This 5 man Grey Knight squad are to based on Grey Knights immediately after the Heresy. As such they have Nemesis Force Weapons in the style of those on 1st edition Grey Knights, ie: Halberds with storm bolters built in.

I opted to use the older metal Terminators as a base for the legs as I find them to be much better posed than the plastic ones which seem to me to be a bit too widely spread. Adding Green Stuff to metal is more difficult than adding to plastic, I’m not entirely certain why that is but I would advise beginners to use plastic models as a base.

The Grey Knight plastic torsos are unusually deep compared to regular Space Marines so I used no spacer in between the front and back. The NFW has had its blade removed and attached lower down so that a cut down bolter would fit atop of the blade. The bolter barrel had to be replaced so that it was in a better position. The added =I= symbol also fit perfectly and the cable was my first try out of my new TubeTool from Masq-Mini (I’ll review it properly in a later post) and I’m very pleased with it.

I lengthened the arms (using plasticard spacers) and Green Stuffed over them to add the necessary size (see a Tutorial here). When I’m working on individual bits like this and I need to put them somewhere for the Green Stuff to cure without getting damaged I use a large blob of poster BluTac (sometimes I also add temporary pins to hold small pieces by).

I had quite a specific brief for the Justicar to resemble a model I did very early on in the blog. I also got the chance to add a shoulder mounted psycannon (I have a bit of a thing for shoulder mounted ranged weapons, not sure why). It took quite a while to make it fit nicely, but I think it works. I wanted the psycannon to be pointing in the same direction as the Justicar’s bionic eye, as if the two are linked. The rest of the squad came together quite naturally from using mostly Grey Knight components. The whole squad is pretty self explanatory to anyone who’s seen my work before.

Click here for Work in Progress pics

To describe the actual work done; the legs are completely scratchbuilt to the same scale as my other previous terminators, whilst the rest of the model is more subtly modified. The torso is already fairly large and the only change I made was to space the front and back pieces with Green Stuff to give it more depth, but only at the bottom. The arms are largely unmodified, only altered to accommodate the pose. Rather than sculpt an outer skin over the shoulder pads like I normally do I instead opted to extend them by adding thicker trims whilst rescultping the arching plates that go over the top. The model’s head is stock just because it’s so damn nice (I was tempted to try and save it for a later project).

I wasn’t totally satisfied with the Force Hammer that comes stock, and after many attempts found an icon bit that is meant to fit atop the terminator armour that could be nicely modified to fit. As an added bonus I also magnetized the head of the hammer and gave him an optional Halberd set up. The hammer looks better (gotta love the brass bits from FW) but a halberd might be a better choice in game so I added the option at least.

The final addition after the odd purity seal and grenade was the loin cloth from the box set. Only problem was it didn’t look particularly animated, just a bit bland. So I trimmed it on one side and sculpted over most of it to try and create a bit more flow. I’m starting to gain a bit more confidence with cloth shapes now, the trick being to have the basic shape underneath the surface already in place and solid so you’re only sculpting a smooth skin rather than manipulating a big lump of putty.

I knew I would have difficulty carving text directly into the greaves because of the way I build minis in GS, so I opted to attach engraved plates in the same positions. This is the first time I remember attempting to sculpt text like this and I have to say I’m reasonably pleased with the end result. The basic technique involves making the entire plate in one piece of Green Stuff, making sure it’s the right shape and in the right position and then using a sharp pointed tool “push in” all the space around the letters.

I have to say the quality of GWs plastics gets better year on year. In some ways it’s hard to find ways to attempt to improve upon the standard kit. Luckily for me scaling up minis is a particularly unique form of converting 

Ever since reading the Grey Knights Omnibus book I’ve wanted to convert a Grey Knight Chaplain (NOTE: this is before the release of the 5th edition Grey Knight codex). When I decide to start any kind of project I look for inspiration (usually artwork or other minis) to help envision what I want the final conversion to look like. In this case I found this amazing image.

I’m sure some of you would argue against the existence within the fluff of GK Chaplains, but I rather like the idea, if nothing else just for aesthetic reasons – Chaplains always look cool, but a Grey Knight Chaplain should be something really special.

I started this project with a few ideas in mind. I wanted it to approximately fit the description of the Chaplain mentioned in Ben Counter’s Grey Knights book, ie: all black power armour and a gun metal skull helm. I also had this idea of him carrying a thunder hammer that looks similar to a crozius arcanum.

You can probably see where the parts have come from. The legs are from the Grey Knight Terminator Brother Captain, and the torso/head is from one of the standard Chaplain models. Normally I would make the torso from plastic and green stuff to give it extra depth and position the head properly, but I decided it best not to remove the head from its original torso in case I risked damaging it. Part of my working process involves trying out a variety of options and poses till I find something that works best. In this case I hadn’t decided on the weapons and gear from the start so I gathered a selection of possibles (swords, thunder hammer (crozius), stormbolter and storm shield).

In the end I settled on the Storm Shield (from the Forgeworld Inquisitor) and a custom Thunder Hammer/Crozius but I eneded up modifying it into a one handed weapon.The Thunder Crozius was made from brass details (Forgeworld again), plasticard and some crozius bits from a Chaplain model. I also selected a large book (from an Inquisitor familiar model) that I would later be slung across his body. I imagined the Chaplain recording the names of the Imperium’s greatest unsung heroes in it.

The Crozius/Hammer had been made a bit more compact by shortening the hammer heads and adding a smaller handle. The forearm is taken from the Hector Rex mini, just so it matches the arm holding the storm shield. I really like how this weapon has turned out. Took a lot of tinkering with to get it right, but this is one of the things about converting minis, the longer you tinker the better it is likely to be. It did in fact start out as the Thunder Hammer on the Preacher Josef model but has been chopped up and whittled down till only the center part between the hammer heads is left… and I could easily have used plasticard to build that bit 

As this was an Artscale conversion I proceeded to fill in the gaps in the terminator legs to make them look more like power armour and resculpted the chest to be both deeper and more pronounced. My first attempt on the chest I tried to retain the original details, but as I really wasn’t happy with the result I ended up resculpting the whole thing, aquila and all.

I had a lot of trouble finalizing his pose, but eventually settled on a crozius resting at his side rather than the usual held aloft pose common to all Chaplains. It helps give an impression of weight to his mighty hammer, but also allows the fitting of the shoulder pad to look far less awkward. Although this model has 9 pins holding him together, there are elements that are definitely fragile (the iron halo for example) but there’s not much I can do to improve that. Guess I better not drop him.

Midway through painting him I decided I wasn’t totally happy with the positioning of the shield arm, mostly because the direction the attached purity seal was hanging looked odd. So I rebuilt the arm with the shield in a slightly more dynamic pose and the seal hanging more naturally downwards. Whilst doing this I realised I’d missed an opportunity to take the rather awesome Iron Haloed Skull design of his helm and repeat it on his own shield. So before continuing with painting I sculpted the Iron Halo design onto his Storm Shield.

Originally I’d wanted to have all of his power armour black (as described in the novels) with just a few gold details and a silver skull helm, however, the all black armour just didn’t really look that good, so in the end I opted to paint both shoulder pads the same silver as his helm.

As a bit of fluff for him I’ve given him the title of Guardian of Names and painted the name Durendin (from the novel) on the iconography of his backpack. He carries and protects one of the Grey Knights sacred tomes, a book that records the name of each and every Grey Knight to have died protecting mankind. If that’s not a role for a Chaplain I don’t know what is.

Size comparison.