Spicing Up the Guard – Lasgun Conversions

By Andrew Johnston | March 26th, 2015 | Categories: astra militarum, Conversion Corner, Conversions, Imperial Guard

Looking for a cheap and easy way to customize your mountains of Guardsmen? Come see this conversion!

Hi My Name is A.J and I’m an Astra Militarum -Oholic. I’m new here on Spikey Bits, but looking forward to showing you all some things which I hope will inspire you all to help Bring Hobby Back!

The ubiquitous lasgun, the most recognizable standard weapon of the imperial guard. Yet, produced on a million different worlds, its not as standard as you may think.

This is the first in a series of tutorials, aimed at creating unique looking lasguns, how to produce the different variants (e.g. hot shot las, long las) and add accessories like grip handles or under slung launchers. Later in the series we will even look into how to create special weapons like meltas or plasmas from the humble lasgun.

First up, I thought I would show you a heavy pattern lasrifle. These weapons are used on my storm troopers as hotshot lasguns. I certainly didn’t design this from scratch, as I have seen a few people on the Internets doing something very similar, but this is my take on how to merge the Lasgun and Bolter to make a kick-ass looking weapon!

For this conversion you will require one Cadian lasgun, one standard space marine boltgun, some plastic rod and a little bit of plasticard, probably about a millimetre thick.

So we begin with the Cadian Lasrifle…

All the areas marked red need to be removed. The sight comes off with a little trimming and filing and the magazine comes off with a simple snip of the clippers. The underside of the lasrifle needs to be smoothed to as flat a surface as you can, in order to ensure a smooth join with the grip.

You should end up with something like this…

You may find it a little easier to clean the lasgun with the barrel sliced off neatly like I have done above.

Next up the boltgun…

This time all the areas marked in red are the areas we want to keep. to do this, first take off the magazine.

Then slice off the barrel and bayonet lug to create a flat front. Its then just a matter of cutting the rest of the magazine port off and carefully removing the grip from the main weapon case…

Remove the raised areas to the back of the grip, and trim the grip down to fit the lasgun…

Then simply glue all the parts together…

At this point you may wish to greenstuff little bits here and there to smooth it all together, however I generally dont bother as I like the modular look of the weapon. Now its just a matter of adding the handle to the top, and a small piece of rod below the barrel.

Now its just a matter of getting it on a miniature. As you can see, the process can work even when using the lasguns with the arms already attached. Just make sure that you replace the hand that usually holds the grip.