Cutting that grey tsunami however you like!

My scalpel has not made friends with my minis. I can 100% confirm that in my one and a half years of 40k there isn't a single model that I haven't taken my knife to in some way. 

And I don't mean just mould line shaving, I mean cut cut. (insert questionable prison metaphor here)

Its a great feeling to make a mini truly your own creation. To change its dynamic and really make it stand out. I've made a resolution never to leave a model untouched.

Everyone comes under the scalpel at one point or another. 

All of my Sons of Omega were, shaving off heraldry and squad markings across all of them. The Guard have all had aquila's shaved away, and all have a minimum of at least one change made to them, whether that be with a knife, or if there's only a couple of cuts, more green stuff is added instead.

Some of my latest works in the Sons of Sek in their pre-green stuff stages. Some drastic conversions and some simple repositions.

These boys will be members of the Second major Guard platoon, again mixing in Cadian and Catachan bits and parts, along with some odds and ends from the new Stormtrooper kit.

Personally my favourite is this guy, the Platoon Commander above as he looks like a complete bad-ass. 

To help identify the Platoon in the myriad of bits I own I gave them some boarding shields made from bits from the Chaos Vehicle sprue, to give them a nicely unified appearance and make them easy to find amongst the generic mass of Guardsmen. 

The rest of the squads are coming together too, using as many bits as possible from my much-overflowing bits box.

I've been bulking the many many guardsmen with bodies from the 5-man Cadian snap packs with a few simple steps.

Patronising tutorial time!

Shave off the aquila on the helmet

Smooth over with the flat edge of a scalpel

Repeat with the chest Aquila, and the raised fitting on the chest

Now start working on evening out the irregular chestplate, including cleavage of course 

There are many ways to hide the gaping hole in its chest, but for now, a false armour plate will suffice.

Take a small rectangle of plasticard, and some pliers.

Apply brute force to get a corrugated look, put to one side for later.

Now sever the arm at the shoulder join, use a very solid knife for this

Clean up the cut with finer blades until the mini is armless.
Note the hacked and gouged helmet to represent removal of Imperial allegiances

Now to remove the head, which I've found far easier when its severed from the chin back, rather than from the back of the neck. Again, strong knives are needed.

Pop! Now add some detail and some bits.

Detail added.

And add arms.

Without much effort, you won't be able to spot the snap-pack figures amongst the rest of the guys. 

As well as this, we have a few reinforcements which are in mixed stages.

Chimera with crazy driver

Wyvern/Hydra with Chaos taggage

Shiny, shiny Hades

Some 'counts as' Ratlings

Tempestus Scions, magnetised naturally

Pretty pretty Cyclops, my least converted mini ever, its just perfect.

'Yip yip!' etc

Here's the actual size of the thing, which even I was surprised about.

On to next week, where I'll explain why I have such a Tsunami of grey stuff still to paint.