What happens when you want an effective anti tank unit for your Blood Angels but Games Workshop don’t sell what you need? Well you need to get kit bashing! That’s exactly what I’m sharing on today’s post, my Devastator conversions. Stay around to the end for the paint recipe card painting guide.


It’s unfair of me to say Games Workshop don’t sell what I need, they do actually, but it’s not quite right. The Space Marine Devastator Squad kit only has 2 Grav Cannons in it, so I’d need to buy 2 boxes. That’s not the biggest problem though, the kit is old and the marines are the older scale (referred to as first born in the lore). The old Devastators are short and squat with weird proportions. All the Blood Angels I’ve painted so far have been the newer Primaris scale (super tall, well proportioned) and the old kit just wouldn’t look right in my army.


Knowing what I wanted to do, I had to source the parts. I raided my bitz box and found helmets, torsos and legs. I also had some Black Templar spares and thought the walking body with tabard would look amazing as a sergeant. A Centurion targeting gubbins, made for a great backpack mounted Signum.


Representing rules with bitz made me realise I needed a Armorium Cherub so I jumped on ebay and bought the one from the Adeptus Sororitas Retribution Squad. Whilst I was on eBay I purchased the 4 Grav Cannons I needed and a Grav Pistol for the sergeant. In total I spent over £30 on bitz to make this squad. Next up, was working out how I was going to paint them.
Why do I keep putting myself through sub-assembly hell? At least I've limited it to a single unit this time.
— Garfy (@Garfytwit) January 8, 2025
I'm pretty excited about my kit bashed Primaris Devastators with Grav Cannons. Motivation is high. https://t.co/Cy97oP34lt pic.twitter.com/4XNbg63RZ2
When I say “how am I going to paint them” I don’t mean the colour scheme, I know my colour scheme. No, what I actually mean is how do I approach painting these in the most efficient way possible. I’d spent the whole of December painting a crazy number of sub assemblies for my Scouts and Assault Intercessors so I decided to go down that route again because I’m a glutton for punishment. I built the guns and backpacks as a single piece and mounted them on corks two paper clips each to make painting the hard to reach areas easier. I kept the helmets and shoulder pads separate from the bodies so I could base coat them all their different colours to speed things up.
How to Paint Blood Angel Devastators


Veteran, Tactical, Assault and Heavy squads in Blood Angel forces are defined by different colour helmets which means my Devastators have to have blue helms. I spent a bit longer helmet and used quite a few layers of blue to get it just right, I’m pretty happy with it. The other areas of the model are just the same paint scheme as my previous Blood Angels. I foolishly decided to sneak in some hazard stripes on the Grav Cannon cables, they came out great but were really hard to get right, I was so happy I didn’t glue the guns to the bodies now.
My Blood Angels have grown to be quite the force, but I’m still short on my goal of 2000pts. I just have to paint a Gladiator battle tank and a Captain with Jump Pack and I’m done, so watch this space.
Garfy
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