Space Wolves: Combi-Weapon How-to-Tutorial!

As you know by now, I am not much of a player of 40K. So when it comes to making lists and prepare squad building, I go to blogs that make a living talking about tactics and strategy. With my new Space Wolf project, I have been visiting The Space Wolves Blog, which is a wonderful resource for all kinds of tactics but also modeling tips. Following their advice I am building a squad of 5 with 3 terminators carrying Combi Weapons. They have a tutorial about making them, and it inspired me to create a Combi Weapon myself. Here's the tutorial on how to make them. First the end result:

I actually made two different ones, the one above faces the melta gun inwards, the one I photographed for this tutorial faces out, it's up to you what look you like better.

I started with the BA Deathcompany Melta Pistol. You all should be able to get that one at the bitz stores or on the Barter Bucket.

make the cut

Grab a bolter (not a storm bolter!) and with a knife flatten one side as much as you can. do the same with the melta pistol.

Glue them together

I always add plastic tube to my bolters, looks tighter then drilling out holes:

Glue them on

At this point I wanted to hide the two pieces-look by giving the gun a full top cover. For that I found in my extensive bitz box this piece: i believe a bolter cover for a pintle mounted gun of a Chimera or Rhino. maybe a reader knows...

This piece has some stuff in it that needs to be removed, not easy

Then throw it on

Looks hokey now,but remember, when painted the two color look of gun and cover will look cool

Also, cut the back a little closer to the back of the gun

Almost there..now find you Termie arm, cut off the storm bolter

and glue on your new best friend

I did some greenstuff on the back, not very good at it but it will do when painted. Now we need to resolve the power supply to the melta gun. Like so, using some Dragon Forge Power Cable, possibly the BEST bit in the 40K universe. EVERYONE should have a baggie of pewter powercables from Jeff at Dragon Forge. It's cheap and I have used them in all my armies

Now add a little cover between pewter and plastic, looks neat and clean. make the cut...

add it on! When you kitbash, always give yourself lots of angles and lines, so painting will be fun.

It's done!

And here is our hero, wielding it!

Other side

here the other variant, with the Melta part on the inside and the bolter on the outside. There I ran the existing powercable over his inside arm. Looks cool as well.

A closeup. You see this cover also had a great gunsight. I only had one of those.

Hope this inspires all you Space marine players to get out the knife and glue!

Mike