Centurions are one of those all too common Games Workshop ideas that are cool conceptually,
but terrible in execution. An armor powered space marine strapped into even more power
armor? Badass. The actual model? Terrible, blocky and chubby. Thankfully there’s a
few guides out there for converting them into a cooler, primaris form. The first half of
this build owes greatly to the guide by WhatThe40k and is mostly just applying what he’s trailblazed,
but in the second half I think I add a cool twist on it.
The first step was to give my centurion better legs. For those I chose this primaris marine.
I split his legs at the knee, then sawed off the knee actuators from the original centurion
legs. I glued them to the thighs of the primaris marine, then snipped off the shins of the
primaris legs so that when I glued them to the actuators he didn’t suddenly jump in
height. The connection was a little wonky, but not too noticeable. As a side note, it
wasn’t a problem in this build, but if you’re trying to replicate this build you want to
pick primaris legs that are spread fairly far apart or there won’t be enough space
for the armor plates and actuators, and your centurion will also look weirdly slender.
I harvested the stilts from the original legs, scrapped them clean, and glued them to the
bottom of the new ones. For the feet I snipped off the sides of them to give them a less
bulky and cumbersome look. To make sure both his feet would touch the ground I applied
glue to the balls of his stilts, placed them on his feet, and pressed down lightly.
With the basics of his legs in place I cut off the primaris’ torso. This was made easier
by the fact that half of it lifts off. This is the torso portion of a normal centurion.
It’s by far the most problematic part of the centurion. Not only does it turn his silhouette
boxy and fat, but… where exactly are the marine’s arms? There’s no way with a chest
that wide they could reach all the way to where the centurion’s arms start in the
original, and also they would be blocking the firing mechanism of his rocket launchers.
I read somewhere that the arms are actually crossed over the chest, but that’s an equally
lame explanation. The idea behind centurion armor is that the marine wears it like an
outer shell, not that he’s piloting it while hugging himself.
The easiest way to fix the chest is to simply slice off the missile launcher portions to
narrow it to roughly the width of a normal marine or terminator. I also scraped off the
decorations from the chest, which I did for all of the centurion’s armor. I like the
simpler, powerful, more utilitarian plate steel look the centurion has without them.
To elongate the waist of the centurion a touch I used greenstuff, though I later replaced
it with a sheet of plasticard. I tend to like more truescale proportions to my marine’s,
and the longer waist helps bring his torso into line with how long his legs are.
Speaking of legs, I decided to finish them by attaching their armor plates. Because the
proportions and stance of the centurion’s legs are different now though, they have to
be split into separate pieces. This is pretty easy with a sharp enough knife. I sliced off
the toe of the marine within to make room, which is a bit of a cheat, and glued the plates
on separately. To cover the portion of the legs left bare
thanks to the centurion’s increased height after crossing the primaris rubicon I scraped
clean the arm guns of a primaris aggressor and used those as armor plates.
The crotch armor I also split into separate plates and glued in place so they sat more
organically on the legs than when they were fused. This is also as good a time as any
to mention that I’m not including the side pistons that go along with the legs from the
original centurion. They’re kind of wonky looking to me, and in the internal logic of
the model we can just assume that the powered portion of the legs is under the armored front
portion. Up till this point I’d mostly been following
the design laid out by WhatThe40k, but I don’t love the original centurion mitten hands.
Even if you carve in fingers like he does, to me they don’t really fulfill the original
centurion idea of power armor. A better way of expressing that idea to me was to use terminator
arms, specifically the ones attached to their weapons. I’ve always really loved the terminator
chaingun, so for his right arm I decided to leave it essentially untouched as a replacement
for the centurion’s original bolters. Because the torso is narrower than the original, the
shoulder pistons are now a little too long to fit the original pauldrons, so I snipped
off the ends so they could sit closer. For some reason terminators don’t ever carry
guns in their left hand, so to make one I had to cut up a flame thrower and splice it
with a normal left arm. The only real problem is that there isn’t an easy way to replace
the left hand. And as I didn’t want my centurion to be some mutant filth with two right hands,
I simply covered the offending hand up later with greenstuff.
For my centurion’s left arm I wanted to give him a power fist that pistons out like
the one the hulkbuster uses in Age of Ultron, or the one in Pacific Rim. The flame thrower
arm works kind of perfect as a base: the fuel reservoir becomes a pneumatic canister, there’s
already a hose linking it, and the three bars look passably like pistons.
My genius design though was foiled by the very simple problem that I couldn't find a
fist that didn’t look dumb. This one looks too much like an excavator, this one like
one of those puppet toy boxer arms, and this one like a brick.
After a lot of iterations, I eventually found the sawn off breach of an ork canon that had
a good silhouette and mostly worked. It’s not perfect, a little too plain and non techy
looking, but that does make sense for what’s essentially the head of a hammer.
And with his power fist in place my primaris centurion was ready for combat. I’m very
pleased with how he turned out, and I think he really fulfills the idea of space marine
power armor that’s worn more than piloted. Now that I have the basic idea worked out,
I’ll be making a few more centurions than are a little more ambitious and match specific
space marine chapters, so subscribe if you’re interested in seeing those when they come
out. And if you have any specific chapters you’d like to see represented, and suggestions
for what the centurions themselves would look like, let me know in the comments below. Thanks
for watching. I’ve also recently launched a patreon, so
go check that out if you want to contribute to the channel and get a say in what I convert
next.