Space Marine Captain

Staying on the Space Marine bandwagon for one more week with a project I’ve been playing with for a while.

As I’ve mentioned before, my big loyalist army is, ironically, the Relictors.  I’ve got over 3500 points, plus some in-the-works things.  Like most Space Marine players, I’ve also entertained the idea of building up an entire chapter (or as much of a chapter as the Relictors have left these days).  One of the easy targets, so to speak, is special characters, and (also like most Marine players) I’ve often toyed with the idea of building the ten company captains... each with a unique twist that lets them fit into the Relictors army.

   

Maybe a year or so back I was digging through the bits bins at my local store and found the back half of the Captain from the Assault on Black Reach set.  It was a bit banged up and had a few connection holes plugged, but overall it was in very good shape.  You may recall this model had a front half that included his head, chestplate, tabard, left arm, and bolter.  Without that piece this figure was a little... well, bare.

However...

As it turns out, a regular Space Marine chestplate fits where the bulk of that piece normally would.  Fits perfectly, in fact.  It even merges with the collar to form a standard head-socket.  All I needed to do was shave down the pins on the back of the chestplate.  I went with a Mk. 8 because I feel like the stylized aquilla makes the wings very prominent.  And wings are good, as I’ll get to in a minute...

This still left a big hole in the... well, the codpiece region.  And this isn’t really a standard component in any version of Marine model I’ve dealt with.  What is standard, though, are various pieces to cover this region.  Tabards, cingulums, pteruges, purity seals, and so on.  I dug around in my space marine jar and found one of the short tabards with a purity seal on either side.  It’s not a perfect fit, but with a tiny bit of filing to give the right leg some room, it works pretty well.  I also glued the captain onto his base at this point.

Now...this is going to be fourth company Captain Daedalus, the Master of the Fleet (see, wings are good).  According to most fluff, this means he should be armed with a thunder hammer, a symbol of the massive firepower he can call down.  But he is a Relictors captain—a high ranking one, too—so there should be a bit of a Chaos influence in his weaponry.  There’s a good chance he’s part of the Conclave, after all.

I have a pile of parts from the old Fantasy Chaos Warriors, the really old ones that were kind of like cartoony, armored hunchbacks.  One of the hands has a warhammer, but it’s single-sided and has kind of a short handle.  So I tried to think of a cool way to combine two of them into a Chaos thunder hammer.  Here’s what I came up with.

On one of them, I cut the whole gauntlet off the arm and then the back spike off the warhammer.  Then I cut the hammer-head off the other piece and glued it in place.  It took a few moments of scraping and wiggling to make it sit just right.

Helpful Hint—Whenever I’m doing conversions with little pieces like this, I always try to clean all the mold lines before I cut.  Trying to do it after the fact with tiny bits is nigh- impossible and always causes problems.

Once the hammer head itself was good, I cut off the haft of the de-hammered warhammer and added it to my weapon-in-progress.  I needed to shave the base of the w-i-p flat and also do the same with the addition.  The leftover spike made for a nice touch at the base of the thunder hammer.

Helpful Hint—Weapons are almost always going to be focal points, so they’re going to get looked at a lot.  Take as much time as they need.  In this case, I knew the shaft of the hammer had to be straight, so I spent almost ten minutes checking it from every angle.

The gauntlet was just a bit too short to connect to that elbow piece.  I cut a piece of 1/4 square plastic and trimmed the corners with my hobby knife until it was more or less round (it’s barely going to be visible).  I glued it onto the “cuff” of the gauntlet and it gave the arm that little bit of length it needed to look right.

I debated for a while what to do with the other hand.  The “traditional” Master of the Fleet just has his hammer, so I went through my bits looking for a good empty hand.  I thought about giving him a ranged weapon of some sort.  In the end, I settled on a storm shield.  I know the shield is generally a symbol of the Master of the Fortress (second company) but there’s nothing that says the Master of the Fleet can’t have one (and it is a pretty classic combination).  Besides, if anyone’s going to be a little off from tradition, it’d probably be the Relictors...

The shield is also from the Fantasy Chaos Warriors.  I shaved off a few of the studs and spikes so I could drop a few purity seals on it.  I want to almost conceal the chaos nature of the shield.  I cut off an old bolter arm just above the elbow and this all went together perfectly.

All of my Relictors wear their helmets.  There isn’t a bare head in the entire army.  It’s a simple, subtle theme that helps imply they’re hiding something.  Even my scouts have balaclavas and goggles.  So I wanted to give Daedalus an ornate-looking helmet.  I’d recently come into one of the new Sternguard sets, and I briefly considered giving him the helmet with the big Roman crest.  However, because of the large aquilla “collar” on the back of the model it didn’t sit right, and that was before I even put the crest on.  Instead I went with one of the Mk. VI “Corvus” helmets (the beakies).  The Sternguard one even had a matching aquilla on it.

As a final touch, I added a few more purity seals (Relictors can never have too many purity seals).  I also dug around and found one of the Crux pendants from the Terminator set.  Hooked to his belt, it’s a symbol of his history and also helps hide a tiny gap between the tabard and the torso.

And there you have it.  Relictors Captain Daedalus of the Fourth Company, Master of the Fleet, and member of the Conclave.  He may get an iron halo or some other backpack icon, but other than that I think he’s ready to go out on the battlefield.