Conversion Corner - Space Marine Operative

The Happenin' Habber stands next to her newest Space Marine friend.

For the second installment of Conversion Corner, I decided to focus my attention on converting a Space Marine operative. I have been exploring the design for Space Marine weapons, namely the bolter (True-Scale Marine, Elder One Othalanga; Primaris Marine) for a while now. For this marine I wanted to delve even further into creating a sub-machine gun (SMG) variant of the bolter (and challenge the commonly perceived size of such a weapon). Additionally, I wanted to experiment with equipping a marine with one of the Genestealer cultist shotguns. Since their release, I always thought they would work perfectly on Space Marines, particularly the Primaris-scaled Marines.

The genestealer cultist shotguns are far better scaled to Space Marines than the plastic Deathwatch ones.

I based the SMG bolter off of the newly released Delaque flechette pistol. While much too large for a human-sized pistol, the weapon makes a convincing SMG for a Space Marine. To transform the weapon into a bolter, I shifted the weapon’s magazine back closer to the pistol grip, allowing room for a forward grip by the operator. Additionally, I trimmed off the toxin chamber (?) on the side of the weapon and filled the flechette ejection port. Finally, I added a rear sight to the weapon and replaced the barrel with a smaller one made from brass tubing (Albion Alloy). Replacing the barrel with brass tubing gave me much more control of the bore size of the barrel. While the barrel is much thinner than normally seen in bolter weapons, it would still allow for .50 caliber or larger rounds commonly associated with bolters.

The bolter was converted from the flechette pistol from the plastic Delaque Necromunda gang.

Brass tubing is fantastic for creating gun barrels, and less fiddly to work with than plastic when working with something so small.

Conversion work on the Space Marine himself was pretty minimal, with most of it focused on the Marine’s legs. I used a Space Marine Primaris Reiver body and legs, replacing the shins and feet with those of a Primaris Intercessor. I decided to do this because the Reivers’ legs have a lot of nice webbing and ammunition pouches attached directly to the legs, alleviating the need to add them yourself, which would necessitate a lot of green stuff work. By cutting off the lower half of the Reiver legs, you also remove the awkward looking “high-top” design of their feet which many people disliked when they were first revealed. His head came from the Forge World model of Sevatar, First Captain of the Night Lords. To hold one of the Genestealer cultist shotguns, I carefully carved the bolt rifle from a Space Marine Intercessor arm/hand. This allowed for a much more convincing grip on the weapon, compared to the “open” hands some Space Marine models have that often leave a lot of space between the weapon and the fingers.

The legs were spliced together from the upper part of a Primaris Reiver and the lower part of a Primaris Intercessor.

The Space Marine next to an Imperial Pilot from Forge World.

I am quite happy with how this Space Marine turned out; it proved my suspicion that Genestealer cultist shotguns are scaled quite well for Space Marines and that the Intercessor and Reivers models mesh together well for creating true-scale Space Marines. As always, it was fun experimenting with converting different patterns of boltguns. The model was fun to build, so maybe I will make some more in the future. Let me know if there are any sorts of Space Marines you would like to see!

- Adam Wier