How Many Bitz Does it Take?

To create the counts-as Wolf Lord for my Centurions, I went a bit overboard when it comes to the sheer amount of parts, pieces and bitz I used to construct him. Or did I? Is there such a thing as too much when it comes to constructing one figure, squad or army?

Lets take a look at the parts list for the Wolf Lord:


Chronus Head
Chronus Tank Commander Body
Crest shaped from a Max Mini bit
Left arm from Inquisitor Coteaz
Left Leg from a Vanguard Marine
Right Leg from a Different Vanguard Marine
Cod piece from plastic marine legs
Backpack from High Marshall Helbrecht
Studded shoulderpad
Chaos Knight Horse
Second Chaos Knight Horse for the other back leg
Holstered Pistol bit
Sheathed sword from Marneus Calgar
Shield made from plasticard and a washer
Winged skull bit
Chapter icon made from plasticard
2 shields from White Scars bike commander
2 marine box purity seals
1 vehicle purity seal
1 forge world purity seal
terminator tabard
terminator honors icon
scroll case
Brass rod
Green stuff

Holy Terra!! That's a total of 27 separate, individual components for this 1 figure when you break it all down.

Okay yes, I suppose I went a bit over the top with some of his parts. The main body alone is made up of parts from 2 metal blisters and 2 metal vanguard marines, totaling roughly 65-70 dollars. For 5 out of 27 parts. However, now we need to take into consideration my previous post about the Bitz Box. I would say that 80% of the parts needed for this conversion, I had in my Bitz Box already, or in a couple unopened Fantasy boxes. This is why I'm such a huge advocate of keeping every tiny little bit and purity seal you don't use. This one figure alone would have cost me a couple hundred dollars to make if I had to buy everything from scratch.

Back to the question at hand though, "is there such a thing as too much?". My answer would have to be..."maybe". See, I really do think you can just keep piling on the parts and make a figure look like it's carrying the world on it's shoulders... Or at least a battalion box. Certain bitz don't always look good with others, like the shin plates from a dreadnought as terminator shoulder pads. Just my opinion. If you want pre-heresy shoulder pads, make your own (Ron's guide at From the Warp), or buy them (maxmini large shoulder pads). But hey, that's just me.

I also think that you could make a figure with parts from a dozen kits, and make it look good, well balanced and put together. Case in point, see above example.

Ultimately it's going to be up to you to decide if you've gone overboard on a conversion or not. Do the parts and pieces look well balanced together, or do they look like you threw a handful of them into a ziplock bag, squished in some glue and shook it before seeing what falls out?

Don't even get me started on what a full squad of my grey hunters in my Centurions army would have cost to buy it all at one time... And I've got 3 of them in the army!

What's your most extensive conversion you've done?

- Tim