Hi all!

Today I’d like to tackle a delicate matter, namely: converting warjacks.

First of, what most of You must have noticed, a lot of warjacks are pretty static and don’t allow much freedom during assembly. I’m sure a lot of PP gamers curses the casting system for it. I don’t actually know who’s fault it is so I’m a no help when it comes to erasing the problem, although I may be able to aid in reducing the pain you must feel. Before I start it is also worth mentioning that not all warjacks make good patients for ‘konvershn klinic’, e.g. cygnaran jacks like Charger or even the Ironclad are unwilling to submit. From my experience I’m compelled to say that Khadoran and Protectorate warjacks respectively are the easiest to convert yielding the best results and the former will set an example in this article. Shall we begin?

I’ll start with the very basis for my Khadoran project - the stamps. I want all of my jacks to bare the symbol of the 5th border legion as well as some battle merits and other stuff. To initiate this process You’ll need a Kodiak, oil (olive, corn or sunflower - whichever) and GS. Of course this works for all the emblems throughout the whole model range, so menofix or cygnaran swan are all fair game. Here’s what You need to do:

1)Rub oil onto the surface you want to replicate

2)Make a ball out of GS, a big enough to cover the whole surface with a decent margin

3)Press it firmly to the surface, making sure You’ll do it on the first attempt, otherwise GS may slightly move and all will be for nought.

4)Wait 24 hours until the GS fully dries. Then just take it off (thanks to the oil it’ll go smoothly) and make as many stamps as you want, following the same guidelines again! Go for it!

Good, now that we’ve got that bit covered I’ll move to the specifics of converting warjacks. I’ll give every warjack it’s own page (apart from the Berserker, which I haven’t converted). So, let’s roll!

Kodiak is doing all the hard work for me

  Some say it’s the best warjack in the game. I don’t care about it that much, I actually put Marauder above everything else, but still, Destroyer is a good piece of machinery and it deserves a proper, awe bringing, pose.

    The first thing that has always been bugging me is the bombard arm. It not only looks like a small barrel with short and shallow muzzle instead of being death bringing barrage, but the warjack carries it so close to his torso that it makes me cry. Unwieldy and funny looking bombard arm, let’s make you better!

I’m no mathematician, but this equation above looks superb to me!

As You can see I used a 6mm diameter copper pipe to give the bombard a real artillery look - I’ve made a second barrel, that in real life would be absorbing part of the recoil after each shot. Cool, isn’t it? Of course it needed some polish inside and out, but overall it’s a good and simple modification.

Here is the bombard after some work on the copper pipe has been done.

As you probably already noticed I’ve sawed off the pistons from the bombard. It’s simply because I’d like the arm further from the warjacks body. I have this image in my head when Destroyer shoots and it makes the inner barrel retract and his bombard arm swings back to absorb the recoil. That’s why this jack always looked so artificial to me, with it’s stupid muzzle and short arm.

    To cut the pistons I used a jewellers saw with medium web (I can’t tell You the web’s exact size, because I’m demented and I forgot... It’s pretty small, but still durable-go figure). Then I drilled three holes in the bombard and two in the torso - I’ve used the old (all metal) GW pin vice, but I’m sure as hell that the GF9 pin vice with wooden handle is much better.

The two holes in the torso are for the 3mm and 2,5mm brass rods that will hold the bombard (two 3mm’s won’t fit into the ‘arm hole’ in the torso), so make them nice and deep, same goes for those holes on the bombard itself. The third, lonesome hole is for a cable/pipe running loose all round the arm. I’ve made mine out of guitar ‘A’ string.

The brass rods were cut so their visible part is about 7 or 8mm.

Make sure you’ve got all the necessary parts ready and that they fit well together, but don’t glue them yet. It’d be wiser to glue the stamps on the warjack beforehand!

Now that the upper body is almost ready, let’s move on to the legs. As we all know, Destroyer’s legs won the contest for the most stupid lookin’ legs in whole Warmachine. Sad but true. Let’s cut them to bits!

    I want my Destroyer to look utterly powerful, like it’s standing on a cliff and raining death on the enemies of the motherland.

1) Cut the left leg off, and then cut it just-below the knee and drill four 2mm holes. You need to know what are You aiming at at this point - you must adjust the drill angle accordingly.

2)Put the pins in place...

3) ...and try different angles for both joints.

4) When you know what you want, glue the parts together. Don’t worry about the gaps you created - we will deal with them later.

5) I assume you already drilled holes to pin the mini to the base, right? Try to fit legs to the base (I used cork for the rocks) and cut appropriate pins.

6) Use GS to fill the gaps and to model some missing parts (like this bolt on the photo above).  Additionally the GS will strengthen the joints, so put a lot of attention to this step.

  Pretty easy, huh? By following these few, easy steps you’ll be able to pose your models any way you like.

    Now, when you’re done with the legs, you can attach the bombard arm. Firstly glue one rod to the bombard and dry fit the other one at the same time. This way you’ll be sure you got it right.

When you figured out the angle, glue the second rod in place and try to fit the guitar string around the brass rods. It is important that you add it - this way the arm will look full and complete (in this model I used only one, but on any later minis I’m using two. One is just simply not enough to make a good impression, though on bombard arm it seems to work just fine). The other end of the string is going into the ‘arm hole’ in the warjacks torso, which, afterwards, should be filled with GS to hold the string in place and strengthen the joints. Same goes for the brass rods glued to the bombard.

And... it’s DONE!

You want a piece of me, boy?

estro_pajo

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Update: actually now, I’d use grey putty instead of GS, because GP holds details better and is more durable. P3 makes some that is good and cheap. Milliput is a good choice also.