This is a fairly light-touch conversion on the Space Marine Captain in Gravis Armour in that only 2 parts were changed, but I think they add a lot of Dark Angels character. I switched the head and sword for ones from the Dark Angels Inner Circle Companions kit. It’s otherwise quite a busy model so I decided against having any more trinkets dangling off it.

Head Swap

Let’s start easy. There’s minimal work to do with the head beyond slicing the contact point down a bit, just so it can fit into the gap under the armour’s hood. I chose one which was reminiscent of the Lion’s head as I thought it worked with the rest of the piece. Any others from the Dark Angels Upgrades (very highly recommended for making your space marines more like Dark Angels) or Inner Circle Companions kit should work just as well, or perhaps something from the older Deathwing Command Squad. I haven’t tried fitting one of the new Deathwing Knights heads through that gap but expect it shouldn’t be a problem with the same trimming.

Weapon Swap

Swapping the sword was more fiddly. Fortunately there are 6 swords for 3 models in the Inner Circle Companions kit so if I messed this up, I could still build my squad. In addition, should this go horribly wrong on the gravis captain part of the kit, there are still the chainsword and power fist arms to fall back on.

I used a hobby knife to (slowly and carefully) separate the Companions’ sword from its hand. Since I didn’t intend to use the blade from the captain kit for anything else, I used clippers to chop that off at the hilt and cleaned up the cut with a hobby knife. This left me with an arm with a clenched fist and a blade with cross guard.

The contact area between the two pieces was quite large so I didn’t feel the need to pin them together, instead just relied on plastic glue. It took a little more precision trimming to align the two pieces so the hilt looked vaguely in line with the rest of the sword. Perhaps not perfect, but more than serviceable for my basic conversion skills.

And that’s it! Just two pieces swapped and a characterful captain is ready to lead the gravis marines.

Painting

The green armour uses my standard approach to Dark Angels, although the extreme highlights on the armour look a bit washed out on these photos.

The sword blade is worth a comment as I think that turned out quite well. I base coated the whole blade with GW Abaddon Black. Leaving the top third of the blade (below where it tapers into the tip), I built up lots of thin layers of GW Caliban Green – more layers closer to the script and the tip. Then did the same with GW Warpstone Glow, followed by GW Moot Green. It follows the same process as shown in my blog about painting armour on Salamanders. Finally, the bit that sets it all off is a couple of very watery coats of Vallejo Yellow Green (this stuff is essentially liquid magic) painted over the script. This just pools in the recesses and sets off the glow. The blade was edge highlighted with GW Moot Green, then again with a thinner layer of Vallejo Yellow Green.

The cloak is pretty simple, although I think I went too heavy with the shade. Base coat with GW Ushabti Bone then add layers of GW Seraphim Sepia into the recesses and areas in shadow. The more in shadow, the more layers. Highlights are just thin layers of GW Screaming Skull built up over the raised areas. I also used this as an edge highlight on the hard edges of the cloak.

Feel free to drop me a question/comment or direct me to any Dark Angels conversions you’ve done.

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