Centurions: A Minimalist Conversion

[Olgerth Istaarn]

Against my better judgment, I picked up a box of centurions as a personal challenge to make them look good. Since I don't have mad conversion or sculpting skillz, I took the path of least resistance and tried to address the most glaring issues with the centurions without completely redesigning them. I have no particular problem with their fluff - a walking heavy weapon delivery system that can walk into spaces too small for a dreadnought is just fine by me, plus - a squad's worth of weapons delivered by a single trooper? Any real-life general would sign up for that.

 

Anyway, I digress.

 

The biggest problems with the centurions as I saw them were pretty typical:

 

- The dreadnought feet with side toes would make it impossible to walk.

- The groin plates combined with the feet made it even MORE impossible to walk without tipping over.

- PowerMittens are oddly low-detail and could be improved.

- Finally, the helmet looked downright weird and I didn't like it at all.

- And of course the weapons are begging to be magnetized.

 

This is the result of the first build. Since I experimented on this guy, he is a bit rough, and I still need to greenstuff the insides of his feet. I also completely ruined the right-side cable, so... screw it, I'm probably going to build the rest of them without cables. The GravCannon and GravAmp are magnetized and pinned, and if there is interest I'll post pictures later of how it's done.

 

http://i43.tinypic.com/11t3pcn.jpg

 

What I did:

 

- Cut off the side toes.

- Cut up the groin plate and instead of using the whole thing, attached just the thigh plate part to the mini. I had to put a generous blob of greenstuff behind it to get it into a proper position, but it isn't visible.

- Added about 1 mm of green stuff to the waist joint so that the belt buckle sits just above the new groin plate, not on it.

- Swapped the helmet for the Ravenwing Techmarine Helmet - it has a meaner countenance and a big honking viewfinder. I had to add about 2mm of green stuff to the neck joint, or the head sat too low.

- Snipped off and hollowed out power mittens with a dremel. For the left fist, took a standard terminator powerfist, cut it in half, filed it and plugged it into the power mitten stump. For the right fist, took the standard terminator lightning claw, cut off the claws and smoothed over the area where the claws attached for the "brass knux" effect. I might build the next two with lightning claw hands on both sides or with cataphracti fists. In this case, asymmetry is cool and such.

- Magnetized the arms. There's actually plenty of real estate there to sink a magnet of the same size you'd use in a tactical marine's shoulder. The cable on the left side was a problem, the cable on the right side failed altogether. I just might go cable-less for the next two builds. For this one, as I said, asymmetry is cool.

 

I didn't bother magnetizing the chest weapons because I'll probably never run hurricane bolters on them and the missiles looked cooler than the IC launchers any day.

 

All in all I'm pretty happy with the result. He doesn't look awkward or square anymore and he can actually walk. At the same time he retains the bulky feel of the original model which, when corrected, isn't bad at all.

 

Next step is to magnetize his remaining weaponry and then on to the other two builds.

[The_Chaplain]

Looks good man. Much more believable in terms of "anatomy" if you will. 

 

 

I'm really beginning to believe the conspiracy theory that GW made the centurions bad on purpose so people would be tempted to buy them and convert them!  Emperor knows I've come up with a couple potential conversion ideas for them- but will I buy them to try them out? Not a chance.

[nurglespuss]

Ha! look great!

 

This is exactly what I was going to do, especially the feet, looks a much better model and not like its going to trip over itself so much!

 

Great :D

[Dedlok]

This is a brilliantly executed conversion. The whole thing has much more of a sense of mobility now. I like that you've swapped out the mittens - personally I would've gone a step further with the arms and got rid of the whole forearm, and simply attached the weapons to the elbows. With gun barrels protruding from below his wrists he doesn't look like he can punch anyway. Looking forward to see the rest of the squad.