Dr. Ruminahui's assorted conversions

[Dr_Ruminahui]

Thanks, @Valkia the Bloody and @Brother Anderson - I'm glad you like them.

 

Valkia, glad to be an inspiration.  Here are some better pictures of my own converted imperial knight, though they are older so don't include of my newly completed options. For another example of a chaosified imperial knight, you might want to check my Tyrant.

 

That said, if you are doing a larger force, I would pick up a chaos knight as well and kitbash the two kits - that's what I did for my other 2 abhorent knights - both the guy I've used above as my showcase model for the conversions, and the guy I largely use as an Abominant.   That said, if I were to do that again, I would give both the imperial shoulders to the chaos top plate and both the chaos pads to the imperial top plate, rather than one of each to both.

 

BTW, the same mix and matching between the kits works for wardogs, though requires some cutting to put the chaos collar on the imperial top plate (and vice versa).

Edited December 28, 2025 by Dr_Ruminahui

[Boc]

That's a killer way to get more Despoiler gatling cannons, I may have to copy that. Awesome

[Vairocanum]

The missile launchers look great, some fantastic plasticard work!

[W.A.Rorie]

Awesome job!

 

[The Pounder]

Outstanding @Dr_Ruminahui! Great way of maximising your bitz.

[Dr_Ruminahui]

Thanks, @Boc, @Vairocanum, @W.A.Rorie and @The Pounder - I'm glad you like them.  Some more knight kitbashing to appear in this space soon.

 

In the meantime, despite the knightly distraction, I just managed to finish painting my tormentors before the new year.  Here they are:

 

 

Pretty happy with them, and have now started on the second squad.  Particularly like the studded leather shoulder pad coverings as squad markings, as they look really nice against the obnoxiously purple armor.  The head on the champion is from one of the FW space marine sets, and I think it looks pretty well on my EC - after all, a haircut that bad can only be an EC... or a space wolf.  

 

Anyway, just started painting my second squad, so I should be able to show you how I intend to vary the Slannpat on the cloaks to differentiate squads.

[Dr_Ruminahui]

@Valkia the Bloody, you are in luck - here are my two latest additions:

 

 

My friend did indeed get me a Ruinator for Christmas (I got him a set of Frontline Gaming terrain and objective templates for he and his son to play on), so I got myself a Questoris to kitbash with it to make myself 2 knights.  This means that I only need to convert up one more galting cannon (for which I have the parts) in order to have 3 gatling despoilers - which importantly means that I don't have to convert up another missile launcher, as I now have the GW parts for that.

 

Anyway, I'll post and explain my kitbashing process here as I do it.

 

As I do that, I'll continue to post my painted conversions - I'm decided to slip in my Cypher stand in (which is almost done) before painting my second Tormentor squad.

Edited January 4 by Dr_Ruminahui

[Dr_Ruminahui]

Painted the character conversion I showed off here last spring - here he is:

 

 

This is the "meme" 3-pistol Exultant conversion I did mostly for the LOLs.  I intend to use him in a variety of roles - for now, as a twin screamer Lord K until the actual GW model becomes available for sale again, possibly as an Exultant after that, and as my Cypher stand-in in my CSM army... that's why I went with the split colour scheme, the hooded head and the sword on the back.

 

The model is more static than I might like (more Last Man Standing than Hard Boiled, for those familiar with those movies), but I'm still pretty happy with him.

Edited January 7 by Dr_Ruminahui

[space wolf]

Dude, he totally DOES look like a slaanesh cypher! Well done!

 

9 hours ago, Dr_Ruminahui said:

The model is more static than I might like (more Last Man Standing than Hard Boiled, for those familiar with those movies), but I'm still pretty happy with him.

And those are both great movies

Edited January 7 by space wolf
Spelling

[BadgersinHills]

Looking great! Excited to see how you model those knights.

 

[Dr_Ruminahui]

I've now opened up the two boxes, and gone through the instructions for the new bits - given that I plan on magnetizing all the options so I can swap between knight types (or, for the despoiler, loadouts), I needed to find out if that was feasible.  It mostly is - biggest problem is that for both the Defender and Ruinator, their unique left armed weapon shares the same arm bits with their base kits, so I can't model both left arm options (the Desecrator's laser cannon and the Ruinator's drill) without getting creative.  That said, I think it should be doable with some green stuff molding - I'll walk you through the process once I get there.

 

In terms of building, I started with the easiest bit - the legs.  Here they are built:

 

 

Basically, they are just each of the legs built as normal, but with the foot of the other variant (the imperial foot on the chaos legs and vice versa).  Basically, the "plates" at the bottom that hold the leg and actuators fit into both types of feet, so just build those bits normally then glue each plate onto the foot of your choice.  I'll be gluing the armour plates on later - swapping those is a bit more involved, as the imperial and chaos shin plates mount differently, but I'll get into that when I do that.

 

Here is the picture of each leg type and its corresponding hip joint (chaos on left, imperial on right)::

 

 

As you can see, the chaos one uses a slot connection, and the imperial one uses a hex connection, meaning each can only be mounted on its own hips.  This is important for us because it limits kit bashing - you can't mount the Abominant's tail on a model using the imperial legs, as the tail has its butt portion which attaches to the front portion to form the long chaos leg slot.  Which is why on my previous knight Abominant I gave it a swappable butt, so that I could at least field my chaos legged model with and without tail.

 

Not wanting to be subject to such limitations with my new model, I wanted to make it mountable on either the imperial or chaos hips/legs.

 

 

First step (after assembly) was cutting off the peg which would plug into the dedicated chaos rear hip its meant to be glued onto.

 

 

Next step was the assemble the top portion, where it wraps around the hips, holding it against the hips as it dried to ensure it maintained its fit.

 

 

Here is how it looks against the hips - normally, it would be flush against the leg, so there wouldn't be that gap where there is the round "cut out" into the "bubble" on the hip.  I'll have to build that back with plasticard and greenstuff, but when I'm done a magnet mounted on each side should be be able to keep it place.  Those are projects for future me, though.

 

Otherwise, all I've done is build the abominant's volkite / ruinator's flamer.  Here are the bits:

 

 

As you can see, the barrels are magnetized at the gun shield (as they share the shield) and the gas cannister friction fits onto the side - its quite tight even without having been painted, so I see no need to magnetize it in the near future (and it should be fairly easy to do if such does become necessary).

 

 

One part I did have to leave off is the cannister above (the paint brush is pointing at it) as it is not friction fit  and there is no easy way to magnetize it while retaining the details underneath.  That said, on the inside of the gun I doubt anyone will notice.

 

One final bit of light kitbashing - I decided to leave the toothed armour plates off the front of the abominant's volkite and instead added some spikes from the CSM vehicle accessory sprue.

 

Edited Tuesday at 05:00 AM by Dr_Ruminahui

[Firedrake Cordova]

Nice work! It seems like a much better option than the tried-and-true approach of buying one kit for each option and then running out of storage space  

 

I like the addition of the spiky bits to the volkite barrel - I think I prefer that to the official teeth part

[Dr_Ruminahui]

Thanks, @Firedrake Cordova - for me, its not so much the buying that's the issue, but the painting,  If I can magnetize the kits so that I can field a bunch of different options with the same model, I save painting time and help myself from options getting better and worse across editions.  To me, that's especially worth it for larger models like knights, and even more so when its a lesser played army that I only play a few times per edition.

 

Myself, I don't mind the original toothed front shield look on the volkite, as untoothed it looks a bit too 30K for my personal tastes.  Rather, I did it so that my two volkites wouldn't look identical.  That said, the non-shielded version has the advantage of visually slimming a large and long gun, which is an added benefit... the original configuration does look a bit too front heavy and even without the front shields its massive compared to the other chaos knight gun options.

 

The skull on the added spiked ring is rather large and cartoonish compared to the one on the gun shield, but hopefully that won't be as obvious from other angles and/or when painted.

Edited Thursday at 05:05 PM by Dr_Ruminahui

[kabaakaba]

Great conversions. Also don't bother about big skull, it's exact ogryn sized skull.

[Brother Christopher]

I've always been a fan of your knights. I'm looking forward to seeing more. At this time in my life, I feel like following your progress with these larger projects as a proxy for me pursuing similar things - something I can't get around to doing.