When I started working on my Imperial Fist Space Marines I decided that I wanted to include Lysander and a unit of Terminators armed with Thunderhammers and Storm Shields. I was reading through the book and I came up with a nasty and ineffective list - Lysander, 30 TH/SS Terminators, and a few units of Scouts with teleport homers. I didn't figure this list would do well on the table - too slow - but I figured it would be fun to play. Being the impulsive shopper that I am I set about figuring out how to accomplish this list in the cheapest way possible.
Six boxes of Assault Terminators would set me back $300. That is just too much to spend for a goofball list. I had set of Black Reach Terminators laying around and I figured that those would work with a bit of conversion work on them. I started asking around on our forum and came up with the following bits for the hammer and shield -
The Hammer from MaxMini.eu
And the shield that I used from ChapterHouseStudios.com
I am glad that I went with the Chapter House Studio shield. Max Mini sent me a few of theres as a freebie and they just didn't 'pop' for me.
These bits ended up costing me about $4 a model for the hammer and the shield - add this to the cost of the Terminators off of ebay - about $3.5 a pop - and I didn't end up saving too much money per model but it did add up since I was doing thirty of them. I think if I add it all up and I ended up saving about $80 to $100 converting my Assault Terminators out of Black Reach models - not too shabby.
It was a bit of work doing the conversion work on the Terminators. I started off by cutting off the bolter and using that arm for the Storm Hammer. I cut the hammer in two and pinned it in place. This was going to take forever. After doing this on two models I decided that my Assault Terminators would be hodling their hammers in a Powerfist. This worked out nicely. One of the fists on the Black Reach marines is slightly open. I bent the thumb just a bit and the model would practically 'hold' the thunderhammer.
The other pose had a closed fist so I just cut the hammer handle in two and used my power drill to bore out a hole the two bits to go in - worked like a charm.
The shield was also easier to attach to the other hand. The backs of the shields have two slots for a hand to go between and I just cut down the hand to fit in there and glued it in place.
And here is the model painted up and dipped -
I decided to go with bone and black on the shield and a Boltgun with Shining Gold on the hammer. Other than that I painted this guy up like the rest of my Imperial Fists and am happy with the way he turned out. I have more bases on order from Iron Halo and they will be here the middle of January (shipping out form New Zealand). Once they arrive I will be able to finish this unit up.