Homebrew Gravis Characters

A long time ago in a 40k edition far far away, the game was a different beast. Unlike today’s highly constrained options based entirely on what models are available from GW, and distinct datasheets for different flavours of the same thing, the game used to permit a huge amount of customisation in your units, particularly characters. This included the ability to swap out their armour. With the increased variety of armour in the modern range, that ability to have equipment lists is more appealing than ever.

3rd Edition Codex Space Marines - Image Credit: Games Workshop, used without permission for illustrative purposes only.

Whilst Games Workshop has leaned into using separate datasheets to put Space Marine characters into various different armour types in their current range, there are a lot of characters and a lot of armours, so they haven’t been keeping pace with our creativity.  Consequently we’ve been doing some of our own.  Today, in addition to offering a few conversion notes on the miniatures themselves, this post contains three unofficial datasheets for Gravis-armoured characters in Warhammer 40,000's 10th edition:

• Apothecary in Gravis Armour
• Lieutenant in Gravis Armour
• Techmarine in Gravis Armour

We have included the points cost of the units on the datasheet itself. If we ever make changes to these datasheets, it will be recorded in the changelog of 

Apothecary

As these things often do, our journey towards making custom datasheets started small.  We all liked the new Apothecary in Gravis armour when they revealed it, but were a bit disappointed that the resulting Apothecary Biologis didn’t actually get to do any medic stuff.  An easy fix, we just agreed to swap out his “Surgical Precision” and “Vivispectrum” abilities for the “Narthecium” and “Gene-seed Recovery” abilities of the standard Apothecary.  Charlie already wrote about this a bit back at the end of 2023, but at this point three of us have them in our armies.

Apothecary Arkadios Herodion of the Cobalt Scions

Balance wise, well, clearly bringing back Gravis boys is worth more than bringing back Tacticus boys, but the Big Apothecary costs more anyway.  Indeed he costs proportionally more compared to Heavy Intercessors than an Apothecary costs compared to Intercessors.  It’s probably fine.  On the other hand he’s losing the ability to grant Lethal hits, which is pretty potent.  Ultimately we’re not that bothered about the exact balance, it’s the principle of the thing!

No conversion work is necessary here, and it’s a lovely model, but that didn’t stop me doing a bit of tinkering.  As it’s a push fit model I prefer to snip out all the pins and glue it together properly.  The plasticity of plastic means that if you push them together as intended they generally bounce back a little bit and you are left with small gaps in the seams.  I’m also lazy and prefer moulded shoulder pads.  In this case it was very easy to slice the left shoulder pad off the small join it has with the elbow plate and replace it with a moulded Gravis pad.  I also trimmed off the Tyranid gunk from his base, since the rest of my army doesn't have any and I felt it would look out of place.

Apothecary Orevis of the Raven Guard

Click here for PDF datasheet
Template used (with permission): WH40k 10e Datasheet Template from TCRepo

Lieutenant

Drew: Hey! So the desire for a gravis lieutenant came about for a couple reasons, but the primary one was narrative. My salamander force was brought together so that Tom and I could play a narrative co-op campaign about the Salamanders and Raven Guard buddy-copping their way to success, or possibly death (Victor or Morris? [Charlie: Have you no respect for our noble cousins' battle cry?]).

The intent with the Salamander force was always to be as gravis-heavy as possible, and so I would need a gravis character to lead my force. I felt like I wanted someone a little less senior than a Captain as I was keen on the idea of character that could grow over the course of the campaign, leading to an eventual promotion, but also leave space for an actual Captain to roll in later if it turned out that my first pass at a Space Marine character was a little whelming. It would also give me a little longer to get used to my new Salamander scheme before trying to unleash it on the best Gravis Captain model GW have made and one that I have had tucked away for some years (The Dark Imperium Gravis Captain model, complete with his little pot belly: fight me.)

Lieutenant Iskandar Varrix of the Salamanders

Unlike the Apothecary we don’t have any kind of Gravis Lieutenant datasheet to start with. No worries.  By comparing various different units, it’s very easy to see that Gravis armour changed the wearer’s toughness to 6 and gives them one additional wound. We discussed which abilities to give him, between the Lieutenant and the Gravis Captain.  As Drew had started out playing him using the Captain in Gravis Armour datasheet we kept the Refuse to Yield ability which had become rather a characterful trait for him at this point, but swapped out the Rites of Battle ability that appears on all Captain datasheets for Tactical Precision which appears on all Lieutenant datasheets.  We also swapped out which units he could lead to match the Captain in Gravis Armour. Since he was quite a significant uptick in badass from the regular Lieutenant, we pushed him up to 75pts, more than the regular Lieutenant but less than the Gravis Captain.  

Drew: In order to fit in with his chunky brothers, Iskandar started out with a basic heavy intercessor, but with a few weapons changes that we discussed together.

My brain throughout this process

I'm a huge fan of giant hammers as a melee option (I blame anime), and it seemed pretty thematic, so Charlie helped me repurpose a thunder hammer from the old Deathwatch Marine kit. This involved removing the original (dinky) marine hand from the hammer, then transferring the haft and head to a new one of a more appropriate size. We ended up going with a hand taken from an old terminator kit that had been clutching a little hammer of his very own. The terminator hammer was removed, the Deathwatch hammer added and the whole franken-grip then connected to the wrist, thanks to some truly wonderful greenstuff sculpting from Charlie which included resculpting the criss-cross design on the handle of the hammer. 

The plasma pistol and halo were generously donated from the Tom Bitz Bank. I did rummage around in said Bitz Bank for additional frippery, but decided that ultimately it didn’t fit well with the narrative of a field promotion that we had created.

Click here for PDF datasheet
Template used (with permission): WH40k 10e Datasheet Template from TCRepo

Charlie: We've endeavoured to provide a pretty flexible array of weapons to choose from. Not all the options are born equal, but this way you can pick whatever you think looks cool.

The one constraint we have applied, despite it being allowed on some official datasheets, is to ban combining a power fist or thunder hammer with a two-handed assault rifle. This is primarily for thematic reasons; power fists and hammers can't meaningfully be stowed to operate a heavy bolt rifle.

I've not included every single Space Marine weapon ever put on a character; some niche options like inferno pistols and lightning claws are absent. Likewise with chainswords it seems like these are generally not used by officers (other than sergeants). Ultimately if you wanted to add such things, and your opponent doesn't mind, then why not?

Techmarine

This idea had been in the back of my mind since GW first introduced the Iron Father Feirros model.  But there’s always more things I want to do than I have time to do, so it has sat at the back of my brain for a while.  Playing a bunch of narrative boarding actions in Bolter Bros gave me the motivation to flesh out my Gravis boys, so I grabbed him when I picked up my Apothecary Biologis.  

Techmarine Korophae of the Raven Guard

In theory any Space Marine player could legally run Iron Father Feirros, as long as you don’t use any other (non-Iron Hands) chapter specific characters in the army, however as I am using him to represent a regular Techmarine in Gravis armour, the stats for the Iron Hands Master of the Forge seem to be overdoing it.  Instead we applied the same approach as the Lieutenant above, took the Techmarine datasheet and gave him toughness 6, an extra wound, changed the units he can lead and pushed him up to 60pts.

In deference to the fact that the gun on his shoulder is so much larger than the standard Forge Bolter, we pushed the range up to 36” and gave it sustained hits 1, the same as a Heavy Bolter (but not quite the sustained hits 2 of Feirros’ “Gorgon’s Wrath”).  The axe stays the same though, it’s not significantly bigger.  

There wasn’t a huge amount of conversion work necessary. Luckily most of his fancy decoration is Techmarine themed rather than Iron Hands themed.  The left shoulder pad with the chapter symbol was easily swapped.  On the right, I trimmed down and filed flat the bolts in the Clan Raukaan symbol and stuck a skull in there, handily turning it into the Cog Mechanicus symbol all Techmarines wear.  I also did a simple head swap, mostly because I just don’t like the original head very much.

Click here for PDF datasheet
Template used (with permission): WH40k 10e Datasheet Template from TCRepo

More To Come…?

I like the idea of having the full range of characters able to don every version of armour, but that’s a large selection so it’ll be some time before we get there.  Naturally as a Raven Guard player I’ve been leaning more into Phobos up to now.  I suspect Drew will be the one pushing this particular boat out, with her Oops All Gravis Salamanders.  I do love how thematic choices push creativity in this hobby.