Sunday, December 02, 2012

Converting the Helbrute With No Plan .. Part 2

So last we visited this guy, he had lost his multi-melta barrels and his power fist arm and gained a couple styrene tubes on which to mount future weapons (I guess everything in 40k counts as "future weapons" but that's not what I meant.)

I still don't have a plan. Well, I have the most basic of guidelines... "make him look different."

Okay, the gun arm needs some changing. Let's saw it off. It's almost like this model was designed for straight saw cuts. I'm really liking the alignment of everything.
This would be much more difficult without a saw.
 Next, that odd "left arm up" pose needs to change more, so let's cut the legs off.
Count the arms, the legs, the heads and then divide by 5

 Now put the legs back on, but trying now to give him a more upright posture. To accentuate this I elevated the right leg a little and cut the integral basing off the left leg. I positioned him squashing a Striking Scorpion. Someone had given me the model without a sword arm, so I cannibalized one from a Harlequin (assuring the Harly that he would get a H's kiss later) and semi-buried the sword to look as if the SS is being embedded in mud ... or something.... I didn't have much og a plan.

That said, the posture a quite a bit different. I decided to keep "crazy face" as is. That's a little too much conversion for me right now. Maybe on another one I'll just make that a big mouth with a tongue coming out. Hmmm. Maybe I'll still do that....
Next, I figured I'd give him a power scourge. S8 AP2, and it lowers the weapon skill of models in base contact. While this may be good against a small unit it falls apart against anything with more models engaged (within 2" of a model in base contact) than actually in base contact. Since you use the majority weapon skill of the engaged models, this guy won't be getting an advantage from the lower WS on any unit larger than about 5 models. Those in base contact use their actual WS to attack, so theoretically he could get hit on 5+ instead of 4+ or on 4+ instead of 3+. So why take a power scourge if it costs 10 points more and is on the whole worse than a power fist? I don't know! You act like I had a plan in all this! I just wanted it to be different.

In coming up with a mounting for the power scourge, I ended up gluing the arm that I had just cut off right back where it was originally. That's the risk when you don't have a plan I suppose. I then cut the arm at the armor point and carved down the back of it enough to fit the forearm shield over it. Cutting left a hole in the arm, which I used to connect the individual lashes of the scourge. I wanted something blade-like at the end of each, so I cut the fingers off the power fist and attached them.

The end result? I hate it. 

Seriously awful. Let's see what we can do to fix that.
First, I shortened each of the lashes by about 30%. Then I rebent them to go up instead of in front of him. I was really hoping to avoid the pose with the left arm in the air again, but oh well.
Is that better? I'm pretty sure that's better. I still need to do... something to it. Something on the end would be good. Maybe I'll thread styrene tubes on makes a more mechanical looking connection for each of the lashes. Also, I use Privateer Press palette paper but not the Privateer Press wet palette. It's pants.

So, more unplanned conversion to come! Maybe!

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