Assaulting a Cannon

Enough to strike fear into the Emperor’s enemies!

WARNING….INCOMING GW POST….WARNING….INCOMING GW POST….

For the sheer joy of blasting assorted gribblies to atoms the venerable Games Workship board and miniatures game Space Hulk has a lot to commend it. It is one of my favourite games and as you might expect, I have a long and rather convoluted history with it - but I will save you from the tawdry details!

Anyways, I have a copy of the 1st edition of Space Hulk (released in 1989) along with Death Wing and Genestealer - the two expansions - and a copy of the campaigns book (courtesy of the esteemed Mr Fox). The figures are a mixture of assembled and unpainted, partially assembled, partially painted and unassembled and none of the above. The base game include the Terminator marines with the option to make a flamer (two figures out of the ten) but it was not until the expansions came out (as well as articles in White Dwarf) that other weaponry became available, sadly not in plastic for this version of the game. 

Purely for the sheer mayhem they can cause - think ‘Ol Painless’ from the film Predator - I wanted some assault cannons and badly!

In my previous set up I converted a few using weaponry from the original version of Adeptus Titanicus which sufficed but I now wanted something a little more aesthetically pleasing. The problem was that the original model did not lend itself to heavy duty conversion, simply because the pose was quite ‘compact’ - no limbs to easily reposition or amputate. I decided that this was not going too stop me, especially as I had seen the latest version of a terminator assault cannon on eBay and reckoned that with some careful pruning I could just about get it to work. I will let the pictures do the talking….

The base model and the soon to be added assault cannon

The finished model

The view from the front….

….and from the side

I was quite pleased with how he turned out so now only have to think about painting him and the fifteen others I have, a further two of which (possibly three) will be similarly attired. Painting troops in power armour is well within my modest artistic ability so I will enjoy tackling these in due course. I realise that the weapon is suitably oversized, as befits a GW miniature, but it does mean that there will be no confusion over what he is carrying!

Space Hulk is great fun to play in an ‘Aliens’ kind of way - the game can be played using any suitable figures if GW are not to one’s taste - and over the years I have had some truly memorable sessions. It has a good balance of tension and suspense, especially if using the first edition and a timer. It really puts the pressure on the Marine player in respect of their decision making in the face of an alien onslaught!