Converted Redemptor Dreadnought

This one's not a pregnought!

So there's a few things changed compared to a normal Redemptor:

• The belly is gone. Look here for some more pics about that topic.
• The casket is replaced with a Contemptor alternate head
• Extended the waist by ~4mm. Padded the space in between with various bits.
• I'll Burn You pose™
• Did I say bits? Black Templar bits everywhere.

I found some chains on Ebay to hang the sword with. It's the sword of the Templar imprisoned inside, I guess. Bass strings visually pad the empty space in his lower back. A WHFB Empire Steam Tank shield is his codpiece.

Overall, this is probably my favorite GW kit I've ever assembled. So many bits, so nicely thought out! And it's posable like no other model.

It sucks that it normally comes headless, as having a head is kinda necessary to express intent or attention at any particular thing. With just the casket, you can make the model stand as cool as you want, the model will look like it's looking at the sky and is being bored by it.

The base is a random bit of plasic I've been using to pose him. The actual base should be bigger and look better, one would hope.

Anyway, here's are all the pics! Thanks for taking a look.

Converted Fellblade!

Finally!

This was a large project. I though that the Fire Raptor was tough, and in many ways it was, but not close to this. This kit is fundamentally flawed; things just don't fit and you have to be creative.

Let's take it from the top. This is a long story, and I took a lot of pics along the way.

Fitting the turret

The turret shell came in warped into an egg shape. Here are a few pics that show what I mean by that; there's a bulge on the turret's rear right. Compare the shape of the turret with the circle that's cut into the turret platform.

Now, pretty much all resin that came in this kit was warped in some way, but the turret is the problem. It's a thick chunk of resin and you can't really heat something that thick from the inside.

So I drilled a few holes along the edge that needed to be bent inwards:

After the pic was taken, I expanded the holes a little bit and made it one continuous hole. With that, I could heat the wall that was bulging out, push it inwards, and finally sand the bottom back into a flat surface. Here's what the bottom of the turret looks like now, you can see sanding marks:

Fitting the front of the hull

The front of the hull on Fellblades is generally bad designed. A quick google search will show you numerous problems with how the front plate fits with the wheel platforms sticking out.

I don't want to link to people fitting this wrong because that's poor form in the hobby. But feel free to look at any random Fellblade online, likely you'll see that something's wrong.

I really took my time with this and I think I figured it out. The top of the tank is too short for this to fit properly. The bottom of the tank is plastic and is therefore consistent in size, while the entire upper side is made in resin, and I believe, has shrunk a bit. So to fit the front upper plate, you have to move and rotate the front vertical plate a bit backwards, and then nothing fits anymore.

Anyway, I padded the front plate with some plasticard that I believe is 1.5mm thick:

With that, the front plate could comfortably reach to sitting above the front vertical plate, so it didn't have to be pushed back, so the wheel mounts sit flush on the model:

Converting the "small" weaponry

By small, here I mean the twin heavy bolter/flamer.

As discussed here, I decided to de-twin the weapon that's normally mounted on the front plate and house them in additional turrets, for cool reasons. Since 40k Fellblades may optionally take an additional heavy bolter/flamer, I decided to use the default weapon mount to house that additional weapon.

Some dremel work and presto: all magnetized, reversible heavy bolter/flamer.

The sponsons on the side were a lot more work. It took not only a lot of manual work to install, but I designed and 3D printed turret mounts as well. Let the pics do the talking:

After some dremel work:

I intentionally designed the door-shaped sponson inserts in two parts: the inserts themselves and the sponson guards. The reason is to be able to sand the insert perfectly flush with the side of the tank without the guard getting in the way, after filling all gaps with Milliput of course. Holes that pin them together were printed too, so after the sanding was done, I could just pin the guards onto the inserts and have a perfectly symmetrical fit.

Needless to say, all small weapon options are magnetized:

Finishing touches

The tracks come with Imperial eagles all over. Those are from the Drop Pod kit and look great. Alongside all the other bits I threw around, they really make this Fellblade more of a 40k model than a 30k model.

Was it too much? I don't think so. Remember that this is not only a 40k model, but one of a Black Templars-descendant chapter. Moderation is not welcome.

I drilled the main guns and all the exhausts:

That's it!

Some glamour shots:

Getting up to this stage took about 6 weeks. It's not the only thing I worked on, but considering I had to wait for 3D prints etc, it's about ok. I'm not going to start painting immediately, I want to get my airbrush-fu to a higher stage first. I might basecoat it first just to be able to see any surface blemishes or seams that I may have missed.

If you're still reading this, thank you. Hope if was interesting or useful!