The ability to infiltrate with heavy weapons has always had a great deal of appeal to me. With two squads doing you can set up a cross fire from the very word go. of course, the only problem with infiltrating is your usually closer to the enemy, so the best option is to take long range weapons and set up from afar. So far my scouts have met with mixed success, mostly because this one guy has a long range weapon, and the rest are armed with bolt pistols and knives!
What you will need;
Fortunately the preparation of this model is fairly simple, but time consuming. The existing shoulderpad of the marine scout needs to be cut down to accomodate the shoulderpad of the missile launcher. This is easier than trying to cut the pad out of the missile launcher shoulder.
File down the shoulder area shown in red in the picture on the left. The shoulder needs to be made small enough to fit inside the missile launcher shoulderpad. Be careful to avoid removing any detail on the Scouts breastplate as you are filing, however you may need to trim the greandes. Another technique you could use here is to scrape the metal with a knife. This will give a bit more control, but take a lot longer.
Not all the missle launcher components are required for this conversion. The neccesary parts have been highlighted in red on the sprue to the right. Only a small modification needs to be made to the launcher. The shoulderpad is a marine pad, and therefore has a border edge. This needs to be removed, and the whole pad made slightly smaller so as not to appear too out of scale with the left scout pad.
The left arm is not required, but the hand is. Cut the hand off just behind the wrist leaving you with a glove looking hand. The 3-pack of missiles and the heavy bolter stand (not shown) are also used in this conversion, but require no modification.
The first step to assembling this conversion is to check that all has been trimmed OK. This really applies to any conversion. Tack the left hand on the model using a small piece of Blu-Tac™ and try to fit the Launcher Shoulder. If more trimming is required, now is the time to do it. I had to do this several times before I got the fit just right. Once all is trimmed up, glue the left hand in place. The left hand is the best starting place because it will help hold the missile launcher in place.
Once set unless you're an expert painter, I'd advise you paint the breastplate and any other spots under or close to where the missile launcher will be going. If you've put together a Marine with missile launcher and then tried to paint it, you'll know why. It's a right paint to try to get to the detail around missile launcher.
Once the missile launcher is set you can add the metal stand to the front of the missile launcher, and glue the 3-pack of missiles onto the back of the scout nose down.
Thats it! You now have a Space Marine Scout ready for painting. Your figure should look like the one below. I have coloured in red the new pieces so you can clearly see where each piece has gone. Larger pictures and different angles (like rear) of this scout can be found in the gallery section.
