How to convert a Squat

Hi all,

I was at the Fields of Blood tournament at Q-Con at the weekend and on the Saturday night Rick approached me about doing an article for his blog, I readily agreed and began planning out my thoughts. Rick then ruined all this by pointing out I couldn't rip the piss out of his performance in the tournament so far... so back to the drawing board.

Now I've always been interested in the Rogue Trader edition of 40k (especially the fluff) and lament the loss of the Squats. For those of you who don't know, they were small, angry and bearded, (so pretty much the Scots in space) and had the technical knowledge that made the Imperium of Man look like a bunch of idiots who can't operate a remote for the TV yet alone an iPhone. Sadly GW have got rid of the Squats, retconning the fluff to state they were devoured by the Tyranids (like a deep-fried Mars bar), but they still have a strong, underground, following (sorry couldn't resist!) on the interwebs.

So for my article I decided I would do a conversion piece (god knows I'm not a painter) on how to convert a Squat from (predominantly) GW bits...



What you will need

Cadian torso
Cadian legs (not the 'running' ones, although any others will do)
Cadian arm set H (the ones with the left hand separate from the lasgun)
Space marine backpack
Catachan Lasgun
Head of choice (I used Pig Iron kolony militia heads as I had some lying around)


Now TKE has questioned my use of any head bar a WFB dwarf, now the simple reason is that I didn't have any and so made do with what I do have. I do have one of the bearded Marauder heads but I'm saving that for a special squat conversion.



Step 1 – The Legs
Take a razor saw and cut the legs apart just below the edge of the jacket. Set the jacket part to one side for now. Again using the razor saw, cut the boots from the remainder of the legs and reattach the boots to the bottom of the jacket. Your squat legs should now look something like this...




Step 2 – The Torso
Using a set of clippers cut off the raised section on the back of the Cadian torso. Using a hobby file, file this flat and also flatten the front of the torso (removing both the pectorals and eagle) leaving you with something that should look like this...





Step 3 – The Backpack
Take one space marine backpack and remove the lowest set of vents, using a hobby knife remove the circular vents at the top of the backpack, placing them aside, and cut the bottom of the backpack square just beneath the three indentations. Take the circular vents and cut the scrap off from where they would have connected to the backpack, glue them back onto the sides, the backpack should now look like this...

Step 4 – The Lasgun
Take a Catachan lasgun, and using a file, remove the Aquila. Using a hobby knife cut the barrel of the gun away from where it meets the housing of the gun. Cut the barrel where it meets the ??? and reattach to the housing of the lasgun. Remove the stock, and you should have a lasgun like this...


Step 5 – The Arms
Using a hobby knife carefully cut away the lasgun from the Cadian arm set, keep as much of the stock of the weapon as you can.








Step 6 – Assembly
Assembly is pretty straight forwards, glue the torso to the legs and then attack the backpack to make sure it sits correctly. Glue the right arm first and use the lasgun to align the left arm. Finally attach a head (in this case I’ve used kolony militia heads from Pig Iron Productions). You can at this point choose to glue the lasgun in place but I prefer to leave it off and paint it separately as it allows me to get at the chest area easily.