"Warhamer 40k Renegade Imperial Guard Conscript Conversions" Topic

I've got some pictures up on my blog today of my full unit of 50 Imperial Guard Conscripts I've converted for my renegade Guard army. They are made from Victrix plastic French old guard with heads from Perry plastic French hussars, and lots of extra 40k weapons. Let me know what you think:

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They look pretty cool. Good job on the conversion.

Metal figures of those have been available for years. Any reason you didn't do this with those a long time ago? :)

Very neat – should be quite the sight once the whole army is painted and assembled.

I like the use of alien weapons, too.

Nice

These are both bizarre and cool at the same time :) I can't wait to see them painted!

Good job. IG has always been influenced by historical themes, be it the Praetorians, DKOK, Valhallans, Tallarns or the Vostroyans.

Nothing works like conscripts for speedbump/quicksand tactics.

Backing them with a Commissar w/Powerfist?

Pictors, I actually didn't start working on this army until around last September, and started out with converting my regular guardsmen from Wargames Factory shock troops with heads from these Old Guard Grenadiers. Then I needed something to do with all those headless grenadiers, so that's how the conscripts came about.

And, of course, these conversions would have been even more difficult with metal miniatures. It was hard enough to get most of those to look like they were holding a lasgun in a reasonable fasion. There's a big difference between an arm holding a musket, which has no handle, and one holding a massively oversized lasgun with a handle.

Thanks for the comments, everyone. If you want to get an idea of how I plan to paint them, you can see some of my painted guardmen in some of my other Imperial Guard posts:

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The green coats with pink facings are suitably 'Napoleonic': several regiments of French dragoons wore this combination.
Now, their trumpeters wore 'reversed' coats, pink with green facings: will you paint so your 'voxcaster operator' (? I'm not much post-RT 40K-learned)? All said, he is the functional equivalent of a cavalry trumpeter…

I'm really enjoying the look and feel of this project, Squirrel- both for the inspiration I'm finding it gives me, regarding a project I've begun accruing figures for in the past couple months (it started with finding myself irresistably drawn to buy a box of Perry plastic Zouaves, with no idea what I was going to do with them initially), and simply enjoying your work on its own (substantial) merits.

How difficult was the weapon swap part of the conversion? I'm not familiar w/the Victrix figures- were they originally cast w/muskets/rifles, or simply in position to hold them, with the weaponry separate?

- Monk

Thank you, Rat Money. That's kind of how it started for me, seeing some miniatures I liked but had to invent a use for. Plus some inspiration from some books to make an Imperial Guard army that was a household guard of some nobleman.

The weapon swaps weren't easy, for the most part. About 1/3 of the Old Guard Grenadier figures were the ones with the muskets shouldered in marching poses. Those were really easy, because I just cut off the tip of the musket, and replaced it with the tip of a las-gun, making a las-musket.

That looked fine, but I wanted to have a mix of weapons in the unit, to look like they had scavenged whatever they could to replace the cheap weapons they were issued. Fitting the oversized 40k weapons into the more realistically sized arms for the shooting or loading poses was a challenge. First, the musket is just held in a different way than a gun with a handle. Also, all the left arms are made for the smaller weapons with no clubs beneath them, so they end up with the left hand way too close to the right hand for holding a lasgun. That's why you can see some Green Stuff in the left armpits to reposition the left arms a bit.

For the most part, the muskets are attached to the right arms. Right and left arms are separate, which allows more options for converting. But, as I said, getting them to hold 40K weapons is a bit of work, especially with so many. If you just wanted to switch barrel tips to make las-musket, or you found a supply of smaller, more reasonably sized weapons, it would be much easier.

Well, I forgot to come back and update this. Here are some pictures of them all painted up: link