Plastic MKIII and Resin Heavy Weapons

[Commander Dawnstar]

Has anyone got any experience of trying to combine the Prospero Tactical Marines with Forge World's Heavy Weapons upgrade kits?

 

I picked up the Legion Autocannon Set with the intention of using it to max out my existing (fully resin) squad of Havocs, but thus far I haven't had any luck trying to combine the Autocannons with the plastic MKIII. It seems like either the armour plate around the forearm is too large, preventing wrist and hand from lining up at all, or the angles taken by the limbs themselves lead to the Autocannon being positioned in ways that seem totally incompatible with the backpack ammo belt. That's my experience thus far at least.

 

Has anyone else tried mixing up these kits, or similar, and have any advice to offer as to where I'm going wrong or how I can work around this?

[Atia]

The backpack ammo packs are resin, and afaik you should be able to bend them using very hot water. Atleast that's the case with most if not all FW products that have similiar stuff (for example the Custodes Dreadnoughts, Titans, Knights, etc)

[Verger]

I think the MKIII plastics are, just by around a millimeter bigger than the previous set of Space Marines.  I had issues with getting the Phaistos pattern Heavy Flamers to fit my plastic MKIII marines, but then there is also this



MKIII plastic torso compared to FW upgrade kit.

As Atia said - use some hot water (or possibly a hair dryer, if its thin enough) and warp the ammo feed into its correct position.  Its worth noting that FW kits are generally expected to require some "work" to get them all to fit properly, but generally worth the effort in the end.

[Tyberos the Red Wake]

The plastic Mk III do have slightly different proportions compared to the resin ones, however, I think the FW kits should still fit. Why? Because both kits are designed to hold a basic bolter. The FW heavy weapons use the same mounting positions on the arms as a bolter would. If you find the ammo feed is the problem, you can simply bend it. I'm willing to bet a lot of people had to fix the ammo belt even on the resin Mk III. FW's newest heavy weapons don't even come with curved ammo belts, they are straight and must be custom bent.

 

The real issue is if the resin weapons backpack fits the plastic model's backpack plug. You may end up having to widen the hole since resin shrinks and the plastic parts are slightly bigger to begin with. The wrist gap being too large is also a consequence of this. The weapon hand is smaller than it would be for a plastic one (resin shrank, and FW sculpts are smaller to begin with) so you probably have to fill this gap with a plasticard spacer, some green stuff/epoxy/plastic putty, or just fill the gap with thick super glue and prop in place until it sets.