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 January 13 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 January 15 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. 

[Dr_Ruminahui]

Thanks, @kabaakaba and @Brother Christopher.  And Brother Christopher, I'm always glad at the appreciation you show for my knights - and nothing I've done is "large" next to some of your epic builds like your thunderhawk.

 

So, the kitbashing continues but is mostly about magnetization.  So... many... magnets.  But that's getting ahead of ourselves.

 

In continuation of building the legs, I glued on the armour plates.  For the top of the leg, due to the different knee bends and the way the chaos thigh plates bend over the knee, you can't really swap plates.  On the lower leg, however, you can swap the armour but need to be aware of the different attachment methods.

 

 

So here is the imperial leg with the armour attachments in place - those Y shaped things poking out near the bottom of the hydraulics.  On the imperial plate, there are little boxes on the back of the plate that these fit into, which aren't on the chaos version.  So, you need to just place and hold the chaos plate in the position you want until the glue dries.  Note, these little Ys are fragile, so at some point may break from picking up and handling the model - if that happens, greenstuff works fine as a replacement, as the leg and plate hide it.  The chaos leg has a large flat surface the plate glues onto (with corresponding box on back of the plate) - this makes it easier to glue the imperial plate to the chaos leg than vice versa.

 

 

Here are the legs with bottom plates swapped and in place.  Note on the rightmost legs (so, the imperial ones) there is that little nub below the knee - normally this would slot into a recess on the back of the imperial plate, but with the chaos plate the top of the plate dips there (rather rising in that location like the imperial one).  This leaves the chaos plate mounted only on those Ys, which is part of why they are so fragile.  Anyway, I should probably trim off those little nubs.

 

Next up is building the torsos.

 

 

Here they are next to each other - they are virtually identical.  The biggest difference is that the imperial torso can only mount the imperial smoke stacks and vice versa.  Otherwise, the few small differences in detail aren't worth swapping pieces between (the back of the chaos one has a broken cable on the rear cannister [the imperial cable is intact] and one of the chaos side cannisters is lacking a cap [the imperial one doesn't]), so the only parts I considered swapping on the core torso build were the on the front - I'll get there momentarily.

 

The other difference between the two isn't a visible one, but is important as can limit swapping - the imperial version has both one more peg for where the carapace attaches and the pegs are larger so that they don't fit into the recesses on the bottom of the chaos carapace.  So, if you want to mount the chaos carapace on the imperial torso as I did, you need to trim off those 6 top pegs, after which it will fit fine.  The chaos pegs fit fine into the slots on the imperial carapace, so no removal needed there.

 

 

For the front of the torso, you'll note that the imperial (left) and chaos (right) front plates have different mounting systems - this means that for whatever front plate you use, you also need to use the matching assembly for mounting the head.  Fortunately, these mount freely on either chasis, so can be swapped freely.  Note, the imperial front plate has two recesses on the bottom of the plate as well, which slot onto two nubs on the imperial chasis - these can be ignored if you swap fronts, as these additional mounted points are neither needed nor get in the way of a swap.  For my build, however, I didn't swap them but I dry fit them a bunch to ensure that it did work, as it took me a while to decide which torso front I wanted with which carapace.

 

Another thing I did at this point was magnetize and build the upper arm assemblies - this is easy, you just saw the lug on the bottom off flat and replace it with the magnet of your choice...

 

 

... at least for the imperial version.  For the chaos version, cutting off the lug leaves a hole in the middle, which needs to be covered with a thin piece of plasticard.  You'll see that in the next picture.

 

Next I glued on the carapace, putting the imperial one on the chaos torso (to use the chaos exhausts) and vice versa.  THIS WAS A MISTAKE - DO NOT glue on the carapace until after you glue the head in place - I had to partially pry it up to have the room to fit the "hood" in place between the head mount and the carapace.  As well, it would have been much easier to put in the struts for the magnetized top hatches BEFORE I glued the carapace in place.  I also glued on the shoulder plates - THIS WAS ALSO A MISTAKE, as it made it a real pain to magnetize the armpit mounts. 

 

The reason for these errors is that, given that the carapace is probably the most important step for the overall knight look, and every other decision hinges on that choice, not gluing it in place was serving as a bottleneck for other decisions.  So, rather than doing the less fun fiddley work first, I jumped the gun to my regret (note, at least this only made things harder, not impossible, which was nice).

 

 

Anyway, here's a picture of the armpit mounts magnetized, the chaos upper arms magnetized and in place, and the shoulders and carapace in place.  Note, I got a couple of the armpit mount magnets crooked, so I had to cut the join apart on one to remount it, and still have to do the same for the other.

 

One positive thing did come out of prematurely gluing on the carapace - it meant I built this head:

 

 

This probably wouldn't have come about it I had done it properly.  I first built the torso without the hood (without realizing it was missing) and attached with horns to the head when there was no hood.  When I realized my mistake and found the horns no longer fit with the hood in place, I decided to keep the look so trimmed the hood to make it work.  Without the mistake, I probably just would have concluded the horns didn't fit and left it at that.

 

 

Here they are alongside each other - the right one shows the original shape of the hood (more or less, the chaos and imperial hoods aren't exactly the same shape), while the left has been cut down to fit the horns.  The left hood does look kind of like a bowl haircut now, but hopefully that will be diminished when painted.  I could also cut the hood back a little (so its more rounded), but need to decide whether that's worth the risk and effort.

 

I also built and magnetized the chaos weapons (except the drill and laser destructor, as I need to greenstuff another bottom arm bit so I can build both), but other than swapping the front blade from the chaos chainsword to an imperial one I had already painted, those are all stock and don't really warrant photos.

 

 

Anyway, here is a picture of the swap - I did it to give variety between my various chainswords - now none of my 4 are identical.  I put it on an already painted imperial sword as I don't think I need any more of those at the moment and intend to keep the one that came with these kits in my bitzs box for some hypothetical future project.

 

Other than that, it was mostly magnetization.

 

 

For the armpit mount stuff, this involved chopping the mounting end off just below the grove, then drilling out the end and inserting the magnet (I used round 3mm by 2mm magnets).  Always, always double check all magnets to make sure they are mounted the right way before glueing.  As well, except for the stubber/melta mounts, if you screw up the magnetization, you can just cut the topmost chunk off and glue the magnet in place - that's what happened with one of the shield mounts, which you can see in this picture.

 

 

And here is most of the magnetization that I did - missing are the two mounting plates for the armpit shields (seen here).

 

I also did a bunch of work on the tail attachment, but that's more involved, so I'll save that for a later post once I've competed that.

Edited Thursday at 09:20 PM by Dr_Ruminahui

[Rusted Boltgun]

Such a thorough breakdown of your process, thanks for sharing. So much great work (the magnetising and the writing up!).