Buckle up, because you’re in for a whistle-stop tour of my fractured mind. Expect sprue goo, baking soda, and more Green Stuff cables than you can shake a mechadendrite at as your favourite kit is butchered in the name of the Omnissiah.

Yep, you guessed it, I’m back on my Dark Mechanicus grind. After a brief dalliance with my AU Slaanesh-worshipping Iron Hands, I’ve ripped up my previous Cawl conversion because it was too boring and forged him anew. He’s got a fancy chassis that reminds me of a mechanical isopod, the body of a rat-daemon (not to be confused with The Odyssey star Matt Damon), and an unfortunate gap right where his bumhole should be.

If Games Workshop won’t make any official Dark Mechanicus miniatures for Warhammer 40k, then I sure as heck will do my best to create something their designers would be ashamed to show their boss.

Kill Your Darlings, Warhammer Style

Budgets are tight these days. Being a freelance wordsmith doesn’t pay quite as many bills as it used to, and the more time I spend sculpting tiny cables instead of penning the articles I’m commissioned to write, the smaller that hobby budget becomes. Such are the distractions of modern life, especially as a man with as expensive a hobby as Warhammer. I bet Shakespeare never had this problem.

So, I turned to my pile of unfinished projects. A few caught my eye. An unfinished conversion of Ushoran, who was intended to be a rat king for my ill-fated Skaven army. Cawl, of course, who I’d sculpted to stand tall rather than horizontal in a fashion that left his waist more befitting an underweight ‘00s supermodel than an adept of the Adeptus Mechanicus. And, finally, I bought the Horus Heresy Mechanicum Skitarii Battle Group a while back to convert the Skitarii into Sicarian Ruststalkers, but the poor Vultarax Stratos-Automata remained on its sprue, unused and gathering proverbial dust.

Having recently dismantled a perfectly good Onager Dunecrawler conversion to give it chitinous bug legs instead of its standard robotic limbs, I was on a murderous rampage. I slipped a new blade onto my hobby knife and started carving. By some miracle of fate, I only managed to slice one of my fingers open and slot the key parts of the conversion together.

Cawl’s head and shoulders emerged from the front of the Vultarax chassis, which was perched atop Ushoran’s decrepit form. I was sad to see his beautiful cloak end up in the bits box, but the plethora of robes and cables emerging in its place was a more suitable option; the bottom half of the Cawl serving a fitting purpose.

Darlings sufficiently dismembered, I had the beginnings of a warlord. But first, I had to fill some gaps.

How To Convert A Warhammer Miniature

Normally, I fill gaps with sprue goo. If you aren’t already aware, sprue goo is a concoction made by dropping pieces of sprue—that’s the plastic your miniatures are attached to in the box—into plastic glue. My preferred option is Tamiya, thanks to the screw top and brush applicator, but any plastic solvent will do. I’ve also heard this works with airbrush thinner or cleaner, but I can’t remember which one and have never tried either.

The resulting pot of sludge is perfect for filling small gaps. It takes a few hours to cure, and then acts exactly the same as the rest of the plastic on your miniature, allowing you to cut, sand, or file it down to fit your needs. The only drawback is its, well, sludginess. This means that it can’t hold its shape in a larger gap, so I needed to rethink my usual processes here. And I went for greebles.

Greebles are just bits. Bits and bobs that you stick to a mini to add detail or texture or to tell more of a story. Large, smooth surface? Greebles. Enormous gap? Double greebles. Conversion feeling a bit boring? You guessed it, greebles. For this project, my greebles consisted mostly of cables found in my bits box. The Vultarax kit had some fantastic options, plastic proboscises that I draped along cloaks and hung between limbs. I connected the biological to the mechanical and back again, added greebles to the greebles until the plastic could bear it no more.

In the end, I’m pleased with the result. There are still a few areas that need more work, some Green Stuff fur to blend pipework and cloak, and I’m not happy with the part I used to cover that Omnissian bumhole. I might have to sculpt a warp-infused eye there or something instead. I’ll also add a few more robes to add to his ceremonial righteousness—you’ll be surprised what a combination of toilet roll and Mod Podge can do.

Let’s be honest, if Games Workshop eventually brought out a range of Dark Mechanicus miniatures, I’m not convinced it would come close to what I’ve built. Or, at least, it wouldn’t match the idea of the Dark Mech that I have in my head. Which, now that I think about it, is kinda messed up. Ah well, I like to think that John Blanche would be happy with my additions to the Warhammer universe at least.

Warhammer 40K

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