Following on from the post last week, he is another update to my BA Kill Team. This one takes the form of a minor conversion, rather than a paint job. One of my two tactical Marines in the kill team has been designated as the units comms specialist and while I was digging through my bits box for some chainswords for a fellow club member, I came across my spare Scion bits, including the vox pack. This got me thinking about the Horus Heresy Master of Signals.
There are parts of thus model I like (the pack) and parts I don't (the weird head) but I've wanted something similar for a while, basically since I decided to do a Marines kill team. As the Eagle Knights will be my main marine kill team, I decided that it had to be the comms specialist from that team that got the treatment, although the at this stage I had no idea what said treatment would actually be. It was only on finding the Scion vox pack that I realised I could actually achieve what I wanted, as all the catachan vox packs were no good for what I wanted (despite the fact I have loads of them!)
The model chosen for the overhaul was Brother Rafael Amuto, on the right below. Mostly has it looks like he's holding up some sort of devise to his ear (yes I know he has a helmet on!) which was a knife at one point but has long since been lost.
Brother Rafael Amuto on the right
The idea was simple, cut and splice together a marine pack and Scion vox pack to form a signals pack. It didn't work out quite as easy as that. Cutting down the vox pack and adding on the bottom of a marine power pack was pretty straight forward. The vents were a little more challenging however. At first I thought about just going with one, on the list, as the right has the speaker unit but it just looked unbalanced. So I went with the classic two, but getting them to sit evenly and look right was challenging. For the right one to sit properly on the pack, even with some modifications, meant the left one looked low and having the left one at the correct heigh mean there wasn't space for the the right vent. In the end I had to do some extra snipping and compromise, so the left is slightly higher than the right but not noticably so.
A close up of the pack
As you can see, the pack isn't perfect and if you do look really close you could probably see where the bottom section isn't quite on level but overall I really like the way it has turned out. It looks like a proper pack, not just a guard vox on a marine. The different antennas give it a nice feel as well, although the big speaker probably is not required for Marines, I imagine that it would be used to broadcast messages and encouragement to near by allies or threats to enemies.
Wide angle of the pack
A shot of the front. Nothing has changed round this side.
In case anyone was wondering, he's the fluff for Brother Amuto:
Brother Rafael Amuto is an ebullient character. The youngest of the force, he still rejoices in the Emperor's work and is always Keen to impress his elders with his ability and zeal. Amuto was chosen, not for his combat prowess but for his technical know-how and is relied upon as the main vox communication from the squad to the rest of the company and beyond.
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