Tuesday 5 March 2013

Converting your Steel Legion Troops

I did say in my earlier post that I have made some weird and wacky conversions of my own over the years to expand my Steel Legion miniature range. 

So without further a due, here are some of my Steel Legion trooper conversions.

Let me just say first off, converting metal steel legion miniatures can be a real pain! (don’t really like cutting metal mini’s) Most of my conversions are basically assembling plastic with metal.

sergeant, missile launcher trooper and reloading lasgun clip trooper


The best models to use are the sergeant body and the trooper who is pulling something from his pouches and the missile launcher mini. 

Converted flag bearer, kneeling plasma gunner and trooper lobbing grenade


This is because the arms are loose and you can fit them with any arm to suit, or the arms are easy to remove. Unfortunately for the ease of conversion, you will have to buy lots of the sergeant bodies for your conversions, which is why I like the trooper conversion best.


Steel Legion Flamer Trooper

 
The flamer was one of my first conversions. My opinion, the best arsenal in the guard army, which the steel legion range is lacking! Pretty standard muzzle cut off replace with flamer muzzle and a small tank attached to the back of trooper from the old tank accessory spru and a piece of wire.


The rest were basically the same but I vary some with just having the smaller canister from the flamer spru straight from the plastic Catachan range glued under the magazine clip of the lasguns.


One of the most recent and ambitious conversions, is to fit the plastic Cadian flamer weapon to a steel legion trooper. This requires lots of precision and careful cutting to remove the lasgun. Once removed, you might need to chip the sides a bit more to fit the flamer into the trooper’s hand



The flamer too, will need to be cut to suit the hand. The final thing is to add the promethium tanks behind the trooper. You might need to cut/shave a little of the back of the trooper to get a nice flat surface to glue the tanks to the back of the body.
  
Putting the tanks and the flamer component together with the metal trooper is fiddly but not impossible. Believe me it’s worth the effort! And there you go; a steel legion flamer trooper. 



Steel Legion Plasma Gunners
 
The models used for these troops are the kneeling missile launcher trooper and the leaning forward trooper. The missile launcher fella is easy to convert as it only take a hand swap and adding some binoculars on the other hand. The second conversion is a little more challenging as it requires you to remove the entire lasgun barrel on the trooper before adding the plastic plasma gun (this one took me a long time to do!).




Steel Legion Meltagunners


Meltaguns are also difficult to convert if you are using any of the generic steel trooper with a lasgun. My initial meltagun conversions are basic the removal of the lasgun muzzle replaced with a meltagun barrel at the front. I tend to cut out the plastic meltagun power coupling from the side and glue it on to the lasgun as well. 

Not my best conversion but the thought of removing another lasgun from the metal mini’s makes this conversion fairly simple.



<To be continued>


As always good luck in your scratch building
Capt. Stainguard

3 comments:

  1. Those are very clever conversions. I have a huge Steel Legion army myself (200+ models) but I have only done a few. Flamers, meltas and the like. I will be adding some of your ideas to my own.

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  2. Go for it man and wow!... 200 steel legion mini's! i think i only have under a 100.

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  3. I have been collecting for awhile and they are the only model range I use (besides Storm Troopers). 100 is very respectable. They are not cheap. Probably have way too many. Sadly I have but 8 Chimeras so the whole force is not mechanized. That would be too many points anyway I think.

    I like the grenade arm idea. I never thought of converting that particular model. Very clever. I am going to take your advice on the missile teams and make a couple of mortar teams. I totally forgot the missile guys arm comes off. Pig Iron Miniatures makes a nice range of Steel legion type models. They would work well as veterans or as Hive Militia.

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