Wolf Scouts Conversions

How to make Wolf Scout conversions: My Wolf Scouts are made from Space Marine Scouts and Chaos Marauder Horsemen. I've seen a lot of Wolf Scout conversions online, but I believed I could make my Wolf Scouts better -and cheaper!

Before starting my Wolf Scout conversions, I looked online for inspiration. Half of the Space Wolves players seem to favour the look of the metal Wolf Scouts from 3rd edition, with their bald heads, short beards and bare arms. Meanwhile, the other half seemed to favour the original Space Wolf Scout Sergeant miniatures from the tail end of 2nd edition, who were essentially wearing stripped down space marine power armour.

As I already had a box of Scouts and some spare Scouts leftover from my Necromunda gang conversions, I went for the former. I'd recommend you do the same for your Wolf Scouts and follow my simple conversion guide -because it's a lot easier than I thought!

You Will Need:
1 box of Space Marine Scouts
1 box of Chaos Marauder Horsemen
Collection of Space Wolves accessories

Note: I've used a pair of beastmen arms, a pointing power fist and a space marine left hand from my bitz box in some of my conversions, but you can get buy with just the basic components shown above.

Sort Your Bitz Out
These conversions use a lot of components, so it's best to get a nice clean surface, cut off all the parts you need and organise them.

I glued the Scout legs to their bases and then the Scout bodies on top of their legs, all facing forwards.

I then organised piles of bitz:

Marauder Horseman bare heads

Marauder Horseman right arms

Marauder Horseman left arms

Space Marine Scouts combat arms

Space Marine Scouts pistol arms

Space Marine Scouts belt accessories

Space Marine Scouts heavy bolter shoulder pad

Space Wolves knives and wolf tails, 1 power axe, 1 powerfist

Note: You'll probably notice that the left Marauder Horseman arms don't have shoulders. Don't worry, because we're going to use the shoulder pads from the Space Marine Scouts.

Basic Wolf Scout Conversion
My first Wolf Scout conversion was relatively basic with a Marauder right arm (wielding axe) and a converted left arm, along with a Marauder Horseman head.

The biggest challenge was the left arm.
The Scout left arm which you will take the shoulder pad from will dictate the position of the Marauder left arm when you stick it on. So baring this in mind, I took the left arm from a set of Scout shotgun arms. This would help the left arm to face directly forwards.

I cut the Scout arm just under the shoulder pad, then trimmed and cleaned the component with a knife.

I took the Marauder left arm and used my knife to create a flat edge along the top of the clenched fist so that a pistol would neatly sit there.

With all the components cleaned, I glued the Scout shoulder pad in place, followed by the Marauder arm which glued to the underside of the shoulderpad, fitting perfectly.

Once this was dry, I cut a silenced pistol from a Scout right arm and glued it into the hand.

I used a similar technique for getting weapons to sit neatly in (or on top of) hands for the other models whether it was a pistol or an axe.

Two Handed Axe Man
I liked to have a variety of weapon options at my disposal. So for the days when I couldn't afford a powerfist for the squad, my pack leader would need a power weapon instead. I saw this as the perfect chance for some double handed axe-tion!

I took the Marauder Horseman flail arms and glued them together. Because there is no left shoulder pad yet, the left arm only just touched the side of the Scout body. That's fine for now, so I glued it in place.

It's too difficult (for me anyway) to trim a Scout left shoulder pad to perfectly fit this gap. So I padded out where the left shoulder should be with some Green Stuff (aka: modelling putty). Once dry, I took the loose shoulder pad from the Scout heavy bolter model and glued it over the shoulder -perfect.

Now I needed to get the head of the Space Wolves power axe on to the end of the pole held in my Wolf Scout's hands. In a similar way to fitting the pistol to a hand in the previous example, I chopped the top off the flail, just above the right hand. I then cut the right hand at the top, creating a perfect flat surface.

I then took the power axe from the Space Wolves accessory sprue, cutting the axe head off, just above the grip. After making sure that this was also a flat edge, I glued it to the end of the fail pole held my the right hand.

Finally, I stuck the Marauder Horseman head on to the body in a direction which would give the most ferocious pose.

Melta Gunner
This conversion was very difficult and I had to used a Space Marine left hand which normally supports a boltgun held in the right hand. As you can see, it now supports the melta gun.

For this, I took the right arm from a pair of Marauder Horseman flail arms.
I cut a Scout right hand away from the boltgun it normally holds.
I then had a mad panic in trying to get the model's left arm right and ended up blending parts from 2 Scout left arms, a Marauder left arm and a space marine left hand!

It went something like this:
Having trimmed off the lump on the wrist, I glued the Marauder right flail arm into place, then glued the right Scout bolter hand to the end of the wrist stump.

I needed the left arm to be facing forward, so once again, I used the left Scout arm for a shotgun and trimmed it offer, just below the shoulder pad, trimmed it down and glued it into place.

I glued the Marauder left arm into place and was about to glue the space marine left hand on to it, but realised that the arm was too short and I couldn't bring the melta gun closer, because of the detail on the model's chest.

So I cut the wrist guard off the marauder left arm, cut a slightly longer wrist guard from a Scout left arm and glued it on in its place -then glued the space marine left hand on to the wrist stump.

Once dry, the melta gun taken from the Space Wolves accessory sprue fitted into place perfectly.

FINISHED!
I'm really pleased with my Wolf Scout pack. I've created a group of very individualistic and feral models. Each model seems to have his own character and story from the raw ferocity of the pack leader to the old veteran with massive brawny arms to the arrogant young pup with a mohawk and dual pistols.

These Wolf Scout conversions took me a few hours to make and considering they were done on the fly, I'm very happy with myself -and with them.

It's important to note that even though the Marauder Horsemen left arms look very difficult at first, you can put them to good use with a little conversion work and forward planning.

It is possible to convert 9 Wolf Scouts (providing you have 9 scout models) using the arms and 9 bare heads from the Marauder Horsemen. There are 5 left shield arms (referred to throughout this article, simply as 'left arms'), 5 left flail arms and loads of right arms.

Even so, I still struggled to use all of the arms effectively and made quite a few mistakes as I went along. Using a couple of beastmen ungor arms on a Wolf Scout made life much easier, but only as a one off. Otherwise they'd all look like a mob of Orks.

I suggest that you only use 1 Marauder Horseman box per 5-7 Wolf Scouts.
And I wish you the best of luck if you want to give one of them a melta gun!