Etako Ironfist

Well, well, well, what do we have here... some sort of LotR and 40k crossover?

Here's my squad leader for my first pack. He's a wolf guard named Etako. He has one eye and a powerfist. The similarities kinda end there. No axe, instead a combi-melta. Small difference there.

I have a few power armoured wolf guards that I'll use for pack leaders. I had the choice of termie or power armour for them. I do have some in terminator armour, but I like the idea that I can fit Etako and 9 other marines in the squad into a drop-pod or other transport. Also it means that the squad can follow up attacks, I can't remember what that rule is called, where terminators are too slow to do so.

Anyway, without further ado...

No helmet as I needed to show that he had one eye! Also helps keep the "special characters" a little more distinct as all of my normal marines (except for the banner bearer) have helmets.

You can see the left shoulder has the same symbol on it as he's still part of Skodi's army and that's his symbol. I also did the rims of the shoulderpads in bronze instead of the usual silvery/grey.

You can also see that he's on a raised rocky bit to give him a bit of extra height. That and the back banner thing easily differentiate him as different from the other troops.

 The Wolf Guard pack marking that he belongs to is partly covered here, but you can see enough of it. It's yellow with three black triangles, it ends up sort of making an "M" shape. Also here you can see a parchment I added to him. It contains the three rules that everyone he leads must follow. Not sure what the three rules are yet. Something along the lines of "if you're dead, the wounds had better be to your front" "the only good xeno is a dead xeno" "save the big one for me" etc.

And here's his squad. You can see I've put some lava on his base to help match the general lava wolf theme. Oh, and on his knee-pad I've put the pack markings that are on the shoulders of the other guys.

How did I get time to paint him? The lad had a 2 and a bit hour nap the other day when my wife was looking after him so I got a fair bit done then. Since then a few 15-20 minute sessions did each other bit.

Tempted to do a terminator next when I should be working on finishing the other squad members...

Another combi-melta conversion and a scout group.

Well, I had my scout group sitting there and couldn't resist putting it together in the end!


For this group I wanted:


Wolf Guard Pack Leader with combi-melta and Thunder Hammer.


Melta, Mark of the Wulfen, Power Weapon and Plasma Pistol. A fully tooled up and ready to cause havok group. Also I loved the idea of them being really individuals that happen to be working together at this moment rather than a completely uniform group.


So I needed another combi-melta and decided to make it in a different way to the last one.


Here you can see where I cut this time. For this combi-melta conversion I was going to use a storm bolter and a melta gun. I cut the barrel off, the tubing underneath and with my fairly dull hobby knife I slowly pushed and sawed through the side bit as shown in red below.

Then it was a simple matter of filing and cutting down one side of a storm bolter and then adding on the metal bits from the melta.

And here's a top view. I also glued another boltgun tip to the exising storm bolter tip to extend the barrel a little. I think they look cooler that way =)

And here they are with the Wolf Guard. To help him be a scout guard I used a scout torso on him. This didn't perfectly fit with the rest of the power armour, so I had to add a few other bits to hide the join. The front banner will have something freehanded on it when it's painted. 

And the big back shield indicates that he has had other jobs in the past...

So here are my motley group of scouts. They aren't very "wolfed up" and I'm not sure if I'll accessorise them or not yet (let alone use them in a game). I didn't enjoy putting them together as much, the torsos just didn't really easily fit, nor did the arms. I think the newer kits are much more clever.

Here's melta-boy (with metal under his base to balance the heavy gun), wolfen dude (with power armour torso for the wolf fur on his back and wolf helmet) and the wolf guard you've already seen.

And here we have power sword (hard to tell from this angle, but it's the big sword from the space wolf kit), plasma pistol guy (just cut the plasma pistol from a space wolf and swapped it with the default bolt pistol) and the one I like to call Norm the normal scout (but with a space wolf scout head).

Next time I'll show you the full army pic =)

Conversions - Chainfist conversion, combi-melta, combi-plasma.

As promised, here are my super easy conversions.


Firstly, making a right handed chainfist.


I wanted a chainfist and storm shield guy, as you saw on the previous page, but the storm shields and chainfists provided are both left handed!


So with options for converting either to a right hand, I wanted the pose you saw, so went for a right handed chainfist.


It was so super easy.


You just get the chainsword you want from the Space Wolf sprue - I chose one with a wolf head because it was easy to cut along the marine's hand in a neat, straight line and had maximum length of gluing potential.

Choose any chainsword, doesn't have to be right handed for the right handed chainfist.

Then choose the Wolf Claw you want from the Space Wolf Terminator sprue. Now carefully chop off the claws. The one I chose (not pictured) had a nice straight line of claws, all the better for gluing on the sword part.

Choose a right handed wolf claw for the right handed chainfist, the less curvature the better.

And voila, a chainfist. Super, mega easy with a total minimum of fuss.
Here it is from the inside.

And from the outside.

Next up the combimelta or combi-melta or combi melta, not sure if it's hyphenated or what. Anyway, I got the pack of metal melta guns from GW so that I'd have a nice supply of them. Not having played 40k or having a previous army I don't have bitz like some people do! It was cheaper to get 5 from GW than buying individual bitz from ebay or bitz websites - some of them are stupidly expensive.


Anyway, firstly I clipped off the melta barrel from the front of the gun (red). Then I used my clippers and some filing to cut away the part shown in green. This was tricky and I didn't do a very good job, the clippers warped the metal a bit, but hopefully a bit of paint etc. will stop that from being way too noticeable. I'd recommend cutting and filing instead, though it might take some time.

Next I glued the barrel back on, but down where I'd cut that section away (green). Then I added bolter bits from a bolt gun (red). I put the ammo feed bit underneath, the muzzle tip above the melta bit and the clip ejector bit on top.


Voila, combi-melta. Oh, you can also see the washers I glued underneath the mini to help with weight imbalances caused by the metal gun. Some people have found it difficult to get an arm that can hold the gun appropriately and cut off the stock/brace bit at the back. I just used one of the arms that is normally reserved for holding one of the big axes/hammers instead of an arm for a bolt gun. 

For the combi-plasma I used a storm bolter. It already has two sides, so was easy to adapt. On the bolter side of the weapon I just added an extra muzzle tip bit to make it a bit longer to match the plasma side.

Then I just got a plasma pistol, cut off the part shown in green and used some careful cutting and filing to remove roughly half of the storm bolter. Once it was shaped to fit I just glued the plasma pistol part into place. It was a bit messy so I added a wolf skull (red) as decoration to hide the rough part of it.

So there you go. Pretty easy, pretty cheap conversions, no drills, saws or anything fancy like that!