Rapier Quad Mortar Conversions

Rapier Quad Mortar Conversion

A brief interlude from my Talos wip's folks. Before Christmas I picked up a couple of Rapier laser destroyers off eBay for quite cheap because they did not come with any crew members and I was confident I could convert up a set of my own when I got round to building them.

Xacheriel had been savaging me in our games of 30k with a pair of his quad mortars, and I was determined to get my revenge and fight fire with fire :D (and because they are really effective at rooting out those pesky heavy weapon squads hiding in buildings and such).

Because I did not want to fork out on 2 more from forge world to get the quad Mortar guns I decided to convert up my own. After a fruitless search through my bits box for anything suitable I suddenly remembered I had bought a long time ago a converted nurgle land raider from eBay which had 2 forge fiend cannons replacing the usual Lascannon sponsons. Perfect! The LR was going to a friend (who wants the normal loadout) so these were good to use and bad the right sort of shape a barrel I was after.

I started out by magnetising the bottom cover to the main gun stand (although later discovered this is completely pointless as the guns slot in easily to the struts on the stand so there is no need to take it out) and then inserted 5mm magnets in the gun tab holes on the stand. I drilled two 5mm holes to either side of the lasers (was trying these out first before moving onto the mortars) and then inserted the magnets (made a bit of a mess of it as my drill was very blunt and was wandering all over the place, but it is hidden when mounted, so I will leave it). It all fit well so I moved onto the mortars.

I first started on the barrels by cutting them down so they matched the stubby length of the original forge world ones (not perfectly but enough) and then sawed off the bottom sections of the stock so I could fit the 1mm plasticard struts I had cut out. The ball joint holes (from the forge fiend attachment) were filled in and I sculpted (fairly poorly) the trim to match the rest of the stock, although I did go round and trim off the chaosy bits, so it now has a more baroque than chaos aesthetic (which fits in fine with my SW's). Finally I used two little pipe plugs from Zinge industries to block off two of the barrels to make it into a quad Mortar. Works well I think :)

Now the guns were finished I moved onto the crews. Decided I wanted them to be in MK3 armour so I purloined a few from my Prospero box set. Not much conversion work needed on them really, apart from a little repose on the gunner legs, a few arm tweaks and the signal packs on them (used Zinge industries again for the Baden of the antennae). Really quite pleased with the whole thing, although the guns might not fit into the plain aesthetic of the heresy as much, they work for my army nicely :)

Also been finishing painting up a plasma long gang squad to use both in 40 & 30k. Didn't want to purchase the Heresy cannons as I am a cheapskate and had these ones already. I actually used some already painted models that I had languishing at the bottom of my display cabinet to make this squad. I just ripped off the arms, heads and backpacks and replaced them with the plasma cannons and Heresy heads. Incidentally I have done this with quite a few marines now, to make a missile long fang team and a vulkite culverin squad, but these still need to have the additions painted yet. It saves me painting up whole new squads, and also a ton of cash as I dont need to purchase anything but expand my options for the army nicely. Anyway here are the pics :)

NafNaf