Saturday 30 September 2017

Bigger and badder than ever before

The new Death Guard are a bit bigger and bulkier than a standard Space Marine miniature. I imagine the scale of these genetically-enhanced giants has crept up in order to have them more consistent in size with the recently released Primaris Marines.

It makes sense for Games Workshop to have bulked them up a little, as they don't have any interchangeable parts with the old range, so there are very few compatibility issues. Apart from the obvious visual one, that is.

But the new miniatures are only a tiny bit bigger. Just enough to not look ridiculously out-of-place when standing next to an old marine.


I've got quite a few old marines, sitting on their sprues, waiting for the moment when I get all excited at the prospect of putting together an entire power-armoured army. But in that lies the rub. I'm not very keen on the idea of building hundreds of under-sized warriors, and yet neither do I like the idea of disposing of them. And complicated conversions are just out of the question for that number of troops, so what I really need is a nice, simple answer.

At the end of my last post, I had decided I wanted to build two more Plague Marines, based on regular marines, but using up some of the off-cuts from my trimming of the Dark Imperium Death Guard. I decided I could use this opportunity as an experiment to see if there was a quick way of giving some of my old marine models a little extra height.


My solution was to add a couple of spacers to their lower legs, and another to their abdomen. I did this by making as straight a cut as I could (working at a fairly hasty speed) and glueing small squares of plasticard into the join.


Once the spacers had set, they were trimmed roughly into place with a knife, then filed down until the fit was pretty good. If you ignore the drying time it was only a few extra minutes of work per model.


The results are not perfect, especially when doing it at speed, but I think the most inaccurate areas could be fairly easily covered by dirt or battle damage.

Once I'd established this basic technique, I then moved on to the fun bit: converting my two upscaled troopers into extra members of my Death Guard squad.


The resultant characters are noticeably larger than a regular Joe...


... yet seem to blend nicely with one of the new Death Guard...


... and don't even look too minuscule next to a Primaris.


Now all I need to do is repeat the process about 100 times, and I'll have a fully upscaled Space Marine company.

ADDICTION CHALLENGE
REMAINING: 92


1 comment:

  1. This is an excellent idea: simple and with a great result!!! Now you do not hide behind those great tricks, we all need a smaller number of addiction challenge, I really would like to see them painted!(I'm joking of course, however those converted miniatures painted by you should be amazing).

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