Conversion Corner - Space Marine Operative

The Happenin' Habber stands next to her newest Space Marine friend.

For the second installment of Conversion Corner, I decided to focus my attention on converting a Space Marine operative. I have been exploring the design for Space Marine weapons, namely the bolter (True-Scale Marine, Elder One Othalanga; Primaris Marine) for a while now. For this marine I wanted to delve even further into creating a sub-machine gun (SMG) variant of the bolter (and challenge the commonly perceived size of such a weapon). Additionally, I wanted to experiment with equipping a marine with one of the Genestealer cultist shotguns. Since their release, I always thought they would work perfectly on Space Marines, particularly the Primaris-scaled Marines.

Primaris Space Marines: First Impressions

Hope is a mistake.

Over the years, we have become increasingly critical of the miniature design of Space Marines, and the discrepancies between them and much of the artwork. Many of the awkward elements of their anatomy, and diminutive size compared to other human models in the game, pushed us to begin converting some “true-scale” Space Marines. To our surprise, shortly after creating some of these larger marines, it was revealed that Games Workshop was releasing a line of new larger Space Marines, called Primaris Space Marines. Many were quick to claim that GW had finally made their own true-scale Space Marines with the models, and we were eager to get our hands on some to make our own judgement, and to see if they corrected some of our issues with Space Marines. Mr_Pink (from the excellent Modern Synthesist blog) generously provided us one of the new marines, and wanted to tell you some of our thoughts on the quality of them, and their place next to their “normal” brethren.