, which I'd chosen for its sentinel sensor, only needed the original node on the miniature's back to be flattened a little for it to fit. [Character bio] |
Notes: The first miniature of Nemesis had been one of my first serious conversions, and I wanted to update her - she's changed during the three years she's been in my mind. Firstly, the Ravager legs (left over from the Anastari conversion) were smoothed at the waist. The feet were bent down, and the tips back up, so that heels could be attached at the back, made from small pieces of plastic cylinder. The Warrior torso had its shoulder armour removed, and the waist flattened to join to the legs. The neck of the Escher head was cut at the right angle for the torso and attached. Both forearms were cut from a Wych Succubus (another conversion used the body) and attached to plastic upper arms. The agoniser whip was cut so that it could be straightened, and bent into its new shape before the arm was attached. The shoulder armour came from another Warrior torso - the female torso has rounded shoulder plates, but I wanted Nemesis to have the sharper style used on the other torsos, and also for the shoulder plates to look like separate pieces or armour, rather than simply being built into the torso. [Character bio] |
Notes: Syrillia was actually not my character to begin with - she was 'recruited' from an old scenario for Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, in which she was a scheming, power-hungry illusionist and necromancer. The picture of her in that article (White Dwarf 132) had a face very much like the Morathi miniature, so the choice was obvious. I didn't like Morathi's staff, however, so I replaced it with the nearest weapon to hand - the spear from the now out-of-production Avatar, which I had bought long ago during a trip to the UK. The skull on the base was a result of a miniature competition being run by the local Games Workshop store at the time - I wanted to have a little something on the base, rather than just leave it blank. [Character bio] |
Notes: This conversion came about almost by accident - I wasn't really doing anything much, and picked up the Sybarite because I hadn't converted the first one I'd bought when 40k 3rd edition came out. I assembled it by instinct, using whichever piece caught my fancy at the time. I hadn't even considered who the new miniature would represent, but at the time I had just created Selyna, and the miniature turned out to look quite like I imagine her - very stylish, and not overly extravagant. It was simply a matter of removing the arms and replacing them with whatever fitted - the spare Harlequin's Kiss left over from the Dancer conversion, and the Incubus hand on the other side because its forefinger was extended, as if around the trigger of a pistol - it was actually an Incubus who had already donated his punisher and tormentor helm to Anastari, my Scourge Sybarite, and consequentially had no use for his other hand. [Character bio] |
Notes: A simple conversion, but how could a Dark Eldar player resist a half-naked vixen like this? The hands had to go, though - apart from being distinct weapons that, supposedly, only Kruellagh had, I just don't like the look of barbed spikes sticking out of someone's palms. The jainas mor was a piece lying around doing nothing, as my half-formed Eldar army never really got off the ground years earlier. The use of the Eversor's hand was inspired by a conversion in White Dwarf 234, where it was used as part of a chaos champion. The conversion itself was nothing more complex than cutting off the soul flayer hands and attaching their replacements. [Character bio] |
Notes: I already had one of these miniatures, unconverted, as part of my old Harlequin squad, and I had occasionally used this miniature as a Sybarite when big games spread my supply of Dark Eldar miniatures thin. I wanted to keep the original as it was - nice paint job, if you'll forgive me for saying so - so I bought the same miniature again and set about converting her. A Dark Eldar army that had been in the window of Games Workshop Sydney (the winner of the 1999 Cancon, I believe), gave me a direction, for it had used the same miniature with two Malcadon claws, and Yeld wings, as a Scourge Sybarite. I didn't want the wings (I quite like the actual Scourge wings) but the claw was too good to pass up. For the other hand, as I didn't at that stage want a Dracon with a Harlequin's Kiss (this was before I converted Selyna), I used a left-over pistol arm, adding a splinter rifle bayonet blade to the back of the wrist armour to give it a bit of extra detail. [Character bio] |
Notes: I can't remember why I decided to do this conversion - I was just sitting around doing nothing much, and half an hour later I was industriously swearing while sawing through a solid metal miniature, which at the time I didn't do often. But I liked this pose best of the available Banshees, and I was sorry not to see the miniature being used since my Eldar army had at the time dropped off the face of the galaxy (I started rebuilding it much later). The head obviously had to go, inappropriate for a Dark Eldar (and I didn't quite like the mane anyway), so it was replaced by a standard Warrior helmet. The sword arm of the miniature, half-covered by the Banshee's mane, had been cut off during the removal of the head, so it was replaced between shoulder and elbow with a Warrior arm, with a Warrior's shoulder plate covering up some rough cutting on the shoulder of the Banshee's body. The forearm and power sword were salvageable, and I chose to reattach it with the sword lateral rather than raised, to give the miniature a different look to the Banshee it had been. The laspistol was cut off and replaced with a splinter pistol, with a Warrior spike providing a trigger guard - something was needed below the body of the weapon, as the splinter pistol is entirely above its handle, where the laspistol had the handle built into the back of it. Without the trigger guard the pistol looked like it was simply balancing on top of the miniature's hand. The addition of the skull-on-a-spike was a last-minute thing, just because I had the piece lying around after doing a little conversion on a friend's Chaos Terminators, changing some of the trophy racks to make them look more individual. [Character bio] |
Notes: This conversion came right on the heels of Sona - a natural progression, I suppose. Also Jain Zar wasn't doing anything much, with her jainas mor donated to Kalarte. This was a tricky job, for not only did the head have to be removed, but also parts of the back had to be resculpted once the trailing mane had been cut off. And let me tell you that's not easy, when the only tools available are a blunt saw and a Swiss Army knife (albeit one with a couple of dozen blades, files and miscellaneous wierd things). The resculpting of the back turned out well, so far as I was able to do it - nice firm butt, in other words. As the removal of the head had taken a while, between the blunt saw and having to pause every minute to let the miniature cool down to a temperature at which I could hold it again (friction, eh?) I had had a while to think about which head I would replace it with. I didn't want to just do the same conversion as Sona on a larger scale, so I decided this one would be an Incubus. Getting the head off the Incubus it came from took a while also, as the helmet is sunk down between the shoulders somewhat, and a straight cut would've damaged the helmet. In the end I cut the torso in half, cut off the shoulders, then cut away the upper torso until just the helmet remained. This also gave me a spare punisher, which I decided would replace Jain Zar's absent jainas mor, with the Incubus forearm attached via a Warrior upper arm. The Wych Succubus shoulder blades helped to cover up the join - I've never used the shoulder blades on any of my Wyches, so I've got plenty to spare. Jain Zar's left arm needed to be modified around the shoulder plate to attach the Wych blades, but that was just a matter of cutting down the armour a little. The Incubus backpack helped to mask the lack of detail on the resculpted back, and once painted in the same colours as the rest of my Incubi the new Incubus Mistress looked entirely suited to her role. The name is a round-about joke on my part, Liu-Tze pronounced 'Lucy', as in Lucy Lawless - I've always thought of Jain Zar as 40k's version of Xena. Even the Kabal of Lost Souls has its lighter moments. [Character bio] |
Notes: What on Terra possessed me to convert a Wraithlord? I don't know, except that at the time I had three of them being perfectly useless (three? I know, I know. I bought two of them long ago, when they were cheap, and thought I'd lost them by the time I bought the third). Obviously I had to make the thing look Dark Eldar, but a paint job wouldn't do it alone - the thing was too smooth and curved for that. The legs, firstly, were modified with parts from a Raider prow ram, stuck on either side in the same way as Warriors have rows of blades on the sides of their lower legs. Another prow ram (I don't use them on my Raiders) was added beneath the head-carapace, like a tusk - I imagine it goring opponents during close combat, like a rhinocerous' horn. I added the spikes in two rows to the front of the carapace with the intention of making it look slightly insectoid, like rows of mandibles - didn't quite work, but it helped to break up the lines of the Wraithlord. The shoulders got rows of blades also, to stop them from being smooth and rounded, and the hand weapons (shuriken catapult and flamer) were replaced with splinter cannons. The hands themselves were turned into claws with the addition of every spare knife from the Dark Eldar Warrior sprues that I could find - it was pure luck that I had the eight I needed. I liked the final look of the claws, and I later used the same idea on another miniature, Satyra. The back powerplant, I decided, would be a trophy rack - I used the War Walker powerplant because, by this time, I was sure I would be using the Talos rules for the thing, and it already had its Sting in the two cannons under its arms. It was just a matter of finding and impaling heads - a marine (an Ultramarine veteran, not a White Scar as everyone thinks), an Ork and an Eldar - perhaps another Dark Eldar, as I imagine Kabals fighting each other almost as often as anyone else. Finally the Wych Succubus shoulder blades were added to the powerplant, on the ridge between the two vanes, which needed a little rounding off before the Wych blades would fit. Athiok (roughly translated: 'hell-lord') was my first Talos, and has always performed excellently on the battlefield. [Character bio] |
Notes: A real mix of pieces, motivated by my desire to use the daemonette torso somehow - all those leather straps are very Dark Eldar. After that it was just a matter of using whatever occurred to me for the remaining pieces - the Mandrake head I liked, the full-face mask just screams 'bondage' and is therefore eminently Dark Eldar also. The arms were chosen just because they were conveniently available, and the legs were from the Malcadon who had provided the claw for the Dancer. All the cuts were straight and simple, just severing the piece from one miniature and attaching them to another. The only real problem was that daemonettes are exaggerated compared to normal human-sized miniatures - if I painted the shoulders and back as flesh like the chest, she would look like a bodybuilding champion. I solved this by just painting the back and shoulders purple, making them seem armoured or padded, and not so out-of-scale. [Character bio] |
Notes: A purpose-built miniature - I wanted the +1 Strength of the punisher for those times when my Scourges ended up among their craftworld Eldar enemies, hacking and slashing. I noticed one of the Ravager gunners had the same chestplate and shoulder armour as a Scourge - I had bought a Ravager but assembled it as a Raider, intending to use the spare parts later (which I did). The gunner's body was duly separated from his legs and attached to the legs of a dark lance Scourge, in flight. The punisher wasn't that difficult, although it needed a little careful positioning. One arm used the Incubus forearm holding the weapon, attached to a Warrior upper arm. The other arm is from the plastic Warrior who holds a splinter cannon - the hand normally supporting the weapon's handle was cut off and reattached upside-down, holding the haft of the punisher in an approximation of staff-fighting technique (which I know only from watching Gabrielle in 'Xena'). The most difficult part was cutting out the top of the helmet to fit in the tormentor helm's splinter pistol barrel, for the helmet's plume started far forward on it, and I had to cut underneath it to make room for the weapon - it took a while, but eventually the pieces matched and it was done. Then I merely had to add a miscellaneous plastic bit to the back of the miniature, to connect the wings without having to cut away the back of the helmet's plume. [Character bio] |
Notes: Another one of those conversions done to use up spare parts - in this case, I had two Harlequins left over from the pack I had bought to get the body for the Dancer. I decided to do a swordfighter, with one of the Dark Eldar blades in her other hand to duplicate the old style of sword-and-dagger fighting, where the dagger was used to block and parry the opponent's attacks, leaving the sword free to strike. Some fencers have been known to surreptitiously use their free hand in the same way, but I was never that crazy. The conversion was fairly simple, just a matter of cutting off the warrior's forearm and replacing it with the gloved hand of the Harlequin. The only real change I made was the removal of the left shoulder plate, replaced with some vertical spikes - I thought it made sense for a swordfighter to have her sword arm completely free to move, without having plates of armour in the way. The use of the Raider head was just to make the miniature stand out from the crowd of Warriors. [Character bio] |
Notes: Built purely to use the Eversor body that I had had since doing the conversion of Kalarte. I had decided I liked punishers (fighting Toughness 3 Eldar will do that), so I cut one off a spare Incubus and stuck it on. To make the miniature feel more Dark Eldar I added the plume, from the bare head included in the Warrior sprue - I've found the bare heads look more evil bald, without the plume. The splinter rifle, in conjunction with the punisher, is not technically a legal combination, but I pay the points for a tormentor helm and then use the rifle as a pistol - my Warriors rarely stand still for a turn, so it doesn't make a difference. Having finally used up the assassin body, I then went and bought another one to get the backpack for my Inquisitor - that assassin (the same miniature) is now lying on my desk, doing nothing. Just goes to show, you can't win. [Character bio] |
Notes: My Reavers had always been the slowest of my units to be collected - partly I found them less than impressive in battle, and partly because I wanted to use metal bodies to make it clear they were Wyches, and there is only one female metal Reaver available - and that's in a box of three. In the future I'll be making some new female Reavers using Wych bodies. Anyway, I had the idea of swapping the faces of the Reaver and Wych Succubus from an article in the Australian White Dwarf, where a staffperson from Adelaide had done the same thing with the normal Wych trooper and the Reaver Succubus to create his Archon. I cut up from below the chin, and then down from the top of the head, to make a wedge-shaped cut in both miniatures. Then I simply swapped the faces, and painted over the cuts to make it look pretty. Fortunately I'd recently bought a new, brilliantly-sharp jeweller's saw, otherwise I'd never even have considered this. The Reaver-faced Wych is now the wielder of my custom Wych Weapons, the katar and talonflail. Riana's right arm was from a Ravager gunner, attached sideways with a little flattening of the shoulder to make it fit - I wanted her to look like she was twisting the handlebar of the bike, like gunning the engine of a Harley. The other arm was a combination of parts - from shoulder to wrist it's from a Wych Succubus, but the hand and agoniser are from a Sybarite (the rest of which is now Selyna). The agoniser whip was bend into shape, so it looks like it's trailing as the bike speeds along. The bike itself had to be something special - Riana is, after all, my lead Reaver. Firstly I cut up and reassembled the 'christmas tree' of blades that goes inside the front carapace, so that the sideways-pointing blades were swept back, not forward - emphasis on speed. Instead of the lower set of blades on the bike itself I used the larger Raider blades, and the upper set of blades were replaced by two Reaver splinter rifles. The blades that had been cut off to make way for these were added along the back of the bike, a little like a ridge of spikes along the vehicle's spine. [Character bio] |
Notes: Not a very difficult conversion, just one of my attempts to make a couple of distinctive squad leaders. The power fist was modified with the addition of some of the little spikes that come with the Warrior sprue, turning it into an agoniser gauntlet like the one in the artwork on the cover of Codex Dark Eldar. The skull on the Sybarite's chest was actually left over from my conversion of Stephanie Warfield, my marine commander - it was removed from her chestplate to provide a flat surface to paint on. To make her stand out from all the Warriors I gave Satyra a helmet plume, which I haven't otherwise used on the Warriors. Also, as she would be leading my Warrior/Guardian hybrid assault squad, I added the more elaborate vane from the Guardian sprue to her back - all the squad members have the simpler vane on the left side of their back, so it adds some uniformity. [Character bio] |
Notes: Another make-an-interesting-Sybarite conversion, with only the addition of a Succubus' agoniser whip, and the hilt of the Warrior sprue's dagger to make the bottom of the whip's handle. So far I've used three Succubi in my Wyches apart from the unconverted one, so I have plenty of spare whips (an inviting prospect - a Dark Eldar can never have too many whips). [Character bio] |