Building a Lunax7070 Space Marine

A diorama of an Astral Claws Dreadnought and Space Marine created by the talented Lunax7070.

Despite our efforts to steer clear of building more Space Marine models, in favor of exploring more esoteric facets of the 40k setting, we often find ourselves still working on projects pertaining to them. Just last month we slightly converted one of Paul-Friedrich von Bargen’s MKV Space Marines! When we convert and paint Space Marines, we always try to use it as an opportunity to explore scale and anatomical form in some way, usually by creating True-scale Space Marines. Over the years we have done relatively simple conversions using Primaris Space Marines as a foundation, all the way up to sculpting the majority of one from an assembly of chopped up pieces. One of our favorite hobbyists, Lunax7070, has a similar style and has spent the last few years building an array of Primarch-scale Space Marines of many different Chapters, from Iron Hands to Luna Wolves. Recently, Lunax7070 surprised us with a stunning diorama of an Astral Claws’ Dreadnought alongside one of its power-armored brethren as a thank you for gifting him a few old Forge World books. Being able to see some of his creations first-hand is truly breath-taking; you can easily get lost considering what obscure pieces he spliced together or what weathering techniques he used to create such a remarkable slice of Warhammer 40,000. This reminded us that a while back, Lunax7070 sent us one of his early casts of his iconic MKII Crusade armor, which he has used to build most of his Iron Hands Space Marines. Inspired by the Astral Claw models, we decided it would be fun to finally build the resin cast he gave us!

The back of the Astral Claws Dreadnought.

Lunax7070’s Space Marines are huge, towering above one of Eric’s “true-scale” Space Marines converted from a Primaris Space Marine.

Although we were using the Lunax7070 cast, we still wanted to make the model our own, and started to modify some of the components. The MKII cast was in numerous parts, allowing you to assemble the model in innumerable ways. To achieve this freedom, most of the pieces only fit together loosely, necessitating that you pin the legs and other components together and fill a lot of gaps. After spending some time working on the pieces, adding details and changing aspects, like adding an enlarged collar to make using different heads easier, we realized the model would be ideal for creating a silicone mold. With this, we could make resin casts of our modification of the Lunax7070 marine, allowing us to build multiple models, and allowing us to give some casts to Lunax to see what he could do with them. We modified each component to fit together more easily with one another and to facilitate posing the model. This was accomplished by adding a series of ball bearings to some of the components, such that the pieces could be easily socketed together. Although this strategy should allow for a much easier assembly process, and provide more posing flexibility, it does result in some gaps that will need to be filled in with molding putty after a pose is settled upon. To minimize this, we sculpted some of the rubberized joint material characteristic of Space Marine armor around most of the parts containing the ball bearings.

The current status of the Lunax7070 conversion, with ball bearings adding to various pieces to aid in assembly and poseability down the line.

The model’s feet are taken and modified from an Necromunda Goliath model.

A variety of details were added to the Lunax7070 model, including sculpted joint material, a wider armored collar, and a more distinct area to attach a power pack.

The start of building a preliminary silicone mold for creating resin casts of the modified Lunax7070 MKII Space Marine.

Although the conversion process for this Lunax7070 Space Marine has been slow, due primarily to the fact that we want to make it very flexible and suitable for casting, it has been a fun one. We are incredibly excited to complete the mold to create a few resin casts, allowing us to test how well the ball bearings work for posing models. We will likely use one of the new resin casts to continue to make additional modifications and continue to improve the model, ultimately creating something worthy of Lunx7070’s legacy! We really want to express our thanks again to Lunax7070 for his inspiring work, the initial MKII Space Marine cast he sent us, and for creating the wonderful Astral Claws diorama!

- Adam, Eric, and Greg Wier