***REDACTED***

[Doghouse]

So I've been bashing my head against a wall trying to put together a Primaris army and not getting far because it's not going how I wanted so decided to return in my main love of making Space Marines...truescaling and to flex my mental lore gymnastic muscles.

 

I have a huge number of ideas floating around these guys and initially just want to make a Crusade force of just a Captain and two squads of Astartes for fun. So far I have ten so very nearly completed except for a few bits of cleaning up here and there and sculpting over the arms to make the armour completed.

 

 

I also have seven Mk III guys but I would really like to make these as Iron Warriors. 

 

 

I was also briefly considering making a true scale Primaris but optically GW already beat me too it with Lieutenant Amulius. While he is stood more upright than the slightly more squatting Intercessors he is actually taller by nearly a head if you were to straighten them out. Removing the base and leaving the soles of the boots a little thick helps the illusion as well.

 

 

So what is the plan? I am not sure to be perfectly honest but I do have a rough roadmap detailed below that I may or may not use. Either way I have enough parts to assemble a full company of Mk IV, MkVI, MkVII or Mk VIII marines including all the main classes which could be fun. Right now I am focusing on the first thirty in Mk IV of which ten are nearly complete and another ten are fully under way.

 

 

Novus Astartes.

 

I like this idea quite a bit that I have been mulling over. During the Heresy I can imagine a lot of Q or X Branch organisations working on game changing projects and I have this fun little idea of a tech savant working on advanced Firstborn marines. I see this experimentation akin to the likes of Corax working on his clones or the tweaks of existing things that lead to the creation of the Vindicator and Sabre tanks.

 

The concept is based on a Perpetual I've created by the name of Isla Antaeus who worked alongside the likes of Amar Astartes on the creation of the first marines. The idea is that Isla is forgettable in the extreme, while people are aware of her presence in her absence over time they completely forget she existed. Imagine recounting talking to someone at a party to a friend, you can recall vaguely talking to someone but not the conversation or who they were or what they looked like. After a short time the memory fades completely and your brain fills in the gap with something or someone else so if you attempted to recount the story again the details would be vague and incorrect at best.

The idea is she has existed for millennia like some of the other Perpetuals so despite her youthful appearance she is incredibly old but cursed by her gift.

 

Now my idea is that she has created a harness that she wears at all times that allows her to focus this ability and control it to the extent of appearing to be normal. She has found she can also manipulate this field generated to edit reality ever so slightly which allows her to pass through history forgotten and unseen. Potentially she has incorporated some Blackstone into it's design that allows slight dimensional manipulation.

 

Having since attained a respectable rank as a senior Gene-Adept in the new empire many are calling the Imperium she has been approached to create a new type of Astartes. While this is not in any way shape or form anything like the Primaris project it is a covert attempt to create Astartes who's loyalty are absolute about three years into the Heresy. Using Initiates from the [REDACTED] Legion utilising advanced cybernetics, mind scrubbing and hypno-therapy she creates a small force of Astartes that fight silently in the background of the Heresy.

 

So in all likelihood you'd have the likes of Alpharius with a hand in this as well and rather than the Novus Astartes have personalities like the regular Astartes of the Great Crusade they'd be more akin to drones where their humanity is totally stripped away and their loyalty is absolute.

The idea would be that these would not be part of the later Primaris Project but instead a limited amount of the data collected would be used by Cawl during his research. 

 

In game terms it'd be Primaris marines rules for models made to look like Firstborn with Isla and her colleagues being represented by the Inquisitor rules. I may use the Raven Guard rules to best represent them, I especially like the idea that the over 18" counts in cover representing Isla's influence over her creations and the enemy not quite being able to focus on their targets.

 

One thing I may do is have her believe Cawl cannot be trusted and present day she continues her work in secret using her Novus Astartes project to amass an army capable of resisting them should things go awry. Her logic being it was the human failings of the original Astartes that lead to the Heresy and she has come to realise Amar Astartes might have been right all along.

 

I quite like the idea of her surname vaguely being something that someone may or may not have misremembered during the 21st Founding regarding a certain Chapter.

[Slave to Darkness]

*Sees the word Primaris and wants to ignore, sees your name and clicks follow button* 

 

I am a man of simple pleasures and Doghouse conversions have been a pleasure of mine since your original truescale stuff back in the Great Crusade forum days. :wub:

[Doghouse]

Slaves to Darkness: Thanks mate, I think we're cut from the same cloth in many respects.

 

This is a having my cake and eat it project!

 

So a quick few pictures (I'll probably make a tutorial video at some point on youtube for those interested) is roughly how I start to make these guys. It's a bit GS heavy but to be perfectly honest if you take your time you can get around it with mostly filler technics and I can probably simplify it at some point. Right now I am on a roll.

 

So as you can see here is that I've taken the torso from an Assault marine to make a faux Mk IV torso chest piece. I've removed the belt buckle part (technically part of the rebreather if you are old school) and created a flat open area on the abdomen so as to maintain the height but lose the detailing.

 

 

I've also used a dremel to shave down the sides of the front greaves (lower legs) so they are flush with the existing back part of the lower legs shaving off the bobbles parts on the ankles. You could do the same with a knife to be honest, a dremel just speeds it up.

 

 

I'll post some more bits as I go and hope this to be my first attempt at Airbrushing now I've got a compressor and stuff. Although as a bit of a luddite this may be like asking a chimpanzee to build you a new PC but I'm sure I can work it out.

 

[Doghouse]

I've started painting Isla for a bit of a break and am currently just blocking out the colours before I go into all the proper painting. I've used the body of the Psyker from Blackstone Fortress, the head from one of the AoS Stormcast characters, the left open hand from one of the soldiers in the Rogue Trader Kill Team set.

The pose is mostly down to her suddenly whipping the plasma pistol up catching her coat as she does so quickdraw style. She makes a nice scale piece for the Novus marines and I'm hoping to make a little retinue of similar scaled models once finished.

I'm going with a brown theme for her clothing which will hopefully take on a uniform feel as I extend the same colours to the rest of her retinue.

 

 

As an old school RT vet this Zoat is going to be included as an advisor/guide. It's not clear what it is that it is after but it is willing to aid Isla in her mission.

 

 

[jaxom]

 

This is a having my cake and eat it project!

The best type of project!

 

Always good the hear/see when folks have their creativity going.

[Shovellovin]

 

So a quick few pictures (I'll probably make a tutorial video at some point on youtube for those interested) is roughly how I start to make these guys. It's a bit GS heavy but to be perfectly honest if you take your time you can get around it with mostly filler technics and I can probably simplify it at some point. Right now I am on a roll.

 

So as you can see here is that I've taken the torso from an Assault marine to make a faux Mk IV torso chest piece. I've removed the belt buckle part (technically part of the rebreather if you are old school) and created a flat open area on the abdomen so as to maintain the height but lose the detailing.

I would be very interested in a full tutorial. I really like the look of these latest marines. 

 

are you using just the front portion of the assault marines torso? If so, why? Is the rear Primaris torso needed to make the fit better?

[Doghouse]

jaxom: Completely agree 

 

Shovellovin: It's basically a really quick way to modify the Primaris marines as the back half of the torso is already attached to the legs. You could cut the back off and put a complete Assault marine torso on primaris legs if you wanted but it will look a lot smaller and a bit stumpy. 

 

The other way I was originally doing the Mk II guys was to glue the Primaris marine together with both sides of torso as normal then shave the chest down and stick a regular MK II chest over it like this and these other conversions:

 

 

So it's just an evolution that saves a bit of work where you are adapting the Primaris torso rather than totally replacing the torso. The Assault marine torso is excellent because it's wide enough to fit a Primaris with very little work and resembles either the Mk IV or Mk V.

 

Another good project log to check out for inspiration is Apologists RT era Blood Angels project as he does some great conversions for Mk VI  as you can see here:  http://www.bolterandchainsword.com/topic/367715-rogue-trader-futura-blood-angels/?do=findComment&comment=5632373

 

Midnightmare also has some great examples for his Flesh Eaters: http://www.bolterandchainsword.com/topic/245078-flesh-eaters/page-29

 

I'll stick together a tutorial video as soon as I get the chance in the meantime. :)

[deathspectersgt7]

Damn it Doghouse !!! Your posts are always inspiration. Wish we were in the same country. Have a bunch of bits ordered and have to get more Primaris and a new camera.

[Doghouse]

deathspectresgt7: Thanks mate, it's always nice to see you pop up on one of my threads. Yeah it's a shame, one of these days I'll have to make you a marine for your collection mate which might be the next best thing. 

[Slave to Darkness]

Seeing you convert Primaris into oldschool armour reminds me of the good old days before FW started the Heresy minis, when all we had was Mk6-7 to work with and the occasional bit from other sprues and we created amazing things. This thread is bringing back good vibes. 

[Doghouse]

Yeah good times mate.

 

Poring through the early Heresy novels for the tiniest snippet of information trying to work out what would be historically accurate and people frowning on the use of Mk VII parts or bringing up the use of Razorbacks. It was like archaeological wargaming with bolters, think we must have been the first Remembrancers! :D

 

Some of my favourite hobby memories mate. :tu:

[Razblood]

They are some nice firstborn, good to see you're still pushing the putty :tu:

[Ryltar Thamior]

I am a simple man. I see a Doghouse log, I see it's doing Truescaling, I follow it.

As it happens, I wound up with a not entirely dissimilar background ... sort-of ... going for the Adamanticores - albeit running off the geneseed manipulations of the Cursed Founding rather than the various experimentations of the Heresy-era. Which was rather amusing because this was about a year or two before Primaris marines were announced/released ... which certainly made the whole thing easier. 

[Doghouse]

Razblood: Thanks mate, nice to see you again.

 

Ryltar Thamior: Thanks I think that is the beauty of 40k, you can have all this mega apocalyptic fate defining greek demi-god hero level stuff going on meanwhile in the background you have mad scientists working in secret labs or mysterious figures trying to sway the course of events. As it was suggested with the 21st Founding like you've said it's implied they were working on something which is perfect for people like us and shows Cawl isn't the only one to play around with the Geneseed. He was just the first to take it to the next level so that leaves plenty of room for people like us to come up with our own little sandpits to experiment in.

 

The way I like to look at it is while my guys are augmented Firstborn they're not forerunners to the Primaris. At very best perhaps the tiniest data scrap of research was absorbed by Cawl for use in his project but that stuff was all on him. My Novus Astartes are born out of desperation in very much the same way you see in some WW1 documentaries where both sides are trying all sorts of mad tech to defeat no mans land and get to the enemy trenches.

 

So my guys can just about go toe to toe with a Primaris but it's their lack of humanity that is the card up their sleeve. Kind of like in Universal Soldier or the Kurt Russell film Soldier. They're nothing like the Astartes of the Black Library novels which is what sets mine apart. They're just cold brutal and unfeeling weapons, because Isla is convinced the humanity of the Astartes is what lead them to temptation and Horus' downfall.

 

Speaking of mad tech...

 

So this is where rules and concept tend to blur a bit. As I technically want this as a Repulsor stand in for gaming I have to include certain aspects to make it identifiable as such. So what this is going to be is a MKII-2X Landraider, again something seperate rather than claim this is the Repulsor prototype. The idea is that it is a failed prototype for a Landraider capable of traversing the Webway much in the same way as we can see grav rhinos in the heresy artwork books and even has an early prototype of an MKIII godhammer pattern lascannon sponsor that has been modified to accept and aircraft gatling cannon.

In short this tank is a failure that was catalogued and placed into storage quite around mid Great Crusade era and where it has sat covered by a dust sheet and probably covered in old boxes. It is thought that it was an attempt to create a variant that could act as a mid tier gunship while also being able to transport a squad into battle but it's machine spirit would prove to be too temperamental and almost moody at times. Being that Isla was probably not well funded, other than having access to gene-banks and a number of prototype Mk IV suits of battle plate as a starting point she had to scrounge what she could because of supply issues caused by the war.

 

So what I have started to do here is shave down a Land Raider and use parts from a spare Repulsor I got cheap to create a hover Land Raider which unlike the Repulsor uses artificial grav plates rather than crushing gravity waves to push itself up.

I've attached the tracks and shaved them down to be flush with the hull using my trusty dremel and will start to carve the shape and sand with carbon paper. At the moment I have a Razorback turret on the front for the las-talon stand ins, a dreadnought Heavy onslaught cannon on the side and a regular one sat on the turret. I'm going to put a back door on the hull and add a side hatch on the opposite side.

 

 

Playing around with these kits made me laugh because although I know the vehicles are not to scale the Land Raider is about 1cm wider and 2cm longer which with the addition of the second wound kind of makes the no Primaris in them rule feel a bit daft.

 

 

Then we have some more progress made on the first squad of ten and their Captain/Prime. I'm in the process of cleaning them up, adding GS to the forearms to make them more Mk IV looking and then clean up the neck and collar areas. I've used Reiver carbine arms for these because they are perfect stand in MK VII arms. So far coming along nicely. 

 

 

I might try and incorporate the alien device from the Astartes animation that I started a while ago in some form as I really like the idea of desperation forcing Isla to work with Xenos tech or agents and how it could later become the one that the Retributors Chapter already have in their possession.

 

 

I will be adding a Dreadnought as I have a few ideas, maybe a truescale Contemptor I'm planning but still not certain there and I have a very interesting idea regarding the company Lieutenant.

 

[Doghouse]

Couple of bits that aren't really project related but are kind of fun that I've been playing around with at the same time as making these guys.

 

First off is what will be truescale Thousand Sons, maybe for kill team if nothing else. I've got this idea for a rag tag chaos truescale warband with the Mk II guys I'm making and figured this would be a great chance to make some Rubric marines. I've not really started to sculpt the details on just yet so the legs are very plain but the kits are really nice to play with. The one on the right is a regular unmodified one for scale.

 

 

Then another random conversion, I'm not really a huge fan of the robes used on the Primaris Librarian so decided to go old school Codicier for a Primaris Psyker using the Blood Angel Lieutenant legs and body with the bits from the Primaris Librarian.

 

 

[deathspectersgt7]

Great stuff Brother . Would love to get a model from you. But would have to do him as a Soul Drinker.

[Doghouse]

Thanks mate. :)

 

So Primaris, maybe a Captain or someone a bit more ornate if a regular Intercessor? Looks like they just got rebooted as Loyalist Primaris in the novel Traitor By Deed. I'm sure I can sort something out for you mate. ;)

[deathspectersgt7]

A Captain would Rock.

[Dosjetka]

I really like that Librarian kitbash/conversion, Doghouse. The original one is indeed a tad too robe-heavy so this one works perfectly. Great stuff.

[Doghouse]

deathspectresgt7: Ok mate I'll see what I can come with. ;)

 

Dosjetka: Thanks mate, this was a what if spur of the moment conversion. I like the old school Librarians and had the bits laying around so thought I'd see if it works.

[Dosjetka]

It definitely works. :tu: Looking forward to seeing more over the next few days/weeks. 

[deathspectersgt7]

I will send you some of my extra Chapter emblems to you.

[deathspectersgt7]

Silver skulls , and such all printed.

[Doghouse]

I'm gathering parts for him at the moment mate so will get started soon and we can discuss it all later. I have a rough idea already brewing in my head.

 

So not really in the mood for truescaling as I'm sourcing parts and having got an airbrush I'm spending most of my time researching on youtube for vids and stuff before I start using it. So in the meantime flipped back to one of my older projects just for a bit of a brain dead assemble while watching youtube exercise. 

Just lately I feel like my painting sucks, I've gone off on some weird path and need to refine and refresh my techniques because I am really not enjoying it. I've got about 60 marines based coated from two DIY chapters and looking at them I'm just meh.

 

This chap is one of the WIP Captains, not sure what to call the Chapter yet or whether I'll continue painting them but I'll see how I feel once I've had a play with the airbrush.

 

 

This was another failed attempt to get my mojo back by making an army using the cheap Assault Intercessors. I quite like the pose which I think may look really nice for Black Templars but just not feeling it. I may return to them both later, who knows.

 

 

 

Originally making a Gravis only force a while back I was using purely Eradicators using the Vanguard Detachment as seen here:

 

 

Now with the release of the Heavy Intercessors I am a Techmarine short of a Battalion. I'll probably convert the Iron Hands character for that. 

 

 

I managed to snag a couple of Heavy Intercessor single models pretty cheap on ebay and have used parts from the Heavy Bolt Rifle Captain and the Apothecary to create the first two characters. I have also got about four easy to build Redemptors in my bits box so may add a couple of those as I really like dreadnoughts.

 

 

I may do them as Skull Bearers like this guy I did a while back as I quite enjoyed painting those and the only reason I stopped those was because they stopped selling the Averland Sunset spray which killed my interest.

 

 

For now like I say I'm watching lots of airbrushing tutorials and would love to have a bash at some Alpha Legion at some point.

 

 

 

[deathspectersgt7]

Take your time mate. Hear you on the painting . have not painted anything in two years. Loved Averland Sunset. Can't wait to see your gunline put together. Having a hard time getting the blade guard box . Have bits for them but no models .