Guard Conversion Brainstorms

Ok...well, the pictures ended up heftier than I'd hoped, but what the hell. I've been brainstorming and getting the itch to go Guard. I've been kicking around a few ideas for a conversion-heavy army, and here they are:

Gears of War series: Locust

The Locust in Gears of War are, I think, a fine human-wave type army. I would personally suggest that the Gears would be better done as a Plague Marine oriented army, since Gears just refuse to die from small arms fire. Just repeated flesh wounds, y'know?

The Locust, though, might be done with the Catachan range. The real trick would be mottling up the bodies enough, as Locust tend to be pale, hairless, and have what are almost scales. If you want to do heavy weapon teams you can do two regular guys, or roll with Boomers for the heavy weapons. I mean, the Boomer is essentially a one-man heavy weapon team, and the Boomer would be fine as a two-wound creature.

For Locust Comissars, you could go with the priest types. Vets could be done up to look like Theron Guards. Skorge, boss of game two, could easily do justice for Iron-Hand Straken's statline, as Skorge cuts a tank in half.

Tanks would be up in the air for conversions, but the Locust seem to prefer some kind of mind-control type of helmets on creatures in lieu of something like a gas-belching tank. I think Sentinels, for example, would do well as Reavers on the ground. Other tanks could be done as
other types of creatures, and while the Brumak sort of suggests a Russ, it more suggests a Titan.

I would probably default to the Tyranid range to modify into tanks. The good old Carnifex kit and a heap of scything talons would probably do it. Tap into some Guard bits for the guns and graft a guy onto it...and it's all good. Consider a square base for determining the facings and such, and I think it could be something worth investigating.

The Helghast out of Killzone 1-2

I can't say I'm the one that came up with the idea first, as there are at least a few folks out doing it: go check out Itkovian's Not Yet Done for a look.

The Helghast aren't that intensive to pull off, as the minimum is a head swap. However, swapping up the guns and adding in coats will do the trick nicely, I think. I like them just because the Helghast are basically human-wave types with a super-man complex, as, y'know, they colonized a crap planet, dealt with the radiation, and turned out pretty nasty for it.

Adeptus Mechanicus

What can I say? I've been an AdMech fan since I can remember. I imagine they'd have access to most of the Guard's type of hardware, but it might look different. You get an excuse to throw down a rust-red paint job on everything, though I think they would be a nearly fully-mechanized guard army. Melta-vets in Chimeras, and just pick the rest of your tanks.

I think the AdMech army could get as heavily or lightly converted as you want. On a basic level? Tech-priest converted for company command, and Cadians or Kasrkin painted in Admech colors, tanks in rust-red, cogs for icons, and all that.

Or, you could go all-out and scratch-design vehicles, and pull in a variety of ranges.


Other more minor ideas

-Chaos Guard (as lavish as you want; go check out 7+ to Hit for some renegade guard pics.)

-Adeptus Arbites (boys in blue mobilize!)