Wednesday, 30 May 2018

Knight Armiger Helverin - Work in progress

I'm sure you were all as excited as me to see the announcement of the new Imperial Knights over the bank holiday weekend. In fact, I was so enthralled by the new Armiger Helverin that I just had to have a crack at building one right away. "Madness!" I hear you cry, "the kit isn't even released yet!" Well, this is true, but I've always loved a bit of a kitbash.


So I present for your viewing pleasure, the fruits of my bank holiday Monday.


Autocannons? More like AWESOMEcannons!!!
If you're familiar with the Armiger kit then you'll see that I've just replaced the chain-cleaver and thermal spear with a pair of long barreled autocannons. I've no idea what the Helverin autocannons will do rules-wise but I just tried to make something that looks similar to the images GW have shown off. I think it's been pretty successful.


The GW version for comparison.
So, how did I make them? The bulk of the gun is made from an Icarus Array from the Onager Dunecrawler kit. I sawed the gun shroud in half so that I would have two identical pieces and then fitted the barrels in place. The rear part of the gun is made from a twin linked autocannon from the Ironstrider model. These were cut down and then shaped so that they fit inside the back of the Icarus gun shroud.


A work in progress of the guns.
I was concerned that the body of the guns would be too slender for the Armiger frame, so I bulked them out with some ammo packs from terminator assault cannons. I also added some small servo arms from the kataphron servitor kit (pictured above).


The completed Helverin autocannons.
The final hurdle was connecting the weapons to the Armiger arms. Luckily the bottom of the arm (elbow?) fits perfectly inside the radar dish from an Onager Dunecrawler which in turn connects neatly to the gun body.


So, there you have it. A good use for that second Armiger from your Forgebane box and all those Mechanicus spares that are cluttering up your bits box! I'm looking forward to painting it!



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9 comments:

  1. Unknown30 May 2018 at 09:34

    That is really cool! It looked like a real thing. Well done :)

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    1. Ed OMalley31 May 2018 at 00:31

      Thanks a lot! Comments like this make me even more excited to paint it!

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  2. Mordian7th30 May 2018 at 09:50

    Awesome work! My first thought was "how did he get his mitts on the new kits already?", they're that solid. Good stuff, man!

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    1. WestRider30 May 2018 at 17:37

      That was my thought, too. Very impressive work!

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    2. Ed OMalley31 May 2018 at 00:31

      Cheers dudes! Hopefully I'll have some more progress to share soon.

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  3. Blazmo31 May 2018 at 01:53

    Yeah, great work. It's nice to have the pictures of the official ones next to it so you can compare them. it really is the spitting image!

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    1. Ed OMalley31 May 2018 at 02:20

      That's what I was going for. When it's painted most people will probably just think it's the real deal.

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  4. Unknown3 June 2018 at 04:07

    This is fantastic; I magnetised my warglaives from the forgebane kit in anticipation of alternative loadouts, and I really didn't want to have to buy a whole new kit for the sake of 2 lascannons - feel like I have a good understanding of how to kit bash it now!

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    1. Ed OMalley4 June 2018 at 00:46

      Thanks a lot. It's a pretty easy conversion really, the autocannons look good with the kit and with GW calling them 'Armiger Autocannons' I expect they will have an upgraded profile over a regular autocannon too!

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