VIIth Legion WIP: Forge Lord

Master of the Armoury

So i got this idea that i wanted to run a big guy in with my shield wall......now I'm talking a big big guy. Of course there is the contemptors, which I am in the process of building but I also wanted something a little more....different. So I came up with the idea of having the 32nd's own pet robot. A Castellax battle Automata to stomp along with the shield line but he is another post for a different day. However, to field said Castellax i need the right HQ to field him and I settle for a Forge Lord consul.

I envisioned him with the typical servo arm and artificer armour. Since his duty involves commanding the companies techmarine cadre and overseeing the companies war machines in action, especially his pet Castellax, he would be close by to his pet, in the front line. Being so i imagined he would relish being in the thick of it so take up a boarding shield and join the shield wall. This gave me the benefit of having another choppy character in my breacher squads and also adding a little extra story to the army overall.

Given that i had decided to arm him with a boarding shield, practicality would suggest arming him with a melee weapon which wouldn't suffer from the presence of the shield such as a specialist weapon like a power fist or lightning claw. 

  

I however decided to go with the power axe as it is loosely held as a totem of office within the mechanicum and I am trying to tie in as much story and fluff with my army as possible. Given he is also a ranking techmarine I had to make him look a little higher up the ranks of those versed in the Omnissiah so I added some mechandrites as well. Ideally I would have liked to throw in some bionics but when I came up with that idea I was too far into the project to pull it apart and add them.

So with that vision in mind I took a simple MkIII marine and added a few techmarine doo dads. I had a box of 40k Marine Centurions lying around (which i hate and think are abominations) so I took a fair few parts from that kit. Namely the head and some of the struts which I used in building the servo arm. I added a few other bits using polyurethane sheets and used that to build portions of the servo arm and power axe. Teeth from an old chainsword were used to make the teeth in the servo clamp and the power supply from the chainsword went towards the power supply for the power axe. (no sense in wasting good bits eh)

Once completed painting was the same process as painting my breacher squads (with red instead of course). I painted the boarding shield yellow as I imagined that the Forge Lord wouldn't necessarily have one as part of his standard kit. When he decides to join in the shield wall he'd grab a standard shield from the armoury, of which he would oversee. Finishing touches were then the weathering and dusting and spent bolter casings on the base.

Hope this guys supplies you with conversion ideas for your own legion. 

Servo Arm Detail