This is another attempt to come up with a squad automatic weapon for the Imperial Guard plastics. In a previous Stupid Bitz Tricks entry, I showed how to turn a vehicle heavy stubber and some leftover bitz into an Aliens-style smartgun, but not everyone has ready access to the vehicle heavy stubbers. So, this conversion needed to use cheaper and more readily available bitz.

This time around, the trick in this particular conversion is actually to make everyone else’s guns smaller, then build up the squad automatic weapon from a standard lasgun. This is the result:

By shaving down standard lasguns into carbine-length weapons, the squad automatic weapon version of the lasgun suddenly looks much bigger and more substantial.

Construction

The following photos show the bitz used and their configuration. (Click the photos to see them at full size.)

Design

For this conversion, I thought a more contemporary look to the weapons would be nice, as well as making it an easy conversion. So, most of the troopers would have carbine-sized weapons, and the squad automatic weapons would be full-length, with some extra bitz added to make them look different.

To start with, I dug out my lasgun bitz and separated them into two piles. All lasguns on which the left hand is completely behind the front sight hump went into the carbine pile, and all lasguns on which the left hands were slightly forward of the front sight hump went into the SAW pile. I took a lasgun from the carbine pile, then shortened it by carefully cutting off everything forward of the front sight post, then sliced off the muzzle and glued it back onto the shortened lasgun. The winged skull motif on the side of the lasgun was also shaved off.

I also shaved off the “sight tube” that runs through the front and rear sight humps. (When I get more plasticard, I’m gluing a strip to the front/rear sight humps to form a carrying handle like the one on the Aliens pulse rifles.)

For the SAW, I chose a lasgun that had an attached bayonet, then carefully removed the blade and trimmed the rest of the bayonet a little so it would look like some sort of gas tube. The original magazine was shaved off, and I needed something that looked like it had a very high capacity to replace the original magazine with. I found some leftover flamers in my bitz box, and there was a portion of the flamer that looked like it would make a good high-capacity power cell. That portion was sliced out and shaved down a bit, then glued to the bottom of the lasgun’s magazine well.

I had a lot of leftover Space Marine Scout bolt pistols and a couple of heavy bolter bipods, which I didn’t use on the Scout heavy bolters because they looked too goofy to me. I sliced off a bolt pistol targeter, shaved its bottom flat, then glued it to the upper right side of the lasgun receiver. The heavy bolter bipod was simply glued to the front of the lasgun.

Conclusion

I like how the Cadians look carrying the short carbines, and the squad automatic weapon is kinda interesting. The main appeal to me is how different the carbine/SAW pairing looks, and it lends a nice contemporary feel to an Imperial Guard squad.

Next time, I’m going to see if I can convert the winged skull motif on the carbine to a single-winged skull rather than shaving the whole thing off entirely, and I’ll be looking into alternative bitz for the SAW’s high capacity magazine and bipod.