Tutorial: Tau Shield Drone Conversion

Considering how useful shield drones are to Tau players, GW don't actually produce many. This is a quick way of knocking together shield drones using parts that should be readily available in Tau bits boxes.

Here are the parts that you'll need: A gun drone sprue, and a shield generator from the Crisis Suit kit. Start by clipping them out and cleaning them up. The pulse carbines aren't required, so toss 'em back in your bits box!

Take the piece that is usually used to mount the guns and carefully trim off the two pegs.

Now cut the tab from the bottom of the shield generator, and file down the bottom of the trimmed down gun mount so that it has a flat bottom and will sit nicely on top of the shield generator.

Glue these two parts together and leave them to dry fully. We need to drill through these two parts before we are finished and if you do it before the glue is dry it will destroy the joint.

All that remains is to drill a whole in the centre of the shield generator for the flight base to slot into, add the antenna, and finally glue the finished shield generator mount into the bottom of the drone.

Here's the finished conversion. It's quick and easy enough that doing several for a list won't be too time consuming, and I do think its worth going to the extra trouble.

Converted Salamanders Stormtalon: Finished

This Talon is converted using drop pod wings, and you can find my tutorial about how to do this here. The tutorial has proved to be really popular, and is by some distance the most-read post on my blog. It is also the top google result for stormtalon conversion tutorial, but that's enough boasting for now!

This model is painted using the same technique as the rest of my Salamnders army - a dusting of yellow spray  over the black undercoat followed by green wash. This scheme is designed for infantry really, and that is where it works best, but it can be applied to vehicles with reasonably good results.

I chickened out a bit and left the cockpit as clear plastic. It would certainly look better with some of the edges of canopy painted like the pros do, but I was worried about making a mess of it and having to try and find a new canopy from somewhere. As far as I can tell this is not an easy part to come by!

Overall I am very pleased with the conversion, but to take it to next level think you'd need to extend the tail really. These two views show how short and stubby the model looks from the side and top - to look really aerodynamic it would want a much longer tail, but that would be getting into more serious conversion work.

As is tradition, I was ably assisted in taking these photos by 40k cat. I am not quite sure whether she is telling me that she prefers the GW version of the Stormtalon or is giving my conversion the seal of approval. Either way, 40k cat bites are resolved at S94 AP1.

Space Marine Stormtalon Conversion Tutorial

There are plenty of people, including me, who aren't that keen on the Stormtalon model, but there are plenty of ideas out there about how to cheer it up with some conversion work. This tutorial explains the conversion work that I did on my mine. It wasn't a huge amount of work, but it did make a big change to the overall look of the model.

The idea for this conversion came from A Painting Chaos. APC took a couple of drop-pod sections and used them to extend the Talon's wings. I was really impressed with the look of this model when I spotted a video about it on YouTube and I decided I would try this approach.

For my version of this conversion you will need:

1x Stormtalon Box
2x Drop pod sections
1x Tau Gun Drone

Body and Chin Cannon

The cockpit and main chassis go together exactly as the instructions in the box suggest. 

The ugly cannon under the chin is one thing that a lot of people really dislike about the Stormtalon, so I decided to relocate the assault cannons under each wing. Because the wings are extended there is plenty of space, but the problem is what do with big circular gap underneath the cockpit where the turret would usually go. 

Here's my simple solution. First, remove the turret pivot with a scalpel, leaving a circular hole.

I was planning to have a look in my tank-bits box for a turret hatch, but I had a Tau Gun Drone to hand, and it fit in the gap almost perfectly.

The underside of the drone is visible when the Talon is viewed from the front, and this might sound like a problem, but actually I think it contributes to the look of the model when viewed from the front by bringing in some extra detail that does not look out of place.

Engines, Weapons and Wings

The next step is to build the engines. Again, these start off being identical to the ones that the standard instructions tell you to build. Instead of gluing the stubby little wings on, remove the tab that they would be glued to using a scalpel.

This step is probably best done before the engine is glued together, but I was making it up as I went along and ended up doing it afterwards. 

Next, it's time to make the custom wings. Take the drop pod section and cut it along the straight line that runs approximately half way up. 

Drill and pin the wing onto the engine in the same alignment that the standard wings would follow.

I chose to put the flat edges of the wings facing forwards, but I suppose that this is a case of personal preference. Because I was having weapons mounted under the wings, I need to tidy up a few bits of detail to make a nice gluing surface.

After much deliberation I decided that the best bet with the weapon pods was next the engines. The parts have been designed to hug the fuselage in the standard design, and this will work just well with the engines for the purposes of this conversion. The assault cannons can be tucked in just next to them and the conversion work is pretty much done.

I have chosen to glue this model up with the Skyhammer missiles, just because I like the look of them. The lascannons or heavy bolters fit in the same housings and would work fine in this conversion. A little bit of work might be required if you think that the weapon looked funny side on. 

That's pretty much it. I really like the change it makes to the look of the model, and its a really quick and easy conversion. The Stormtalon kit is actually really nice, but I think it is best to go off-piste to make the most of it because the standard design isn't as good as it could be in my opinion.

Here is a bonus picture of 40k cat playing a 1500 point game last week. None of us had the heart to tell her that she was more than 3" away from the objective.