SHOWCASE: Dave Taylor – Improving Space Marine Centurions
Hi everyone! Dave Taylor here with my take on taking Space Marine Centurions up a notch.
Dave Taylor here with a quick guest post, as requested by BigRed.
Like many 40K hobbyists, I too was a bit put off by something I couldn’t quite grasp when GW recently released their new Space Marine unit – the Centurions. However, while there was something niggling away, I also loved a lot of different elements of the models, and had absolutely no problem with the idea of a Space Marine in power armor climbing into another suit of powered armor.
So, I bought a box and set to looking at all the cool elements while they were separate. After a bit of chatting with friends, and assembling the weapons in different ways, I realized the key thing that was putting me off was just that, the arrangement of the weapons. I had an armored suit sitting in front of me with two big power fists that played no part in any of the rules for the suit, then my weapon of choice could be bolted on (lascannons, grav cannon, siege drill thingy), and if I chose the assault option, I could then bolt on another weapon too (flamer or melta). The problem became that the suit now looked a bit apeish, more Orky than Imperial.
So, I set about rebuilding one of the Centurions to fit into my Mechanicum/Adeptus Mechanicus force.
Above you can see the result of the conversion work. I rebuilt the siege drill to essentially be the left arm, I left the power fist on the right arm, without adornment, and then re-sited the grav cannon to the right shoulder pad. As far as matching it to my Mechanicum force, this location for the grav cannon lines up with the big gun atop the Castellax from ForgeWorld. Additional cabling was added to give the back of the suit a more exposed feel. The green tubes are simply rolled and dried Greenstuff, and the metal power cables are from Dragon Forge Design (incredibly great value if you are doing lots of conversions, like I do).
Of course there are a bunch of variations you could do on these yourself, including slinging the heavy weapons under the shoulders, much like a Dreadnought, or placing the assault weapons (melta or flamer) up on the shoulders. But whatever it might be, I think the real goal is to slim down the profile a little by making the model feel taller, and with less clutter around the arms.
And Above is the final piece painted. Some of the comments from readers of my blog lead me to change up the head. I removed the Imperial Guard gas mask head you saw in the WIP photos, and replaced it with an enclosed visor, simply built from a Space Marine shoulder pad (for the front visor) and an Imperial Guard shoulder pad (for the rear of the “helmet”).
I painted my now-Skittarii Centurion to match my Mechanicum Knight and the Thallax Cohorts I have. Lots of bronze, some areas burnished, others tarnishing. I’m really happy with the results.
Feel free to click on any of the links throughout the article to see more on my own blog.
If you’ve done some work of your own on the Centurion kit (be it straight up builds and paint jobs, or excellent conversions), please feel free to post links to your own work in the comments section below so that we can all enjoy it!
Cheers
Dave
