Idea for conversion, feedback/advice would help.

[Commissar Lewis]

Right. So, my cousin had an old box set lying around and gave it to me, as he never really got into the hobby. So this was an old box set, the one with the plastic DE. What I plan on doing is converting them into some Imperial Stormtrooper/ Spec-Ops -type guys, with armor that looks sort of like the Chinese Stealth Armor from Fallout 3, or the armor in Mass Effect.

So my question is this any ideas on how to make a good-looking hot-shot lasgun type gun and/or make the armor look sort of Imperial? I got enough bits to probably pull it off, still some ideas can help jog my creativity.

On a side note, I plan on using one of the female torso to convert into torso much like the Catachan GL chick, give her a heavy bolter, and make a proper Jeanette Vasquez, as a counts-as for Harker.

[plasticaddict]

I built some Mehanicus Tech Guard a while back for a buddys army. To build the hotshots I used the lascarbines from the vehicle accessory sprue, voxcaster backpacks from the Cadian troop box, the sight from the mortar out of the heavy weapon team box, some left over lasguns from an old hellhound kit (the ones that would stick out from a chimera) and some fishing line. I cut off the magazine and drilled a hole where the magazine used to be on the lasguns, mounted the scope to the top of the weapon,replaced the original barrel with the chimera lasgun barrel and glued them into the hands of the models. I removed the antenna, speaker and handles from the vox pack and drilled a hole into the right side of the pack, then attached it to the model. I used the fishing line to go from the backpack to the gun (that's what the holes are for) to make the power cable. It's a pretty good looking piece of kit I think. Of course I used the door gunner models for the Valkyrie kit as the bodys so you may hace to make some more changes to fit the bacjpack to the DE models.

[weeble1000]

I did something similar to make the hotshot las pistol for my Bastonne conversion. I used a vox caster for the backpack but I cut it down pretty severely. It was simple enough to do, but since I'm on vacation right now and don't have the model in front of me I can't really describe what I did to it. A shorter pack might look better on the DE's smaller frame.

I kept the power pack on the pistol, drilled into the bottom of it, and drilled into the bottom of the mutilated vox. I made the power cable out of copper wire that I twisted together with a drill. The wire had to be a pretty small gauge to fit into the bottom of the power pack, but I bulked it up by threading on little segments of rubber that were stripped from some scrap wire.

When I get back home after new years I'll post a pic.

[Commissar Lewis]

Alright, thanks for the ideas, i was thinking of vox casters as the back packs - just hope i have enough.

[KINGS]

I would recommend using Imperial Weapons and some Imperial bear heads to make sure people know they are humans under that Xenos armor... good luck. Hope you can post some pics but this sounds interesting.

[Commissar Lewis]

Well, completed one, and used a plastic SOB helmeted head from an Immolator on it. Not ecstatic how it turned out, could have better, but I'll make the rest better.

I'll be posting pics of the full squad when done.

[Commissar Lewis]

Well, I have completed a 5-person team, so that's one squad. Pics will be incoming sometime later today or tomorrow.

Didn't turn out as awesome as I'd hoped, but they look cool.