Jetbike Autarch Conversion, Round 2

After my Autarch fell apart when I was trying to enter a contest a while back, I figured I could do better, and redid the conversion. I've had this one in the works for a while. I think it's close to done, but I need to do some more greenstuffing.






What's different about this one from the old one is pretty evident, I moved the gun to the underside, and magnetized it. I can swap it out with a Reaper launcher if I wish. I put the Dire Avenger camera thing on the hood, and put a shield I found in an old bitz box up there too. I had to round out the edges to make it look better, and it was very tricky getting it to stay on the curved hood.

I also replaced the wings with that weird symbol thing that comes with the Dire Avengers. I cut off the staff and such, and just kept the shape. I filled in the details with greenstuff, but I want to go over it and create new detail on top.

If you look carefully, underneath the wings there's a round bit from a grav-tank. I stuck that underneath because this jetbike is missing its wings (that's why I had to create my own). I stuck that bit under there to make it less plain, as there's only a piece of plasticard covering the gaps.

Autarch Tragedy

So I was working on my autarch for Way of Saim-Hann's contest. I used Armory black primer, and it destroyed my model. It came out looking like he had ridden straight through a black, sticky snowstorm. The model was covered in powder. Not to mention, it wasn't black but a dark gray. So I'm never using Armory again. It did the same thing to my Scorpions, but not as bad. It didn't powder my vehicles, but I did have to go over them in black because the basecoat wasn't actually black. And while I was holding it one of the flags broke off. So no contest for me.

Basic Autarch Conversion

I am just getting into the conversion side of the hobby. I enjoy making little tweaks on the models. This is my first piece that I'd truly consider a conversion. A few extra bits, nothing drastic.

The first thing you'll notice is the wings on the jetbike are handmade. I got a bunch of bikes from a trade deal, and one of them was lacking on the wings. I decided to take some plasticard and create new ones anyway. The rest of the bikes were really messed up and didn't have enough riders, nor enough arms. Someone tried some really weird conversions and failed. They're all fixed now but it was a nightmare. Anyway, I used plasticard and green stuff to recreate the missing wings. Looking back, I think I could have picked a better shape, but at this point meh.

Here, I just swapped out his normal arm for a Shining Spear arm. I figured that as an Autarch he was once a Shining Spear and would opt for the same control scheme as he used before. I had to do a lot of filing to get the shoulder to fit in his socket.

I also had to raise where the control actually sits. If I kept it where it's supposed to go, it's too short, or rather on a different angle. So I had to move it towards his body and set it higher.

This was the easiest part. I took his fusion gun, sawed off his hand, filed that smooth, sanded off the bump on the other side, then set a pin in it. I then drilled a hole on the jetbike canopy, and set the gun in with epoxy.

I considered magnetizing it so I could swap it with a reaper launcher, but that is not happening. I would have needed a mounting and way more work than I was willing to do. Possibly, I could have mounted the gun underneath and that would have made magnetizing easier.

I also switched out the tip of his spear. This was the trickiest part. I happened to have some High Elf spear people laying around, so I chopped off one of their spear tips and drilled a hole in the top and bottom, then inserting a pin and gluing it together. The hardest part was getting the drill to bite on the small points.

Finally, I added the tail stabilizer/thing that Shining Spears have since the box of Shining Spears I bought came with 4 models instead of 3 plus a bunch of extra controls and tail fin things.











Not terribly complicated, but it makes a slightly lackluster stock model unique and more befitting a command position.