Forgeworld's latest Legion Heavy Weapons Kits

I don't know about you, but when I am shopping for a Lascannon and faced with the choice of one that I can mount on my shoulder, and one that I can carry low-slung like that nutter off of predator - I'm a low-slung kind of buyer!

So when I saw the new kits coming out recently I put all the Lascannons I had on ebay and sent Forgeworld some more of my cash. When they arrived I was a little surprised that building them would require some serious resin bending as the long cables attaching the back-pack to the weapon are completely straight. I must admit to feeling a little fazed at seeing this, but after Dave's affirmations on the power of the hairdryer (yes I mean a real one, not the thing guardsmen shoot with) I thought I'd give it a go and take a few pics along the way to share my technique.

So armed with: pin drill, glue, thin brass rod, and a mug of coffee I was off!

Stage one: Looking at how the cable attaches at both ends I decided to pin them. There is going to be a fair bit of pressure and I reckon they need more than just superglue. The cables are just about wide enough to accept being drilled but be careful doing this as its all to easy to put the drill out the side of the cable. You can see the length of pin I left outside of the lascannon cable mount in the pic

Once done I glued the Lascannon and back-pack in place. At this point it looks pretty weird! Make sure you put them on the right way round and think about how they look once you put the bend in the cable.

Stage two: Bending the cables. I had made this extra difficult for myself by deciding to re-purpose
some already painted tactical legionaries, so I had to cut off guns and reposition arms first and then hope the hairdryer didn't boil off the paint job or melt bits of them....urgh!

This pic shows the first heat up...

So what you need to do here is grab your marine, the lascannon and the hairdryer. As each marine's
pose will be slightly different I bent the cabling onto them and kept them together so that I would have a solid fit; I had to paint my Lascannon separately so this probably won't be an issue if you are doing it from scratch and can just glue them straight on after the bend.

With the hairdryer positioned close to the model I started the heat up the cabling, being careful to heat it evenly. Then I positioned the back pack and folded the cable around so the Lascannon would line up with the hand positions. See the pic where the weapon has had its first 'fitting' around the model...

At the first try it probably won't all line up perfect so with the cable wrapped around the model you can bring it into the airflow again and keep it warm whilst you finish it off.

Its not a tricky as it sounds, you just have to be bold and trust the resin not to break under the bending.






There you go, simple eh! Now make ten of them and blow those traitors/loyalists back to the Eye/Dead Emperor they came from!