As you can probably tell from some of my previous
builds, I’m often inspired by video games I play, and I happen to have been playing a fair amount
of helldivers 2 recently. In particular it really reminded me of killteam, with it’s
small squad completing various objectives, and even more so given the killteams
I most often play against are necrons and tyranids. Plus helldivers and
40k are kind of spiritual siblings, both taking inspiration from starship troopers,
giving it a lot of potential for conversions. The idea I decided to go with, was making a
killteam of helldivers I could use in game. There were a few potential kits that I could start off
with. I knew it should be imperial guard based, given that there are direct similarities
between their main armour style and helldivers, both being loosely based on the mobile
infantry of starship troopers. While cadians or scions would work, kasrkin
were the ones most resembled helldivers, plus they have a dedicated killteam
box, which tend to come with a variety of options and extra bits which are
perfect for customising and converting. I made sure to check a few things first,
like making sure I could build them all with the full face covering helmet
options, and that the armour had close enough spots for the yellow trim of
the helldivers black and yellow scheme, and it all seemed to have exactly what I
needed, so I picked up a box and got to work. I started simple with the first one,
built with a fully covering helmet option, and some modifications to the gun, to make it look
closer to the default weapon of the helldivers, the liberator. I couldn’t bullpup
the rifle to fully match the look, but I could at least remove the
wires, which works given these guys most won’t have backpacks. And I
also cut the front of the gun short, then gave it a smaller muzzle by drilling a hole
in the front to glue in some paper clip wire. Still keeping it relatively simple for the
second, I made the same changes to the gun, as I would for most of these, but went
with the grenade throwing arm options. It gives some variety with the poses,
and it’s also fitting for helldivers, since it works as shutting down a bug hole or bot
factory, or even calling down a stratagem marker. From there I looked at what other
weapons I could give the units, and given I’m partial to using shotguns
in the game that felt like a good place to start. I used one from the arbites killteam,
and tried to find a kasrkin which had the arms in a similar enough place so I cut it at the
weapon handle and just swap out the rifle. The kasrkin kit itself already comes
with a good variety of weapon options, and one of those that matches a game option is the
flame thrower. So I built one with that loadout, the only change being cutting off the
fuel tank from the backpack so I could attach it on the weapon itself to
match the game’s version better. Then I started to look for some even heavier
weapons I could add, and the autocannon seemed like a good option. I searched my bits and found a
spare autocannon from an ironstrider ballistarius. I just cut down the barrel a little to match
the scale a bit better, and trimmed the back so it could rest on the units shoulder. Then I just
used whatever kasrkin arms that were in the right enough position to hold it, along with adding
a scope from one of the rifles I didn’t use. A nice extra touch I decided to add to
my squad was a guard dog rover. I made the body of it by gluing together two of
the kasrkin backpack I wouldn’t be using, then attaching some of the thrusters
from a space marine backpack, then for its energy weapon I used the plasma
pistol option from the kasrkin sergeant. Since the game isn’t all just bot shooting
and bug stomping, I wanted to include a trooper doing something related to the
games objectives. For this I made one to match the carrying the SSD. Using the pistol
and mine holding arms from the demo trooper, but I replaced the mine with the
fancier backpack from the vox-trooper. Another thing from the game I thought would be
neat to include is some of the pack options, so for the next trooper, I build them
mostly normally, but also made them a version of the supply pack, using some ammo
boxes I had spare from a skorpius dunerider, plus the kasrkin medic’s pouch, since the
games re-supplies also refills your stims. I wanted to use the kasrkin demo trooper for
some armour type variety, and a heavy weapon seemed like it would be a good fit with the
heavy armour, so I looked for a rocket launcher since the game has a few of those. I bought
some bits from a space marine devastator, since one of those units had both a launcher and
a loader backpack. Normally I’d be hesitant to use space marine parts for more regular
soldiers given their size difference, but it came from a kit of old firstborn space
marines, meaning it wouldn’t be too out of scale. Starting with those bits I cut off and trimmed
the space marine arm holding weapon, and replaced it with one of the sword holding kasrkin arms,
since it had a handle and the right kind of pose, only needing a little adjustment at the wrist.
I adjusted another spare kasrkin to use, and trimmed down the sides of the backpack so
I was left with just the rocket loader part. The squad needed a leader, so I went with a pose
to try and signify that, using one of the pointing arms, and a rifle just held at the side. And
for another touch to really make him stand out, I wanted to replicate the helmet wings from the
super citizen “saviour of the free” armour. I remembered a similar fancy helmet from another
killteam I had parts for, the arbite’s kit’s leader, so I cut the wings from that helmet
and attached to it the sides of my kasrkin’s. For the last trooper, I wanted to give them
something to match the game’s railgun weapon. I got a few different rail gun type parts to test,
but it was tricky matching exact weapon details, with hands and arms holding it in the right
way to attach it to the body of the unit. In the end I went with adding the front half
of a tau rail rifle, to the back half of a kasrkin rifle I cut down. And along with the
binocular helmet, he works as the squads sniper. All the squad was built, but there was one
last step before they were proper helldivers, their capes. A good material for making
fabric type parts is normally green stuff, and while I’m not good at sculpting it, I have
found an easy method for making simple bits of it. And that is to look at sewing patterns,
and test it out on the model with paper, before cutting out greenstuff that had been
rolled flat to match the paper pattern. So all the sculpting that needs to be done is just laying
it on the model and lightly pushing it into place. Here I just did add an extra step or
two here though, after figuring out the pattern with paper, I made a stencil of it
with plasticard. As I’d be using it a lot, I needed something slightly sturdier than paper. I made more capes than I needed, just so
I could pick the best to use. Once they were cut out I made a few unique alterations
to each one, just cutting simple patterns on the bottom to match some of the different in
game cape options. I also tried to lightly score a few lines on either side of the cape
and slightly pinch them to get them folds, so they weren’t completely flat. Then all
that was left was to lay them onto the model in the right place and push down on them at
the shoulders with a silicone tipped tool, so they were attached to the model, but there
weren’t any big marks where I secured them. Then the last things to put
together were the backpacks, I was sure exactly which units I wanted to
have which packs, so I magnetised a few, just drilling a hole for a 3x2mm magnet in packs
and the back of the troopers under the capes. With all that done I could finally get to
painting. I wanted to keep this squad simple and consistent, so I went with the black and
yellow most the helldivers armour sets are in. Now painting black can be tricky, because
the way you normally paint a colour is: you start with the base colour, shade it with a
wash so it looks like it’s got shadows where the recesses are darker, then you highlight it, so
the raised areas and edges are brighter to look like they’re catching more light. But black
is already very dark, so it’s hard to shade, and for a similar reason, white is hard to
highlight, given it’s already very bright. Fortunately I’ve had some practice
painting black armour with my black templars and figured out a quick way to
get some good depth using drybrushing and multiple shades of black and grey. As I often
do, I start with a coat or two of black primer, here paying extra attention to the capes,
as it can be tricky to get the inside of the cape and their green colour can be
quite noticeable if a spot is missed. Then I do a heavy drybrush with a paint
slightly brighter than the prime, corvus black, so the recesses remain the darkest, but everywhere
else is slightly brighter. It’s a very broad and very slight highlight, inversely shading it I
guess? From there it’s a more traditional drybush, with a bit of eshin grey paint, and using
downward strokes to catch more raised areas and edges. Then a very light drybrush with
the lighter dawnstone grey, just focused on the most raised edges around the upper parts
of the model, like the head and shoulder. While doing this, there’s also the opportunity
to brighten any bigger parts of the model with dawnstone, because it can be tricky
painting brighter colours over black, so you can brighten them a bit here to
make it easier later. Which is what I did with the sniper’s railgun since I
planned to paint that a bright grey, Also it may look a bit too bright
for black armour at this point, but it won’t look as extreme once there’s
other colours on the model, and even after that it can still be darkened easily with a
black shade or grey contrast where necessary. The next part of the scheme was the yellow on
parts of the armour, which I used averland sunset for. I tried to pick out parts similar to the
yellow on the helldivers armour, so a line at the bottom of the jacket, a line around the shoulder
pads, some small detail on the helmet and a line at the top of the kneepads. If you can find a good
way to add some vertical lines to the helmet that would be ideal, but I’m not particularly
good at freehand so I left that bit out. Since yellow is tricky to paint, even
more so over a dark colour like black, I needed to take my time and do 3 thin coats
before I could get a consistent colour, and just to add a bit of warmth to it, I
shaded it with the contrast iyanden yellow. Then, the last main colour of the helldivers
armour is a bright silver, for all kinds of details like harness buckles, insignias, various
devices, and a lot of parts of the guns. For this I tried out sir coates silvers from the
two thin coats paint range, which worked out great. Once that was dried I shaded that with
a black wash, the dark tone from army painter. For the leader, since I wanted him to look
like he was wearing the saviour of the free, or hero of the federation armour, I
used the gold paint retributor armour, in most of the places I used
yellow and silver other models. Given the leader of a killteam has
slightly better rules for their weapons, I thought a good way to represent that would
be to paint their weapon as the helldivers liberator penetrator variant. For this I
painted it with a few coats of grey seer, which I also did for the railgun, as
that is also a brighter colour in game. There are a lot of fancy patterns on the
games capes, but my freehand is not good enough to do them well, so I just painted a
few different edges of them yellow and used some decals. Fortunately the decal sheet that
comes with the kasrkin matches pretty well with the icons on the helldivers armour,
with a lot of regular and winged skulls. So I just used those on the capes and shoulders, applying them regularly with water at first,
then going over them with decal softener, to make sure they sit flush on the model.
Then just making sure they fully blend in by painting over any noticeable edges
and shading the whole section they’re on. Then there were just a few smaller parts left
to paint. For weapon sights and helmet cameras, I decided to go with green, as in
game weapons use green laser sights, so I used the contrast paint karandras
green, over grey seer on the weapon sights, but just over the existing black on the helmet
cameras, to keep it dull and not too distract from the eyes. For some other details, used
khorne red and kabalite green for some parts of the chest device, and aethermatic blue over
grey seer for the plasma effect on the guard dog. The eyes of any humanoid model are always a big
focal point, and to make sure these look the part I went over the visors with a gloss finish of
ardcoat. Hand painting some highlights or light reflections is sometimes also an option, but this
area is small and tricky enough to reach anyway, let alone for precise highlights, so
I just settled with the gloss coat. I mentioned before that I most often play
killteam against necrons and tyranids, so I thought it might be a fun idea
to paint one of those as one of the basic automatons and terminids since
I can easily get a one or two of them. For the necron I cut off its chin as automatons
lack the jaws in their head designs, drybrushed some greys and a few spots of metal, used
rakarth flesh for the bone coloured face, and used blood angels red contrast for
a few spots of red. And for the tyranid I drybrushed on some greys and browns, and used
iyanden yellow for a few small spots of colour. As for basing, there are many options to
choose from given the variety of planets that can be fought on in game, but one that
always stood out to me was malevelon creek. I remember the first time I played helldivers
2. I had just finished the tutorial and a few bug missions on easy, saw an old friend on
steam was playing it and joined his game. I didn’t know much about the systems but he
was already 30 something levels higher than me and I had just dropped in, mid
base assault on one of the hardest difficulties. Going from the simple, low
number of bugs on a bright empty desert, to a flood of enemies I’d never seen,
bots and tanks, in a dark, dense jungle, where multiple directions at a time would be
filled with red lasers coming straight at me. That mission and planet really stuck with me, so
it made an obvious choice for basing my killteam. So for this dark alien jungle style of base, I had
already started with some astrogranite technical paint for the dull ground texture. And to darken
it, while also giving it a hint of colour, I mixed my black army painter's dark tone wash with my
blue two thin coats tempest blue wash, to shade the base. Then for the vegetation part, I checked
my local hobby shop and found two things from gamers grass, burned grass, and alien rosettes,
which fit the look. So I just bent the rosette into shape, assembled them, trimmed the grass
tufts a little, and attached them to the bases. Then all that was left was the highlighting, I
never do a huge amount of this, as the initial drybrushing often already covers a lot of
it. I just did a bit extra edge highlighting on particularly prominent parts that I
thought needed to stand out a bit more, on the black armour I highlighted with dawnstone
on most prominent edges and administratum grey for the upper parts. On the yellow I
highlighted with the original averland sunset, and then I used two thin coats’ mythril
blade on the silver, and gold parts. And that completes my helldivers kilteam,
incorporating the main colour scheme, a few amour details and weapon choices
from the game, but still close enough to the original kasrkin for me
to use them in on the tabletop. And speaking of, I already won a
game with them against some tyranids, doing my part to help spread some managed
democracy, for super terra of course. Now I’m happy with just the killteam myself, but
there’s definitely potential for more with this idea. With plenty of alternate armour types
and colour schemes, plus maybe even enough to turn it into a full imperial guard army, with
cadian heavy weapon squads as sentry turrets, a valkyrie pelican-1 dropship, and
patriot exo-suits made from sentinels. Thanks for watching, consider
liking and subscribing if you want to see some more warhammer conversions
