Thursday, April 14, 2011

[The Rogue Trader] - Cheap Knights



With the high price of the Grey Knight Strike Squad box I wanted to see if I could stretch the value a little bit.  I'd made a basic strike squad, Justicar with Daemon Hammer, Grey Knight with psycannon, three Grey Knights with Force Swords.  This left me with a good range of option pieces, part of why the set is so expensive.  So I gave some thought to what I'd need to make a second squad out of this set.  A couple of eBay purchases later I was on my way.


To let you know how much this second set of Grey Knights costs, I bought a set of 6 Space Wolf terminator stormbolter arms for $6.50 of which 3 were needed.  I also bought a set of 10 tactical space marines (the basic combat squad box x2) for $17.50 of which 5 were needed.  So $12 for the bits to do this particular kit bash, and another $12 for the bits that will allow me to do it again.  I did also raid my bits box, but only very basically for a couple of SM bare heads and a couple of extra bits for the Justicar and special weapon knight.

The issues I was going to have were how distinct the Grey Knight armor is.  Firstly, the helmets, the easiest problem to solve.  As I mentioned I used bare heads, it gives the squad a consistent look and simply gets around the helmet problem.  Next is storm bolters, and the reason for the SW termie purchase.  The Grey Knight set comes with five and I had one of those left.  Having removed the storm bolters from the terminator arms, cleaned up the SW logos, cut the back off to shorten them, and moved most of the ammo clips to the side, I had a good copy of the needed weapon.  For the chapter logo on the shoulder I had two options, get better with green stuff, or paint it.  I'll be taking the second option.  Lastly, the armor itself with the writing, psychic hood, and Liber Daemonicum.  Not really anything I can do about the writing and the hoods I'm ignoring because of the bare heads.  I could GS some Liber Daemonicums, but for something so small that will disappear behind the arms I decided it wasn't worth the time.



So here they are, at $12 + spare parts for 5 they compare well, 1/3 the cost of the regular Grey Knight box.  We have a Justicar with Force Halberd,  Grey Knight with incinerator, and three Grey Knights with paired Falchions.  190 points if we master craft the Force Halberd.  And of course I have enough left from the eBay purchase to do the same again when I get another Grey Knight Strike Squad box.  And yes, there are some differences between these and how they'd look if they were straight from the box.  Once painted, and by keeping them all in one squad, I think the differences will look minimal on the table and I'll still have $24 for beer.

Marcus

8 comments:

  1. Good article and ideas :-) doing something similar myself trying to stretch the funds a bit... A short while back I saw that someone had posted a "tutorial" on converting regular SM Terminator helmets to GK style ones, but I cannot remember where that was at this point...

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  2. Very good idea!

    With all the money I need to spend on gas for my car I could learn well from this!

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  3. I am planning to do something similar. Convert regular Marines to be my Strike squads and use the box set for my Purifiers.

    I also intend to use Maxmini miniguns as my Psycannons. http://www.maxmini.eu/store/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=12&products_id=123

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  4. Pretty awesome, Red. I'll probably be picking up a box of these guys for some conversions of my own. I like the ideas you've put in here

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  5. Yeah, I'd thought of doing something similar, except maybe using Dark Angel Veterans as the base model, and mixing the parts up a bit to make a more cohesive squad.

    Although, I was stumped on the Storm Bolters. So I do have to thank you for that!

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  6. I love the Dark Angel Veteran squad models, used them for a lot of things. Now you mention it though, I think I may pick some up to use as purifiers.

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  7. It is my opinion that you will thank yourself later. I always appreciate my models I work on like this more than "out of the box." And the beauty of conversion... If your on the fence about it head down to your local battle bunker and wait for the inevitable

    "how did you do that"
    "what parts did you use"
    "whats their story"
    "how can I do that"
    "wish I thought of that"

    It perks me up every time. And I save money for more models.

    Working on something myself.

    pewter Grey knight arms
    plastic dark angels.
    makes cool grey knights

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