Need someone to discuss my conversion ideas with

Cheers fellow Kabalites,

I'm not sure if this is the right place to ask this, but I'm currently a bit at a loss what to do as my second army. I'm totally in love with DE, their playstyle, their miniatures and in comparison everything else feels... well, it's not bad... but not so dynamic.

With the release of 6th I got myself a Dark Vengeance box for very cheap and I plan on expanding on that, just because that would net me a playable second army for less than 100 bucks and because a change in playstyle might do me good - building up tactical flexibility and all that. The thing is, there are marines everywhere, around 70% of the people at the LGS own at least 1 marine army, 20% (maybe more, there are people who have marines and crons) are crons... and all other xenos are the remaining 10%. Combine that with the fact that your basic marine looks incredibly boring compared to our sleek xenos bodies, I thought I should give myself a challenge: There has to be a way to make marines actually look good (without using them as impaled corpses on my archons base).

Here is the problem: HOW? And which of the 19898234 marine dexes out there do I use? DA seem like the obvious choice, and actually I quite like their fluff. Also Termies and Bikes are about as cool as it gets with marines. But what to convert? The out of the box guys look rather flat.
There are also Grey Knights (I know, booo hiss!) who are a lot further away from you basic marine. They do wear power armor, but they are armed differently, have psychic powers and some other mechanics no other army has. They also got uber terminators and a flyer (which is rather expensive though). This would be a bit harder to do - arm mounted weapons, no fists but swords... and I wouldn't have any bikes unless I ally something in.
Feel free to convince me of other marine flavors, these are the two I like most just by looking at them and comparing their fluff (the GK fluff isn't THAT bad... not all of it that is. It's just draigo who's... wtf was ward thinking... but I digress).

Next up: conversions. As I've said before I wouldn't leave them as they are, for out of the box marines are boring and everywhere (no offense please @ all marine players). My current ideas include:

Tzeentch Traitors: would look a bit like the thousand sons do in the fluff, but not with blue as the main colour. They'd be quite colorful as I like to have at least one army that's not in dark colours. Lots of egyptian looking bits, scorpions, glaives like the Tomb King Ushabti carry for Power Weapons for example. And for a Dreadnought or NDK (in case of GK) I could do a fancy conversion from a necrosphinx. Not sure what I'd do with the bikes there, ideas? The whole army could also easily be undeadified a bit. Skull heads/masks, bandaged armor parts like with a mummy... Deathwing is said to have bone(coloured) armor as it is would fit in nicely... that GK char Mordrak with his ghost knights would have a nice skeletal bodyguard ... that's just musing though. GK would be a brotherhood of tzeentch psykers obviously using GK rules... again undead/daemonifying would work well here.

Samurai: This sounds incredibly cool and I'd love to alter the normal power armor a bit to resemble the samurai armor of ancient japan. The battle masks would be incredibly cool. It would be much harder to distinguish these guys in PA from these guys in TDA and the structured samurai armors make it harder to tell squads apart as there is not so much space for squad markings... ideas? Bikes and anything mech would also cause problems. any ideas how to solve that? I could easily see both DA and GK follow a samurai theme... a brotherhood of swordsmen fighting for honor and purity or to gain back said honor because it was lost long ago. Samurai could also easily be interpreted as a silent secret order. The path of the samurai was an honorable path in ancient japan and the secrets in the art of war were not easily given away.

A dark, silent, monkish Order - theme... maybe a secret brotherhood like the Illuminated (you know, the guys who appear in every second conspiracy theory). This is not as defined and obviously I have less ideas for this theme. Still both DA and GK have too "much" on them, especially GK with all the inscriptions and sword icons and books and scrolls everywhere (honesly, who'd carry a book on his frickin' shoulderpad?!) - if you know what I mean. I'd like to make them fit the dark, sinister theme they have going for them fluff wise better by making them look ... well... more vicious if you wish to call it like that. Of course not as flat as a plain ultramarine, but not as bling either. Decorated, but dark and serious, much how you picture a brotherhood of vengeful beings that have retained ancient tech or developed their own psychic warp tech no-one else has. Ideas as per how to actually model that would be handy

Other ideas include doing the minis with LED inside (might do that anyway no matter which army or theme I choose), having a Halo themed army, or deepsea, or aviator / airborne, brotherhood of assassins maybe, but it's hard to picture an army full of supposedly sneaky assassins I also don't have too many ideas on how to achieve any of these ideas (except Halo, Halo'd be relatively easy but also... not very fitting... or would it?). For deepsea something along the lines of this:
http://lol-game.ru/data/guides/Nautilus_AbyssalSkin_Ch.jpg might work. not sure.

Edit: full cyborg might be cool as well... steampunk though idk. you see I'm full of unfinished ideas... gnaaaaaah

Wow, this post got long. I'm happy to discuss any of the ideas or develop new ones together with you. If a mod thinks this is the wrong place to put it... feel free to move away.

Cheers,

Dogmar

Hmmm. How to make marines look interesting.

Tzeentch is going to be one of the best bets with Egyptian theme. Very commonly done, but it almost always look great.

Dark angels could also be done very well, however, if it was me I would deviate away from the established bone colored robes. I think a lot of dark on dark colors and then add some details to the robes wouold make the army look incredibly good, add in deathwing with their feathers and you have an army with some nice contrasts.

I did silver skulls marines a long while ago. They are head hunters, so I put a lot of skulls and trophy racks on them, I also used 2 different colors of metallic to make the helmets stand out from the rest of the armor.

The samurai sounds really cool, but I would do some serious planning on how everything needs to look, lots of sketch work and such. Otherwise I have seen several attempts at this and it looks kinds "meh, not so much"

Samurai Space Marines from a very old white dwarf:

you could always do a sucessor chapter of the dark angels, there are a ton of them to choose from, or you could make your own.

As for GKs, they dont use bolter marines, bikes, or even regular powerfist termies, so your dark vengance box will be useless. They play completely different than the regular space marine variants out there, and require a different mindset to play.

Also... Ward also wrote that they slaughter SoB and spread their blood on them for some sort of super holy armor... yah... thats NOT bad writing at all

I'll be the last to praise wards fluff, really. havent read the GK dex cover to cover yet... is it really THAT bad... I thought although the codex stretches the fluff the only "head vs. wall" moment was draigo...

I'd have to play testgames to see if I liked GK I guess, different mindest from normal marines sounds good to be honest, because normal marines are for everyone . As for different armament, yes, that's what I was referring to when I said "It's going to be a lot harder to do" ... but I think with enough bits and GS (I actually own 36" of GS - picked it up for hilariously cheap) I could do it.

That picture is awesome by the way.

Did some research on Samurai marines after your pic, Mush, must say I'm not too impressed. If I were to do it I'd have to make a lot of changes to what I've seen on the web so far. I'll work on some sketches on that.

I can't Support your claim, that normal Marines(Codex Astartis Marines) are the regular. I rarly see someone with Codex SM. There are only those SW, BA and GK as the normal SM Codex is Not as "Good" as the other dexes. And i think that a well painted Codex Astartis Army with squad signs and markings can Look stunning.

But i guess its each there own. I have a Pre Heresy Emperor's Children Army that i Play with the Codex SM. Loads of Modeling done ;-) and i have a Fenian/Irish/viking themed SW Army. So i World say, pick a theme and just go for it. White scars or Raven guard can be very dynamic.


My2pints,sláinte

Crazy

Good looking Space Marines? Skeptical Raven is VERY Skeptical. As they are modeled I can not truly think of a away to make them look good. But The one Idea I have tossed around in my head is making Medieval Styled armor. Classic Knight, Some thing like this for Jump pack units http://cgenetwork.com/image_upload/images/37AzureKnight.png

Something like this for SGTs https://2img.net/h/i31.photobucket.com/albums/c355/FusionSaint/TemplarKnight-1.png
Without the head wings for normal troops.

In other words making their armor more segmented. and sharper.

As for the chapter/codex I think someone should do Vanilla Marines. I see a lot of Space Pups, Blood Angels, GK and Ultras. It seems no one plays SM. If I every did a GK Army I would HAVE to have them covered in blood, and have some SOB on bases, either models, weapons and emblems or mix of all. Take GKs, and make them look evil, then when new players should up and ask if they are Chaos Marines. Say "HECK no, these are the purest Space Marine chapter the last line between The Great Imperium, and The Daemonic Hoard"

Hmm if I didn't hate space marines so much I might have done both my ideas... Grey knights in Old armor, bathed in blood.

I have always like black templar for that reason they look more like knights. Not to mention they have their squires (neophytes) follow them into battle and play very differently due to mixed armour. Unfortunately their codex is rather dated.

Ultra religious medieval crusading space knights is how space marines were meant to be played in my opinion!

Wow, interesting arguments all the way through

@Crazy_Irish: no offense, really. I've seen beautifully painted Ultramarines and other Astartes Chapters. Sure they can be made look good and it's rather impressive with squad markings and all. It's just not what I see myself doing. I'm a "the further outside the box the better" kind of person and I just need to personalize my marines. That and I think the Armordesign is a bit too flat. The heresy armor marks from FW are very good looking, they have something more knightly to them and less toy-soldier-ish. They cost a small fortune though.

@raven: those are fine pieces of artwork. Having them more classical looking would indeed be cool. Fits both GK, DA very well. Once I get around to do some sketches I'll post them here, I'll include one at least for each of the proposed ideas.

Interestingly you all advocate the nilla marines, believe it or not, I think there is a total of one SW and 2 BA players at the local store, then a few GK and the rest is vanilla. What I do like about the C:SM marines is that you can go either way, you are not forced down a specific route. You could do lots of termies, all bikes, footslogging. pod-army...
DA is an army I've never seen in my area in person. There is someone who uses ravenwing (or ravenguard?) with the C:SM as all biker army. They also have a fluff appeal and are soonishly getting redone, all pros.
Templars are extremely cool but they suffer from an outdated dex and I don't like painting even more black (my DE are quite dark as it is, so are my vampires in fantasy)... maybe a successor-chapter for them but at that point why not play the nilla dex directly?!
Lets put aside the hate for ward for a moment: I really liked GK even before they were redone (they were just not affordable as an all metal army that it was also hard to win with). They have a unique playstyle going for them and some cool unique abilities. There surely must be a way to play a not so broken list with a bit of unit diversity (yeah, they only have 2 kits aside from the vehicles and NDK, but that's what my insane amounts of GS are for.

Before the topic gets lost: Noone commented on the deepsea style armor I posted. The army wouldn't necessarily have to be underwater themed, I just happen to like the armor pattern. It's more segmented and bulkier than the normal marine armor. What do you think? Picture!

Deepsea style armour like this?

There's nothing that hasn't been done yet, is there?! And yes, similar to that, but not so daemonic / cthulu style. I'd stick with just the weathered armor and the light effects. That said, nothing is decided until I finish all the concept sketches

So I think I've made a decision... strangely it turned out to be something entirely different from what I had mused earlier. Thing is: egyptian would be more a GK thing as I could then call them a Tzeentch psyker brotherhood, with cool ghost conversions for mordrak, walking sphinxes (german plural is sphingen, but that sounds just as odd) and all that. Cool thing indeed, but I figured I'd have to rebuild the models I have so massively that they wouldn't have anything in common with the basis any more at which point I could just buy them new entirely - this is a project I plan to finish some day after all.
Same goes with the knightly stuff. The way I'd want it to look would be gorgeous, but I'd spent a day per mini at least for sculpting alone, let alone paint. If I then proceeded to add LEDs to the minis... I'd get 5 guys a month at max.

Getting frustrated I started a top down approach to the army. I looked for colours I'd like to paint and then imagined a theme to go with it. And here goes (without pics for now, printer (with inbuilt scanner) died so no sketches for you):

After having vampires and DE both fully in cold colours save for the purple on my DE which is a bit in between I wanted something warm. Mild browns, full reds and yellows. That maybe with a light dash of green/purple/blue for a contrast. Thus I came up with a deser nomad theme. I'm not too far into the DE fluff but after the destruction of caliban the planed could have become a desert wasteland (it surely has in one way or another) and the remaining DA were forced to adapt to the new conditions, which they did through their superior ancient technology bringing up new armor patterns to deal with extreme weather conditions be it hot, cold, sunny or sand-stormy. Their fortresses lie partly under the endless dunes but they hunt mercilessly for the fallen nevertheless for they may be purged from the galaxy.

Alternatively you'd set that DA company on a desert world because there was old tech buried in the fortresses under the sand that they didn't want the fallen to acquire first, thus they use the planet as a hub for their endless mission to avenge the shame the fallen have brought to the legion.

so much for the fluff, conversions include:
cloaks and hoods on many models, ornamented nomad coats, sometimes something like scarves (lacking a better word) covering half the head, breathing masks for others, helmets with reflective sun-filter vizors. special helmets for ravenwing (a bit similar to the reaver helmets, but fitted to marine style), bone/skull decorated armor for deathwing, not only with human skulls but also bigger skulls of horned animals maybe. I want them quite sinister looking. they could also get hoods with bonemasks. Of course I'm trying not to overdo it with ornaments as it's a lot of work and because it'd look bad. I could also do bone decoration on regular marines and more segmented armor (picking up the traditional armor thing, even though not literally knightly).

Thoughts? Improvements? Criticism? Let me know. Pictures to follow once my scanner does it again.

Cheers!