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.

Introduction

I’m a firm believer in the old adage “waste not, want not”, so when I carve up something for bitz, I’m always looking for something to do with the leftover pieces and scrap. The sentry gun from Stupid Bitz Tricks #2 yielded several useful pieces that I decided to put to work filling another hole in my Imperial Guard roster: the lack of squad automatic weapons. I had a pintle mounted heavy stubber in my bitz box, and I’d always wanted to find a way to make it a handheld weapon system. However, it wasn’t until after doing the sentry gun that I realized I could convert the heavy stubber into something that looked like an Aliens smartgun. This is the result:

Construction

The images below show the bitz used and their configuration. (Click the photos below to view them at full size.)

Design

The main parts used are a spare set of Cadian flamer arms and the heavy stubber from the Imperial Guard Vehicle Upgrade sprue. The flamer was sliced apart in two places so that only the rearmost segment with the handgrip and the sling remained attached to the arm. The heavy stubber’s barrel was shortened by clipping out everything between the muzzle and the ventilated shroud, then gluing the muzzle directly to the shroud.

Next, the upper surface of the heavy stubber was shaved clean of all large protuberances (the lever-looking thing and the sight hump), and the rearmost end of it was squared off so it could mate nicely against the flamer’s handgrip. The bottom was also shaved flat, then glue was applied to the front of the flamer handgrip and the front sling swivel on the right flamer arm, and the heavy stubber was then pressed into place. The ammo drum was the ribbed section of the autocannon barrel that was left over from the sentry gun project, which was shaved flat on both ends and then glued into the notch on the bottom left side of the heavy stubber.

The sighting system is a Space Marine targeter that was left over from the sentry gun also, its front end having been sliced off to serve as the sentry gun’s sensor lens. The front of the targeter was sanded flat, and the targeter was then glued to the upper right side of the heavy stubber, above the ejection port. The next step was to incorporate the visual suggestion of a waldo system, so I rooted through my bitz box and found the lascannon barrel that was left over from the sentry gun project. On the bottom of the barrel, there’s a long rail–the frontmost, tapered section was sliced off.

The lascannon barrel rail segment was glued to the bottom of the heavy stubber, directly in front of the flamer handgrip, so that the flat end was flush with the heavy stubber’s receiver and the tapered end of the rail segment was pointing to the left side of the heavy stubber. This is what gives the visual suggestion of a waldo system. The next step was to add a vertical handgrip on the side of the weapon, in order to make it look more like an Aliens smartgun, and I used a leftover autocannon ammo drum handle for this purpose. The ammo drum handle was cut so that only one flange remained on it, and glued to the lascannon barrel rail segment.

Conclusion

If you happen to have leftover heavy stubbers from Leman Russ or Chimera kits, this is one way to make them man-portable. It’s also not a particularly difficult conversion, and it follows the same basic Aliens-inspired theme as the sentry gun.

One other fun thing you can do with the Imperial Guard Vehicle Upgrade Sprue is to use the tank commander parts to make a junior officer with upraised hand and binoculars, which would be a good stand-in for Lieutenant Gorman. You could also just use the tank commander’s head with the Cadian sergeant bitz to make a more heroic-looking lieutenant, so long as you remember to shave the sergeant stripes off the chainsword arm.

I think the weapon is a bit large, however, so I’m going to shorten the flamer handgrip and the heavy stubber body the next time I perform this conversion. I figure if I shave one or two more millimeters off the overall weapon length, it’ll be snugged in a little closer to the body and look a little less oversized.

Introduction

I’ve wanted a couple of the Forge World Space Marine Tarantula sentry guns for a while now, because I’ve had a thing for sentry guns ever since watching the director’s cut of Aliens. In that movie, there were a couple of scenes in which the Marines deployed some UA 571-C sentry guns and used them to fend off the xenomorph onslaught. However, I have some problems with the Forge World Tarantula models, namely the facts that they’re too expensive at the current GBP-USD exchange rate, Forge World doesn’t deduct the 15.5% VAT for overseas customers, and I’d actually like something a bit smaller anyway. So, I decided to check my bitz box and see if I could make my own.

The Prototype

I found enough of the right bitz, and this is the result:

It’s small, looks the part, is surprisingly easy to make, and can be made solely from leftover Cadian and Space Marine bitz.

Construction

The next two photos illustrate the bitz used and where they go. (Click on the pictures to see them at full size.)

The Design

I chose to use Cadian heavy weapon bitz because I wanted the sentry gun to be plastic and fit in seamlessly with my GW plastic figures. The main body of the sentry gun is a lascannon with the entire barrel removed, and mounted on a tripod. The front half of the sentry gun is a heavy bolter with everything behind the ammo feed/ejection ports removed. I took a Cadian grenade launcher arm and removed everything except the drum, then cleaned it up to serve as the ammunition drum for the sentry gun. The drum was glued to the feed port of the heavy bolter.

At this point, the sentry gun looked a little unbalanced, so I added the muzzle brake from an autocannon to lengthen the barrel. I also sliced off the carrying handle from an autocannon ammunition drum and glued it to the top of the lascannon body. Next, I needed some sort of sensor cluster on the left hand side of the sentry gun in order to balance out the drum and make it look more like a sentry gun, so I rescued the grenade launcher’s barrel and shaved it down to serve as a large sensor housing. The rail along the bottom of the grenade launcher barrel makes a nice mounting point, so I applied glue to the bottom of the rail and attached it to the side of the lascannon body. The targeter from the heavy weapon sprue was glued above it, along the angled portion of the lascannon body.

I liked the way it looked, but it still didn’t quite say “sentry gun” to me yet. I decided it needed two more elements: some sort of control box that would make it look like a remote weapon system, and the sensor I made from the grenade launcher barrel really needed a lens in front. I went through my bitz box again, and found a Space Marine targeter and a baggie full of spare voxcaster backpacks. I sliced off and glued the front of the Space Marine targeter to the grenade launcher barrel, and it finally looked like a proper sensor. I cut off the bottom half of a voxcaster backpack and removed the long antenna from the top. To form the control box, the bottom half of the voxcaster was glued to the right side of the lascannon body, behind the ammo drum, and the antenna was glued to the control box to finish it off.

Conclusion

You can make a sentry gun out of one $13 heavy weapon team box and leftover bitz from a box of Cadians, and still have enough bitz left to make a missile launcher team and a mortar team. Use the kneeling legs for the mortar team, and the missile launcher bitz work with regular standing Cadians pretty nicely. You’ll use the included 60mm base for the mortar team, and the sentry gun will need a spare 40mm base. If you buy the $35 heavy weapon squad box, you’ll get 3 sentry guns, 3 missile launchers, and 3 mortar teams out of it.

I’m thinking about using the leftover sandbags and stuff to set up a sentry gun control station, with some sort of scratchbuilt command display, a communications unit, and a couple of kneeling guys on a 60mm base. One of those could control multiple sentry guns, and it’d look pretty cool on the tabletop.

Looking at the completed sentry gun model the next day, I think I’ll do it a bit differently next time. The heavy weapons sprue has two autocannon drum carrying handles, so the next sentry gun will have two carrying handles on the top of the body, along the angled bits of the lascannon body, which would make the sentry gun look like it could be carried by a couple of guys. The smaller targeter from the heavy weapons sprue would be moved up top, between the carrying handles and close to the front. I’ll probably leave the larger sensor on the left side of the sentry gun exactly where it is to visually balance out the drum on the right side.