Space Marine Casualty Markers

Today's project is a little How-to for creating cool Space Marine casualty markers for 40K. These can be used as objective markers for the new 40K 5th edition missions or as Sacred Ground markers for Cities of Death games.

For parts I dug through my bits box and found the following items:

1 Space Marine head
1 Space Marine right arm
1 Space Marine left arm
1 Space Marine backpack
1 set of Space Marine legs
1 set of Space Marine Biker legs
2 shoulder pads
1 Space Marine torso
1 Boltgun

The exact parts that are needed depends on your plan for creating the model. Most likely you will have to design your model based on the parts that you have available. For my first marine I wanted leg positions that are a little more relaxed than the standard standing marine legs. This is were the Space Marine Biker legs come in. These legs have a more relaxed foot position relative to the lower leg.

After some visualization I decided to make a hybrid between the biker legs and the standard legs. I first cut the right biker leg off at the hip joint and threw the rest back in the bits box.

Next I did the same thing with the standard marine legs. This time I kept the left leg and the lower torso.

Next, I glued the two legs pieces together. I think this gives the desired relaxed look.

While the legs dry I assembled the torso and the backpack.

After everything has dried it is time to attach the torso to the legs. Because of the awkward shape of these pieces I needed to support the legs while the glue set.

The left arm that I selected is an old school marine arm with the flat hand. This one look very strange and just will not work as is. The answer is to take a sharp knife and carefully separate the fingers.

I also needed to needed to modify the shoulder in order to get the correct angle.

The right arm also needed some work. The normal firing position of the arm was all wrong so I cut the arm from the shoulder mount. I then glued the arm back together in the 'correct' position.

Then I glued on the boltgun.

With the arms complete it is time for the final assembly. I added a grenade to the 'relaxed' left hand as I was not completely happy with how the fingers looked.

For basing I used a spare 40mm square base and covered it in FIMO modeling clay.

Then if mashed the marine into the still soft clay. This will leave an impression that will be used to mount the marine to the base once the clay is hardened. To harden the clay just leave it under a lamp for a while. No need to bake in an oven...in fact this would be a bad idea as the plastic base would likely melt.

After you glue the marine to the base it is time to paint and flock.

Here is another one I built at the same time with the extra leg bits. I have plans for three more of these.