For the love of conversion ...

I was originally a Warhammer 40,000 player in the 80s, but like many, sold my collection when I got older (truth be told I was more a role player than wargamer anyway).

About 7 years ago my son started to get into Warhammer, and I ended up joining in with him, as we built up our armies from scratch.  We were helped in this by picking up a few sets on eBay, and also my friend Steve needing to pass on all the pieces he'd played in the 90s and had no further use for.

I concentrated on Space Marines, with a small Ork army.  My son Cameron has focused on Imperial Guard and Tau.

Both of us have built up our own armies (and colour schemes) and developed the back-story which for us explains our army.  For myself, I have a Space Marine army which is a bit of the old and the new.  Including (heresy) the occasional thing I've bought and found it has a Chaos hatch.  Rather than feel limited by this, I'm forever trying to develop the history of the Storm Wolves to make this fit in with where they've been.

I play them as a standard Ultramarine army codex "vanilla Space Marines", but someone has suggested I could (with their back story) easily play them as Dark Angels ... we shall see.

What we are forever trying to do though is create armies with a unique look.  And play around with other model kits.  I love bits boxes to just rummage through and go "eureka!".  We're also trying to do our armies on a budget (Games Workshop is never cheap but here in New Zealand, it's crippling), so we buy a lot of stuff second hand and improvise - oh the people who when a new tank/flier comes out and go "we'll take 10".

So here is a walk through of some of our fun conversions ...

Imperial Guard Tank

This was a 1:35 M41 Walker Buldog tank that we then went to town on, adding Imperial Guard weaponry (a cannon, las cannon and various flamers and rocket launchers).  The result is simply amazing, and looks to be honest like a superb hybrid between a Leman Russ and a Baneblade.

My son will sometimes play this at home as an extra Leman Russ.  I love the way he adds graffiti to his tanks, naming them.

Predator Tank - The Shermanator

This one was a lot of fun to put together.  It's the unholy cross between a 1:48 Sherman tank, armed with a spare twin-linked lascannon from a Razorback kit (I used the heavy bolter instead).

The Ravaged Land Raider

This was a Land Raider I managed to pick up cheap, but ... the left lascannon was damaged.  I was thinking of replacing it, but had an idea to make it look battle damaged.

This has be a bit concerned - some purist players, esp under "what you see is what you get" can be a bit unpleasant over this.  Hence my Land Raider appearing to have a damaged left lascannon they might say "well that lascannon has to be gone".  I try as much as possible NOT to play with such people if I can avoid it (it's supposed to be fun).

My son has some fabulous figures done (he just needs to paint) showing instead of "parade condition" troops and tanks, tanks you can see are "in the middle of fighting a battle".

Hence I've added a couple of genestealers to the side, doing their best to damage the tank even further.  Again, purists might point out a genestealer can't damage a Land Raiders, but yeah, it looks good ...

Master of the Forge and his Servitors

Unfortunately I bought this Master of the Forge from a Games Workshop, and they didn't make it clear he's a Chaos (Iron Warriors) chapter.  Ooops.  But I really love him, so have tried to downplay the Chaos nature of him.

I've also last weekend found some spare old Space Marine scout parts.  I have a load of scouts already so thought it might be nice to try out something a bit different for them.  I thought it would be nice to give my Master of the Forge some Servitors.

I found genestealer claws together with a platemail arm from some old Warhammer kit made a half decent robot arm.  I then used a craft knife to shape the scout's head, cutting out a quarter of it, which I substituted Borg-style with part of an old plastic Necron.  The end result didn't look too bad, although it was fiddly as hell ...

Talking of scouts

I inherited from Steve about two sets of the old-school scouts with Mohawks.  They don't look too bad, but a whole set looks too much the same.  So sadly I had many of them decapitated, and used some Imperial Guard style helmets for them, which again makes them look unique.

Two of the sergeants I've made look unique.  The first sergeant is based on Daryl from the Walking Dead, so I gave him not only a power weapon, but a "kills silently" crossbow.  [No, he doesn't have special rules, he's just there to look cool]

The other sergeant is a part cyborg relic of bits and pieces - he's a survivor of multiple campaigns ...

Did someone call a doctor?

What do you do when you've a missile launcher marine without a missile launcher and a spare Sentinel close-combat weapon?

If you have a devious mind like mine, you probably think you can made up a medic who "grants feel no pain".  Seriously - the cure looks worse than the ailment!

[There's a similar version of this guy in my Ork army as a mad dok, but he needs painting]