Making Different Stormtroopers

Variety is the spice of life. While I appreciate that all my stormtroopers are supposed to look alike, do they all need to pose alike?

I am a big fan of multi pose kits. I am also a big fan of Star Wars, so when Legion was announced I was over the moon (ThAt’S nO mOoN!). I could not wait to collect an endless horde of Stormtroopers. When I realized the minis in the base game were essentially push-fit I was not phased. After all, I was raised on GW games that came with mono-pose minis. The multi-pose plastic kits that came out to support those games are the gold standard for our hobby.

When I realized the standalone squads being sold in their own boxes were the same minis from the base game I was disappointed. There are plenty of good reasons to make push-fit minis, I am not here to argue against them. However, they limit pose variety, and that is a problem for me. This problem is exacerbated by particularly dynamic poses on models that are focal points in the squad. I am talking about the squad leader standing tall and giving the universal “move out” hand signal.

That’s the guy! He looks fantastic, don’t get me wrong, but if I have three or four squads I would rather not have all the squad leaders striking such a specific pose. What can be done about this?

The squad leader model comes in two pieces with his right arm separated. This is actually quite nice, because it prevents us from need to cut around his pauldron to get it off. His left arm is outstretched and comes away fairly neatly with a sharp hobby knife, although there will be just a little extra trimming to be done around the base of his helmet.

In selecting a different set of arms for my squad leader I cheated slightly. Rather than use a set of arms from the squad leader’s troopers, I used one of the extra sets that comes in the Stormtrooper Expansion box. I don’t really understand why it comes with these, as I can’t imagine buying this box just to assemble the troopers inside with standard issue weapons, I’m not complaining. They saved me some effort on my next step.

The arms for any stormtrooper wearing a pauldron have part of their right shoulder cut away so they will fit underneath it. The right and left arm both have pins or tabs coming out of them, uniquely shaped to fit the minis for which they were intended. Thes specifically shaped arm tabs and sockets on the standard soldiers are pretty annoying, as it prevents you from sharing arms between poses without cutting the tabs away.

I cut down the pin on the right arm and fully removed the one from the left arm. I drilled a hole in the squad leader’s left side and in the left arm (I did not have a drill bit large enough to make a hole for the original tab). I then cut a small piece of brass rod to act as a new pin. From there it was just a matter of gluing everything in place.

And there we have it! Something to differentiate my squad leaders from one another that still looks badass! A bit more basic, sure, but I don’t need all of my guys wearing orange pauldrons to be signaling First Down everywhere at once. Have you chopped up any of your Legion minis to make new poses? What was your favorite modification? Let me know in the comments!

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