Kitbashing in Bulk: Heavy Stubbers

One of the most important considerations when kitbashing, for me anyway, is scale. This probably comes from being a lifelong Guard player: having just one of anything simply won't do. Even having two is barely enough. I like everything in at least triplicate, because:

1. The first one will be blown up by incidental shooting before your first turn,

2. The second one will do its job adequately,

3. The third one exists to suicide charge, ineffectually, into a hive tyrant.

I also like things to be fairly uniform (probably also the Guard player in me...), and when you combine those, you end up looking at extra bits on sprues a little differently.

Sure, I could just buy a single real heavy stubber on ebay, or trade for one from a friend. Or...

I could make eight from leftover stuff from the Age of Darkness box, a rhino, and chimeras.

Parts list: one chimera lasgun, one Warhammer 30k pintle boltgun, one-half of one cataphracti combi-bolter, and the pintle attachment from any 30k vehicle

Here's where we get into scale. The Age of Darkness box comes with ten cataphracti terminators, each with two lightning claws, a power fist, and a combi-bolter. Each of those combi-bolters has two big ammo drums, and are not necessary to build your terminators if you opt to give any of them lightning claws. Age of Darkness, or a single box of cataphracti, therefore nets you up to twenty surplus big ammo drums.

Every chimera comes with six lasguns. If you look at any of my tanks, you'll notice that they're all built on a chimera chassis, and not one of them has a lasgun popping out the back. My tanks aren't usually run as chimeras, and when they are... eh. Those lasguns are ugly, and in several editions, didn't have rules anyway. Bits sellers almost always include the lasguns in the same order as the roof components, so I'm drowning in extra chimera lasguns. I use them for anything I can think of.

Every 30k vehicle (including the one in Age of Darkness) comes with an accessory sprue that holds four pintle-mounted boltguns, which most vehicle builds simply don't need or use. Each sprue comes with two of those little stands to pintle-mount weapons (I guess that makes it the pintle? what the heck is a pintle, anyway?), typically unused. That makes the pintle the limiting factor, but also the one I'm most confident in being able to find a substitute for--it's really not much to look at. I have enough for my current project, but I'll probably start looking for a substitution if I get more ambitious.

First thing's first, chop off the barrel of the boltgun so that the front is as flush as you can with the sight. Then cut off the ammo feed, and pop it in your bits box to glue to something the next time you need a random greeble.

Not shown in this picture (I forgot until right after taking the photo)--also chop off the little blippity-bloop that sticks out, as shown in the red box above. This guy will get in the way of the ammo drum.

I should probably replace my hobby knife blade.

Next, chop off the ammo drum from the storm bolter, and cut the big ball off of the chimera lasgun.

One small detail that really sells the gun as a stubber, and not a las-weapon, is to chop off the sloping front of the lasgun barrel such that it lacks that trademark angled-tip.

The next step is assembly, so before that, this is a good time to clean up flash and mould lines.

Stick the ammo drum where you removed that little bumpy-boop earlier such that it's opposite the shell ejection port on the other side.

Simply glue the barrel extension directly onto the front, and bam, you're done.

Hold off on gluing the pintle(?) to the gun until you're ready to stick it onto the vehicle, because you'll be comitting to a specific angle. You'll attach it over the big circular hole in the boltgun.

The finished product should look something like this. The one in the picture also had a handle attached from my bits box, but I don't know what it's from and couldn't find any more.