Image from the Black Library
In the end, it may have been just as easy to buy one... but I wanted to see if I could could build my own plastic Eversor Assassin. Besides, I had most of the bits and it was the challenge that really drove me on this project.
I have to be honest though, I did cut a few corners knowing that this guy was going to reside in my display case and go no further. Had I been doing it for someone else, I might have added a few more things to finish him off.
That's it there on the right.
But it has that "old" feeling to it. You can tell because the pose isn't that dramatic. They hadn't perfected the dynamic poses they can get today.
I thought I could do something at least as good as this with the right bits. Well, that was the idea anyway.
A breakdown of my assassin conversion
Obviously it took a few bits from a couple different places to make this guy. Before I started, I knew I wanted to keep one thing from the original model... and that was the slightly over-sized skull head. In fact, that was the only bit that I purchased for this model. The rest I scavenged from my box.
The main part or the body of this guy is an Eldar Guardian figure I think. Whatever the basic troop model is. Nothing fancy and most of the gems were shaved off the model as well.
1. The lamp from an Apothecary backpack. The lamp itself is cut clean from the actual backpack and mounted on a short stem made from greenstuff.
2. Space Marine Scout bullets. These are the tiny bits you add as shoulder straps to Scouts that most people don't bother with.
3. Skull icon from the top of a Space Marine plastic banner pole. I cut the front half off so it would lay flat against his chest armour.
4. Your standard Space Marine bolter scope.
5. Standard Space Marine bolter with the muzzle cut off and moved to the top to allow for the needle conversion underneath.
6. The needle is made from a single crack missile that's had it's nose cone and rear fins cut off.
7. The Chaos Warrior skull that I bought. I had to cut the neck portion down considerably to make it fit in the tiny Eldar neck opening.
8. Sheathed sword from Space Marine Scout set as his powersword.
9. Plastic curved bit (I think a shield of some sort) used to extend his backpack over his shoulder. I added a greenstuff button to the front as well for texture.
10. Eldar guardian arm that has the pointing finger. The finger has been cut off in this case, but it gave me the positioning I wanted for his trophies.
11. More Space Marine Scout bullets... this time trimmed down to represent combat drugs. A pair of greenstuff cables completes the illusion.
12. Standard Space Marine pouches. They comes as three in a row so I cut two away.
13. Don't know what this one is or where it comes from. I've had it for years knowing I would use it some day on a model. This just happened to be it. It's glued to his hand and some greenstuff added around his fingers makes it look as though he's actually holding the hair.
The base comes from Dark Art Miniatures. I bought a handful of them a while ago and I've been trying to use them up as I find a need for them. In this case, it made the perfect ruined warzone type base for this guy and gave him a little bit of height as well.
All in all, he's not in a super dynamic pose. I think the biggest part was just seeing if I could do it with an Eldar body as the base and working up from that. I'd call this a success in that respect. If I had (or built) a more dynamic pose to begin with, I bet I could build something really dynamic like the picture at the very top of the post.
As far as painting, I think I'm going to stick with the standard color scheme.
You can see what the finished model looks like here.
Make sure to check out these posts as they might help:
Conversions live and die in the details
Conversions: Can you "see" the end result?
