Space Marine Master of the Forge

Hello again all, haven't posted much about my marines since the new codex dropped. I took some time and looked through and completely reconfigured my army plans... I'm leaning towards an Iron Hands themed force and then I thought to myself.

Self, if you want to run Iron Hands you should consider a Master of the Forge.

Good idea self ... but do I run him with a servo harness or a conversion beamer? and if I take the conversion beamer do I put him on a bike ... then that little voice in my head spoke up again.

You know a Master of the Forge with a conversion beamer on a bike would be awesomely cool to kit-bash and convert.

Right again me.

So with all that in mind I started looking for what on earth to use for this conversion.

Step 1. The Bike. Get a space marine bike kit. Not that hard, going to set you back $19 if you get him from GW Australia. Or if you're going to order it from a bits site (with some other parts to make the MotF) one will go for about $12. I got all my parts from http://www.bitsandkits.co.uk and they were more than reasonable, the whole conversion was $25 for the bike and the two other bits that we will come to later.

Step 2. The Beamer. I was looking for something that looked very techy, very cool and would mount onto a bike well. After a bit of looking around I decided on the Death Ray from a Necron Doomscythe. Now I just bought the bit from the website above but if you've got a friend who decided to make the Nightscythe then you can probably scrounge one up for free.

Step 3. The Master. (of the forge). Now I may have mentioned it before but if not I like my HQ models to stand out a little more that the standard guys so I have been kitting mine up with Grey Knight helmets so that they're a little more unique and a little easier to spot on the field. With that in mind I searched around for a Grey Knight Techmarine. No such luck, but they do have a Terminator Apothecary who has a pretty cool looking helmet and so it was decided.

So with all these bits gathered together I decided to get to work. First off I cut out the bike and blutac'd it together so that I knew what kind of scale I was working to. As well as assembling the Death Ray or as it will soon become, my conversion beamer.

Next after rummaging around in the bits box I came up with a spare space marine bike wheel... or half of one. But that was enough.

I simply cut the wheel down the center so that one half had the little lip seen on the left of the pic and the other had the recess so that the two halves would fit together perfectly. I then glued the two halves together to make half a wheel. Now at this point I forgot to take a couple of pics so I will give you the run down on what took place next.

I decided to mount the beamer on the right hand side of the bike so after turning the beamer so that it would mount properly I cut off the prong from the side of the Death Ray that would hit the ground and shaved a little bit off the underside so I could glue the wheel on. It looked a little out of place at first but I'll fix that as I go along. That decided I made a little cowling around the wheel out of plasticard and viola...

I'll tidy up around that with a little greenstuff later. Now the next important part was the mounting. As you can see the Death Ray comes with a handy little mounting point right on the side. But in order to make it fit the bike you'll have to shave out a little indent. I used a hobby knife to make a groove where I needed it and then filed it out with a rounded file until I had this...

Now you can see my plan, the mount and the little part I just shaved out now makes a perfect fit right on the side of the bike. (Forgive the wonky bike construction, I will fix that up before gluing.

 

 

So with everything looking pretty sweet I decided to blutac it all together to see if it was all worth it. Keep in mind that I plan on running some cable from the little port in the top of the beamer to the back of the bike. But that will have to wait until everything is glued together. However I have to admit I'm really proud of how its starting to look and I'm itching to get some paint on this sucker.

 

My last and favourite pic so far was just a trick of the light from the TV behind the model but I like the look of him. I'm tossing up as to whether I swap his standard pack for something bulkier to give him that Techmarine feel. I'll rummage around in the bits box again and see what turns up.



So there you have it. for a grand total of $7 more than the standard GW Australia pricing for a standard space marine bike I got a great custom looking Master of the Forge with a sweet conversion beamer/death ray. I hope you like the look of it and if you're looking for ideas to make your own that this guide was helpful to you.