I love my Tallarn Desert Raiders Imperial Guard Army. I will never sell it.
BUT, when GW made these guys, they decided to NOT include flamers or heavy flamers as part of the weapon loadouts.
After many ebay purchases, I have obtained quite a number of Tallarn Desert Raiders. The main box came with a Melta guy, so I have plenty of those. I also have only 2 Plasma guns, a single Grenade Launcher, and assorted heavy weapons.
BUT no flamers! Thus with all my spare time with COVID, I decided to change this with a little ingenuity. I shall explain my process below the pics. I present; 3 flamers & a heavy flamer WIP. I was encouraged by original Ogryn Conversions (here and here but they've since been rebased) and am getting more comfortable with green stuff in general.
Process Regular Flamers:
- Purchased several flamers + 1 heavy flamer Imperial Guard bitz, including Gas Tank backpacks from ebay (pretty cheap).
- Took 3 existing melta guns that I had purchased (the red paint job is old), and sawed off the Melta bit.
- Also had to grind their backs a little bit to remove the head covering ends etc. to make way for the gas tank(s). Not too much is needed if you're cool with a "slouched" diagonal look to the gas tanks.
- Took 2 flamer gas tanks, and cut them in half, carving them down so that they looked like a single tank backpack. This is to help differentiate the heavy flamer from the regular flamers on the tabletop from a distance.
- Cut off the flamer "flame" bits from the original flamer arms and glued them onto the end of the cut down melta guns. Now the melta guns looks like flamers
- Took 1.5mm jeweler's wire which is very flexible, and cut it down to the right length
- Drilled shallow, roughly 1.5mm holes in the end of the gas tank as well as the bottom of the melta gun. I found the part where the other piping goes in looks logical.
- Glued the wire into the gas tank and the melta gun
- Hey Presto! Instant Tallarn Flamer dude
- This guy was neat because he's actually an older missile launcher guy who was missing his missile launcher arm. I had nothing for him to do...
- Had to grind down his shoulder a little bit and bend his holding arm, but eventually got it to a good place where it looks like he's holding the Heavy Flamer with both hands. But it's a great look
- Grind his back a bit to accommodate the flamer tanks.
- Glue the double gas tanks onto his back. I keep the double tanks since he's "heavy" so will need more gas, and at a distance I'll be able to easy tell he's the heavy. I'm not a HUGE fan of the heavy flamer weapon model, but that's ok. I think it would look better if it were more horizontal instead of vertical.
- The piping almost fit, but needed a bit of hot bending, and I broke it a bit so will have to fill in with Green Stuff eventually
- Also, since he's supposed to be holding a missile launcher against his head, I'll need to Green Stuff the side of his head to fill it out a bit. Otherwise it looks a bit flat.
- Hey Presto! Instant Heavy Tallern Heavy Flamer dude.