At the moment, I frequently feel drawn towards some of my earlier INQ28 conversions — not only due to a desire to finally finish those models, although that does obviously play a part in the matter, but also because after all the ultra-grimdark stuff, it’s enjoyable to return to the somewhat simpler archetypes laid out in the Inquisitor Rulebook: the Rogue Trader, the Security Agent. After all, let’s not forget that those archetypes seemed pretty out-there and grimdark back when the game was originally released, at least to those of us who had only been used to 40k proper at that time.

Nowadays, after several years of hobbyists doing their darnedest to come up with ever more creative and spectacular characters (and to great effect, I might add!), some of those character archetypes may seem almost pedestrian by comparison, but they do have a swashbuckling charm that I like, and returning to some of those earlier ideas just feels like the right thing for me, so here goes:

Enter a conversion I created a couple of years ago for the retinue of Inquisitor Erasmus Gotthardt, Rogue Trader Iskander Gagarin:

This was actually one of my very first INQ28 conversions, and I guess it shows, both in how closely it retreads some of the design cues from the stock 54mm models (Von Castellan, in this case) and how the model is a testament to my much smaller bitzbox in those times: It was mainly built from Cadian parts and some leftovers from the Empire models that came with the 6th edition WFB starter box. But in the end, I am still pretty pleased with the way the model channels both the 18th century military look typical of many of GW’s own rogue trader concepts as well as the flamboyance expected from such an individual, as evidenced by the xenos weaponry (I am so happy I still had that 2nd edition shuriken pistol!), the fur coat or the rather outrageous topknot.

I had wanted to get the model painted for years, and now I felt it was finally time. So I blew off the dust and made some finishing touches in order to spruce up the model for its day in the limelight:

I only really added a bit or two, but the one tricky part was to splice a suitably impressive ring (from the Skaven Stormvermin, of all places) onto that pointy finger. That did take some rather delicate cutting, but Iskander just seemed like the kind of guy who would wear a clunky signet ring (probably doubling as a digital laser, come to think of it), so there was ultimately no choice in the matter ;)

When it came to actually painting the model, I had basically figured out the colour palette quite a while ago, back when I painted Iskander’s little familiar, PeeDee the Monkey:

So I bascially stuck to those colours, going for a paintjob that was at once suitably militaristic, but also flamboyant enough for a man of Gagarin’s station. And while the result possibly isn’t one of my more technically accomplished paintjobs, I do think it manages to sell the character. Take a look:

“Ceruleam est Terra. Imperator Deus est.”
Motto of House Gagarin

Iskander Gagarin is a Rogue Trader of some renown operating in the Velsen Sector, and scion of the Gagarin merchant house — a house, according to Gagarin himself, that was one of the first in the galaxy to actually sail out into the great void-sea. An outrageous claim, certainly, but House Gagarin’s trade warrant is real enough, signed and stamped millennia ago on Holy Terra, and Iskander has built a small but considerable merchant empire based on his exploits into the treacherous region of space know as the Veil of Impurity.

In fact, it was after one particularly daring expedition into that cluster of stars that the rogue trader crossed paths with Inquisitor Erasmus Gotthardt. Back then, the Ordo Xenos Velsen was hot on Gagarin’s heels, pursuing him for smuggling Xenos contraband. And so Gotthardt offered his protection to the rogue trader, expecting his continued cooperation in return — and thus did Iskander Gagarin become a member of Inquisitor Gotthardt’s retinue

At first glance, Gagarin may seem like a braggart and ladies’ man, above all else, entirely too full of himself and utterly irresponsible. But while those traits may be very real facets of his personality, the outer veneer of a flamboyant merchant king hides a surprisingly resourceful individual, and it is for this reason that Iskander Gagarin has become one of Inquisitor Gotthardt’s most capable operatives.

Along with the signet ring, I also added a hip flask to Gagarin’s belt as a last minute addition: Just because he’s in the middle of a black ops for the Ordo Hereticus doesn’t mean a real man of the world cannot take a quick sip of priceless Amasec now, does it? ;)

And here’s Iskander next to his personal pet, PeeDee the Monkey:

I feels good to finally have finished one of my oldest conversions ;) And as an added benefit, completing Gagarin also brings Inquisitor Gotthardt’s retinue a fair bit closer towards completion as well. Here’s a quick shot of the retinue as it stands right now:

While I was at it, I made some small touchups to the other models, such as repainting some parts of the bases so they would fit together and finally adding some Inquisitorial symbols to Gotthardt himself. One thing that I like is how Gagarin’s paintjob also functions as a bit of visual storytelling: In the retinue’s background, Gagarin and Esteban Revas are rivals and works as foils to each other. Which is why their paintjobs share quite a few similarities, while Gagarin seems more flamboyant. Anyway, there’s really quite a bit of backstory in place for these characters, and they really do feel like fleshed-out characters to me rather than mere playing pieces, which I think is a good thing.

So yeah, just a fun little paintjob and a chance to finally tie up some loose ends. What’s not to like, right? ;)
But seriously: I’d love to hear your feedback, of course! And, as always, thanks for looking and stay tuned for more!

So, after last week’s crude drawings, let’s get back to actual models, shall we? ;) Work on Inquisitor Gotthardt’s retinue continues, and it certainly feels good to finally put some paint on some of these models: The warbands is one of my earliest projects for INQ28, with many of the models dating back a couple of years at this point, so finally painting them, giving them a pat on the head and introducing them to all the nice people out there really feels like I am tying up some loose ends!

So I am going to show you some of the new models I have managed to finish, of course. But I would also like to use this occasion to talk about a certain dynamic about this project – and, in fact, about INQ28 character creation in general – that I find rather fascinating. A warning in advance, though: What follows will be a rather wordy post on the minutiae of my creative process, so if you’re just visiting for the pretty pictures, feel free to scroll down ;)

When I created the first characters for Inquisitor Gotthardt’s retinue, the warband was intended as a bit of a foil to the gang I had created immediately beforehand: The warband of one Inquisitor Antrecht:

Antrecht is a radical with Istvaanian leanings, and his retinue certainly reflects that: Since many of his colleagues in the Ordos see him as a dangerous heretic, he can no longer move through the Velsen Sector too openly and has to rely on some rather shady characters to do his work for him (such as a runaway Magos, a bounty hunter, a former Officio Assassinorum operative, a twist sniper and an actual daemonhost). The rest of his retinue is made up of arco-flagellants and combat servitors: tragic creatures and certainly not wholesome characters. But in the desert, a man has to take such water as he is offered.

Now Antrecht’s former-friend-turned-pursuer Erasmus Gotthardt is still far more moderate and puritan in his views, even if he has already had to make a compromise here and there. This allows him to travel the sector more freely and recruit retainers that are somewhat less extreme (if still rather unconventional at times). In short, fewer twisted monsters and more actual people. And once again, I wanted the retinue to reflect this quality, lending it a more adventurous, somewhat picaresque feel. I’ve already mentioned that many of the members of the warband are based on the classic archetypes from the Inquisitor rulebook. But while working on the models, something interesting happened: While I started by merely ticking off boxes (Rogue Trader, check. IG veteran, check. Huge Inquisitor in golden armour à la Inquisitor Tyrus, check), the various models suddenly started to develop a life of their own. That is, I started to think about their motivations, their backstories and what had led them into Gotthardt’s service.

Now developments like this always feel very rewarding, because they make the models grow beyond their origins as mere playing pieces into actual characters, which is a lot of fun. But it went even further here in that some of the characters suddenly brought their buddies on board. Case in point, I had a security agent named Remus Ingram, and suddenly I felt that he certainly needed a cyber-mastiff to accompany him on his patrols through the underhive. Now in this particular case, it took me years to find the right base model for the cyborg-canine, but I ultimately did, and now Remus has his personal mutt, “Balzepho”:

Rogue Trader Iskander Gagarin was a similar case: The model was originally built to resemble Duke von Castellan from the Inquisitor rulebook: a strangely eclectic character in a fantasy uniform. So far so good. But when PDH sent me a powder monkey from one of the WFB Empire kits one day, I realised that the little guy would make for an ideal pet for the flamboyant Rogue Trader with a bit of work. So PeeDee the Monkey was born — and became the actual template for Iskander’s paintjob later on:

Now neither the dog nor the monkey are extremely deep and important characters in the larger narrative, of course. But they serve as a deeper explorations of certain facets of their respective masters, if you will, making the characters a bit more real in the process. Plus they were just a lot of fun to build and paint!

Now one of the new models I promised you really takes this whole buddy concept to the next level. You may remember Cpt. Esteban Revas, one of my oldest INQ28 characters (he also has quite a bit of backstory as well):

I originally built Esteban as a variation of the IG veteran archeytpe. I really liked the idea of a guard regiment in (somewhat ridiculous) getup recalling both renaissance clothing as well as the military uniforms of the 18/19th century. The resulting model was built with a much smaller bitzbox than I have today, but I am still enormously fond of Esteban even now: I think the model is really quite characterful. Esteban Revas looks like a rather arrogant peacock, but there’s also a hint at something deeper, a hidden tragedy maybe? Plus there’s always the fact that he must have had some inner quality to become a member of an Inquisitorial retinue.

The longer I thought about the character, the more I felt that his background deserved further exploration: I had invented a regiment for him, the 126th Haaruthian Dragoons, but that was just a name and didn’t really mean anything. But now I started thinking about Haaruthia, about the Dragoons and about Esteban’s backstory, and suddenly I had an idea about another character to accompany the good Captain:

An aristocratic officer like Revas would certainly have some kind of servant to lug around his gear, clean his boots and just serve as a whipping boy, if the need arises, right? So with that idea in the back of my head, I built the first version for Trooper Salvador ‘Sal’ Koltz, formerly of the 126th Haaruthian Dragoons and personal retainer to House Revas:

Koltz was originally created as a bit of a joke character, actually: His almost medieval getup was a hint at the feudalist structures inside the Haaruthian military, with proud nobles being handed officers’ ranks without any need for actual qualification while the commoners could only ever hope for a place in the trenches, more fodder for the meatgrinder of war. At the same time, I gave him a huge amount of gear to lug around, because just because we’re in a warzone doesn’t mean that Cpt. Revas can possibly do without his smoking utensils, right? In a small yet effective stroke of absurdity, I even added a small treasure chest from the Bretonnian Men-at-arms kit to the pile of gear on Koltz’ back. The screaming head from an old Empire kit was chosen to invoke the impression that Koltz is just a regular guy who is way out of his depth: “What has that idiot gotten me into this time?”, he seems to be hollering.

While I was happy enough with the resulting model, the various characters in the warband were still very much in flux, and so Esteban Revas became more and more rounded-out: While he remained a proud and haughty character, his backstory also revealed a deeper nobility, an inner urge to do what’s right and neccessary. And while this made him a better, more believable character, it also meant that Koltz would have to grow along with him, becoming less of a caricature and more of a believable person himself. I exchanged lots of ideas on this matter with DexterKong, and in the end, while the Master and servant dynamic between the two characters remained in place, Koltz also became a straight man to Esteban, serving as an unabashedly lowbrow, yet also surprisingly cunning and loyal foil to his master. I wanted him to be less downtrodden and more confident. This coincided with a small but important change to the model: Dexter suggested replacing the characterful (but somewhat panicky) head with another bit from the Empire range, this time from the Free Company:

And I think you’ll agree with me that the different head totally changes the feel of the model: Koltz looked way more confident and self-assured now. A grizzled veteran rather than a panicked everyman. The screaming head was cool, no doubt about that, but it simply no longer told the right story.

I was really happy with the model at this point, all things considered. So what did I do next? Well, I put Koltz away and didn’t paint him for several years, that’s what ;) But after Esteban Revas was completed a while ago, Koltz’ time had finally come, and so I dusted off the model and got to work last weekend.

And while the model may be a fairly straighforward conversion, coming up with the right paintjob turned out to be rather challenging for a number of reasons: For one, it shouldn’t surprise you that I wanted Koltz and Esteban to really work as a pair within the bigger framework of the warband, with Koltz serving as a straight man to his, ultimately decent yet also fairly foppish, superior, and they also embody the class distinctions in the Haaruthian military, with commoners serving as the rank and file, while the nobles (with their very romantic concept of warfare) get handed the command, with little to no regard to their actual suitability for such positions.

I tried to achieve it by painting Koltz’ livery in a way that makes it look like a less grandiose, ruddier version of Esteban’s dress uniform. I also wanted to include some hints to the 126th Haaruthian Dragoons’ heraldry. And while I wanted the model to look a bit more subdued, I also needed to add some small touches and tweaks to make it suitably interesting from a visual standpoint.

So here’s what I ended up with:

While Koltz may no longer technically be a member of the Dragoons, he’s still wearing their colours and heraldry, including a numeral “126” on his left shoulder pad (spliced together from two Cadian decals — maybe I should have looked at the available numbers beforehand and then chosen the regimental number afterwards…), a generic IG winged skull on his right shoulder pad and a small plaque with a stylised “H” (for Haaruthia) dangling from his belt. He also has the same very dark silver armour with a gloss finish as his master.

Here’s a look at all the gear on his back:

Making him look like a bit of a packing mule without seeming comically over-encumbered was a bit of a challenge, but I think the overall effect really works. I still think that small treasure chest is a rather beautiful touch ;)

In order to add some subtle visual flourishes to the model, I have Koltz a five o’ clock shadow on his face and added a slight woodgrain pattern to the casing of his rifle. Both effects may not be spectacular or anything, but I am still fairly pleased with the result!

Bound by a debt of honour to Lord Bestrald Salazar Revas, Trooper Salvador “Sal” Koltz has vowed lifelong service to House Revas and has become Esteban Revas’ personal retainer, serving under him in the 126th Haaruthian Dragoons and following him into the service of Inquisitor Erasmus Gotthardt afterwards. While he may seem irreverent, indolent and unashamdely lowbrow at first glance, Koltz actions reveal a surprisingly crafty and unfailingly loyal individual whose feeling of obligation towards Cpt. Revas goes far beyond any notions of military discipline.

So much for the character himself. Here’s Koltz and Revas together — I hope you’ll agree with me that there really is a certain dynamic between the two models:

Koltz may not be a spectacular piece, but I am still enormously pleased with the model. When all is said and done, my chief goal in this hobby is to invent, build and paint characters rather than mere playing pieces, and it just feels like I have come pretty close to achieving that goal with these two guys!

As for the bigger picture, additional buddies like the two cyber-pets and Trooper Koltz have made Inquisitor Gotthardt’s retinue grow beyond what was originally planned, and that is something that has indeed happened to me on several projects. But while the temptation to add a character here and there might get me sidetracked occasionally, it’s also a great way of further exploring the inner workings and backstory of any given warband/army, so it’s a temptation that I am usually just too happy to indulge! :)

One more model before we wind up, and yet another oldie but goldie ;) Back when I built the first models for Inquisitor Gotthardt’s retinue, I decided to also include a character based on the “Drill-Abbot” archetype from the Inquisitor rulebook. So I made this guy:

Another fairly simple conversion, and one that reproduces several elements of GW’s 54mm model for Preacher Josef, such as the robe, thunder hammer and devotional knicknacks. But while I was happy enough with the conversion itself, it took me ages to find the right angle for this guy: Call me weird, but it’s far easier for me to actually paint a model for INQ28 when I have even the slightest idea of who they are as a character.

Unbelievably enough, it took a couple of years for me to return to this model, but suddenly things just fell into place: I was thinking of the “Quelling of St. Berthold”, an event DexterKong came up with for our shared INQ28 setting, the Velsen sector. I don’t want to give too much away, seeing how Dexter is probably going to reveal some of the story on his blog sooner rather than later, but the general idea is that a daemonic incursion occured at St. Berthold and had to be fought back by a coalition of Imperial forces. For a number of reasons, the event became a turning point in the lives of many of the characters involved. Looking at my little drill abbot here, I asked myself: What if he participated in the operation as a member of the Imperial Guard? And what if the things he saw during that campaign instilled in him an utter piety born out of sheer terror and made him take a cloth and become an Ecclesiarchy cleric?
Not a momentous idea, certainly, but it was enough to rekindle my interest in the model and finally get it painted. So here’s the finished Drill Abbot:

Funnily enough, I chose a colour palette very close to the one used by the ‘Eavy Metal team for Preacher Josef — I just liked the look of the paintjob and also thought it might go well with the rest of the warband. But even though much about the model recreates GW’s Preacher Josef, I hope there’s still enough originality about Father Harlan to turn him into a character in his own right.

In fact, one aspect of the model ultimately turned into a part of his character in a rather organic way: When I originally posted the WIP model on the Ammobunker, a fellow forumite joked that the little casket worn at the model’s right hip probably contained some kind of alcoholic beverage. Now I had originally intended that element as a vessel for holy water or some kind of unguent, but I liked the idea, so when PDH suggested adding a drinking cup to the model’s gearbelt, I did just that. Now given Father Harlan’s backstory, maybe his drinking habit might be another consequence of his experiences at St. Berthold?

Father Endric Harlan is a Drill-Abbot of the Velsian Ecclesiarchy currently serving as personal confessor to Inquisitor Erasmus Gotthardt. A veteran of the Imperial Guard, his experiences during the Quelling of St. Bertholdt led him to pursuing a life of piety, haunted by the utter fear born of of having witnessed firsthand the terrible powers of chaos.

Regarding the bigger picture, I am really happy to say that I have managed to finish nearly all the members of Inquisitor Gotthardt’s retinue — just one more character to go, although that will be quite a challenge. Because the last member of the warband will be Elisha Gorgo:

We’ll see how that turns out…

In the meantime however, here’s a look at the retinue so far:

I hope you have enjoyed my – unfortunately rather wordy – look at my creative process. Please don’t hesitate to let me know any feedback you might have! And, as always, thanks for looking and stay tuned for more!

So, yet another round of fresh INQ28 models this week — I just cannot help myself, and I know far better than to second guess any motivation I might have for painting stuff. Next week, we’ll finally be taking a closer look at the models from Deathwatch:Overkill, in case you were wondering, but such review posts take a lot of time and work to complete, and at least for the time being, I would rather use this energy to actually create something new and not to merely write about models ;)

So anyway, one thing that I have wanted to do ever since I saw Bruticus’ brilliant pit slave gang last year was to build a pit slave or two of my own. A recent conversion by Legatho taught me that the combination of an Age of Sigmar Bloodreaver and a Skitarii Vanguard head would be a terrific mix to start the project, so I grabbed a Bloodreaver body, carefully shaved off all the chaotic and Khornate runes (HERESY!) and tried my best. But the model just refused to come together for some reason, and so the parts landed on my desktop, glowering at me accusingly every now and then — at least that’s what it felt like.

The project wasn’t kickstarted back into life until I started messing around with some of the – brilliantly crude – bionic limbs from the Ork Nobz kit, but when I discovered a brutal looking bionic harpoon arm among those bitz, I knew I had found the missing piece for that pit slave gladiator. And just a short while later, I had a finished conversion. Take a look:

The crude bionic arm really sells the model, if you ask me. And the Skitarii Vanguard helmet adds a sinister, quasi-robotic look that seems really fitting for a heavily augmented killing machine. For the pit slave’s right hand, I chose a standard CSM chainsword that was made quite a bit more spiky and hideous by making a few small tweaks. I also added some of the Ork armour plate and some tech-y bitz that I had shaved off from some Skitarii backpacks. Those latter parts were used to disguise the areas where I had had to shave off chaotic detailing from the original Bloodreaver model.

When it came to painting the model, I went for a main colour that I don’t use all that often: a very strong industrial yellow for the various armour plates and bionics. My reasons for choosing the approach was that I wanted the armour and augmetics to slightly recall heavy duty construction machines. Plus I thought that the gladiators in the fighting pits would go for bold colours to serve as some kind of “stage outfit”, so to speak. I did add several layers of scratches and sponge weathering, though, to make the yellow parts look suitably grimy and damaged.

So here’s the finished pit slave model. I give you Grimspyke “the Impaler”, former champion in the fighting pits of St. Sabasto’s Reach:

All in all, I am really rather happy with the finished model: Grimspyke looks suitably gladiatorial, but there’s also an Imperial underhive angle about him that removes him from his roots as a Khornate model.  In fact, I was so happy with the model that I almost instantly started converting another gladiator. Go figure…

This time, the inspiration I chose was one of my favourite classic Inquisitor models: Arco-flagellant Gryx from Phil Kelly’s seminal warband for Inquisitor Lichtenstein:

warband built and painted by Phil Kelly

Back when Phil wrote about this warband in White Dwarf, he said that Gryx had been inspired by Judge Dredd’s Mean Machine — and even though I actually experimented with several different versions of my own conversion, I wasn’t happy until I had decided to recreate the one-armed look. Here’s the conversion I came up with:

As you can see, a Bloodreaver from the AoS starter box forms the base of the conversion once again. I chose a massive Ork power claw for the right arm and cut off most of the left arm so it ended up looking like an augmetic stump where a bionic arm may once have existed. I wanted this model to explore the slightly grotesque – and ultimately rather sad – angle about pit slaves: that they are crudely augmented to serve as tools or fighting machines, divorced from their humanity and turned into misshapen creatures. This is also the reason I chose a more human head (originally from the Space Marine Scout Bikers, I believe). All in all, the model looks lumbering and lopsided, with an overmuscled look to its right side — exactly the effect I had intended.

I chose the same recipe for painting this guy that I had already used on my first pit slaves — these guys might actually end up in a warband together at some point…

So here’s the second pit slave: “Crusher” Vex, also known as “Old Man Claw”:

Something that doesn’t show well in most of the pictures is that I have added some greying fuzz to Crusher’s head:

I wanted to show that he’s a rather old guy, and definitely well past his prime as a pitfighter.

And here are the two gladiators together:

“The championship match between Grimspyke and Crusher Vex? One for the ages, that was! I’ll never forget when Grimspyke took Crusher’s arm clean off during the fifth bout!”

“Shug” Holn, Sector 2 Habber

For now, these are mostly a fun little diversion. But I do like the idea of spinning these off into their won little warband at some point. I don’t even see these as members of a simple pit slave gang, either, but rather as a crew of former pit slaves, mutants, workers and other malcontents. In fact, they would work great asa warband hailing from the world of St. Sabasto’s Reach that DexterKong and I invented for the Velsen Sector. Here’s the outline for the planet that I wrote a while ago:

St. Sabasto’s Reach

An extremely rich hive world grown fat and depraved through slave trade and the exploitation of its mutant lower class.

The world originally earned its name when the Imperial Saint Sabasto rested here after his great victory on the fields of Belzifer, before engaging in the last stage of his holy crusade for the defense of Velsen against the forces of the Arch-enemy. While Sabasto’s crusade army was still magnificent at this point, it had also suffered heavy losses (a fact, it is argued by some contemporary Velsian historians, that conrtibuted to Sabasto’s eventual defeat within the Veil of Impurity).

When the Saint contemplated the price in blood paid for the reclamation of Velsen, he decreed that the entire world of St. Sabasto’s Reach would be given to the orphans of the slain and that the Imperium would see to it that the children of martyrs would never need to go hungry. This spurred the planetary populace into religious fervor, and countless orphanages and scholae were opened in the saint’s name, earning the world bynames like “The Planet of Orphans” or “The Orphans’ Cradle”.

However, with a slow decline in piety and a general economic recession, many of the world’s orphanages have had to close over the centuries, while others have turned to a far darker trade, giving the world’s epithet a new, sinister meaning. It is true that Imperial organisations like the Schola Progenium, the Ecclesiarchy and even the Inquisition still maintain a presence on St. Sabasto’s Reach and recruit from the ranks of the homeless orphans, choosing the most talented or devout to serve in their respective organisations. And in the deeper levels of the world’s hives, missions and orphanages still offer a real, if meagre, chance for survival to this day. Yet that is only one face of St. Sabasto’s Reach. For at the same time, the world has also become the biggest fleshmarket in the entire Velsen Sector, providing human resources in a very literal sense, from mutant workers to household servants. Moreover, it is rumoured that there exists a slave for every kind of service in the almshouses and slave pits of St. Sabasto’s Reach, and the masters of the world have long prided themselves on being able to cater to every taste and desire, no matter how “eccentric” it may be.

Another mainstay of the world’s culture, the countless circuses and fighting arenas, are also fueled by a constant influx of “material” from the slave pits. At one point, the world’s renowned Circus Imperialis served as a front for a cult of chaos worshippers and was purged by the hand of Inquisitor Antrecht. But even after this upheaval, the remaining slavelords and ringmasters of St. Sabasto’s Reach quickly regained their step, slightly realigning themselves in the resulting power struggle and carving out a new pecking order among themselves. Because the Inquisition’s issue was never with the slave trade itself, but with the presence of heretics, and so the House of Blossoms, the Angelflesh Lodge and countless other establishments like them continue to ply their dark trade to this day…

I think a group of former slaves would be an interesting concept, plus it would allow for all kinds of different character types, including pitslaves, mutants, workers and some more exotic members. I don’t consider this a high priority project at the moment, but it’s still a fun diversion. In fact, this mutant overlord that I built recently, using the Bloodstoker from the AoS starter box would also make for a great member of that particular warband:

As it happens, the Ork Nobz kit provided the final missing piece for this model as well: a crude trophy pole that looks great on the mutant’s back:

I am normally *very* reluctant about adding back banners or trophy poles to models, because they end up looking very silly more often than not, messing up the model’s silhouette. But I thought this guy needed that precise pole ever since I started building him, and I like it a lot. It also has the added benefit of adding another layer to the model, so to speak, as the base model is surprisingly two-dimensional.

Anyway, I think this could become a rather interesting project somewhere down the line! Keep your eyes peeled! ;)

For now, I am happy enough with my first two pit slaves, though:

Let me know what you think! And, as always, thanks for looking and stay tuned for more!

So here we are, at long last, with my look at Deathwatch: Overkill. Sorry for being so awfully late to this particular party, but I really had to force myself to sit down and create a suitably long writeup, especially given the huge amount of conversion potential inherent in these new kits. But I persevered, and here I am, probably the last person in the world to discuss this new board game release on their blog. I hope you’ll be taking a look, nevertheless😉

Say what you want about the constantly escalating scale and rules complexity of 40k or about GW’s somewhat aimless treatment of Age of Sigmar, but I cannot deny that GW has been steadily ticking boxes off my personal Most Wanted list for quite a while now: An 28mm Imperial Knight, check. More and better Khornate models, check. A fully fledged plastic AdMech release, check. Plastic Sisters,…no, wait, we haven’t seen those yet.

But possibly the only thing quite as interesting as a proper Sisters release is a new version of Genestealer Cults, and lo and behold: That’s exactly what we are getting with Deathwatch: Overkill, the latest boxed game by GW. Oh yeah, some Space Marines are also included, of course, but I suppose that’s a given😉

So join me as I ponder the new models and their possible use in all kinds of conversion projects — in fact, several highly talented hobbyists are already hard at work, putting the new sprues through their paces, and it goes without saying that I’ll be pointing you towards their work as well. Also make sure to check out Heresy & Heroes` and Wudugast’s posts on the matter, as I enjoyed reading them and they should make excellent companion pieces for my take on the matter.

So here goes:

Team Deathwatch:

You simply cannot have a Deathwatch centered game without a Deathwatch Killteam, obviously, and here we are. Now it’s of course perfectly obvious that this collection of models is a pretty shrewd move by GW, because what we are getting here, beyond the scope of the game at hand, is basically a collection of eleven custom Space Marine clamshell characters that would look great in any Astartes army. What’s more, there’s also a model for nearly every popular chapter, probably making this box an auto-purchase for Space Marine players while also giving rise to a healthy shadow economy of selling the different models on ebay.

But what of the models themselves? Let’s take a look at each member of Killteam Cassius in turn:

Ortan Cassius:

Well, what do you know: It’s a great little surprise to encounter a younger version of one of the Ultramarines’ special characters, dating back to before he fell, head-first, into the meatgrinder known as Hivefleet Behemoth — or it was a surprise for me, at least, because I didn’t follow BL’s string of Deathwatch related short stories. But let’s talk about the model:

The obvious thing is to check for parallels to the older version of the character, and it’s nice to see how quite a few parts of the model create a nice sense of continuity: The general design of the armour, the crocius, the book at the hip. What I really like is how some of Cassius’ equipment yet seems free of the Tyrannic influence: the book of prayers will end up bound in Tyranid hide, and his crocius will one day be crowned with a winged Tyranid skull. But his is a younger version of him, so his equipment is still more generically imperial — a good thing for once😉

I also like the model’s powerful pose, and even though it’s fairly static, the flowing seals and dangling chain create a nice, subtle sense of dynamism.

All in all, Cassius is a worthy leader of the Killteam and also, arguably, a much better chaplain model than the one included in the Reclusiam Command Squad.

Drenn Redblade:

Drenn seems like the archetypal Space Wolves Blood Claw: Running forward? Check. Bareheaded? Check. Mohawk? Check. But there’s an elegance to the model that I really appreciate: The running pose is well done, but I especially like the way the sculptors have treated Drenn’s gear: The underslung bolter with the strap running across the model’s chest, the empty scabbard for the combat knife — stuff like that. I realise that many people are unhappy with the unsubtle “Vikings in Space” look of the 40k Space Wolves, but while Drenn shows all the hallmarks of modern SW design (the pelt, the runes, the totemic doodads), there’s also an air of restraint and focus about the model that has been pulled off rather beautifully — easily one of my favourite Astartes from this box!

Jensus Natorian:

Jenus is the first plastic Blood Ravens model we get, so hooray for that! Beyond that, he’s a fairly standard Librarian model. I like the implementation of his heraldry, but his face seems a bit too “generic angry dude 101” for my taste. A solid model, certainly, but no match for the awesome, bearded clamshell Libarian, if you ask me.

Garran Branatar:

Am I the only one reminded of Pat Benatar by that name? Anyway, the model: The inclusion of a Terminator certainly makes for a nice change of pace — unfortunately, the model itself is a bit underwhelming, though, especially the somewhat generic pose. Space Hulk really showed us how to make loyalist Terminators look great and imbue them with lots of character, even with their helmets on, but Brother Branatar seemingly never got the memo. I also think the heavy flamer/melta combo seems a bit iffy, although I realise that it’s probably a Salamanders thing. Speaking of which: FW’s Firedrakes are some of the cooler legion-specific Terminators, and I guess I would have liked GW to have taken a few more design cues from them instead of going for an – ultimately fairly generic – set of Indomitus Pattern Terminator armour.

Jetek Suberei:

Another standout model in that the character comes with a bike, being a White Scar and all. But while the idea is cool enough, it’s all a bit much really: The bike, the gear, the topknot and the cyber eagle. It feels like the model is just trying to do too much at once, where a bit more restraint would have been the better way to go, in my opinion — in fact, this is an ongoing tendency for some of the Deathwatch models from the box (and also one or two of the Genestealer pieces).

It’s not all bad, however: I really like the sabre with its scabbard and the hybrid head trophy! And I am pretty sure that Brother Suberei would make for an excellent Khan. He just seems a bit OTT for a Deathwatch Killteam.

Edryc Setorax:

Raven Guard models often oscillate between badass and silly, and it’s good to see Brother Edryc fall into the former camp. While the pose seems, once again, slightly awkwardly balanced between landing and jumping (it seems like GW’s sculptors have some issues with jumping/flying models…), there are some touches that are really well executed: The more beaklike design of the Mk VI helmet, complete with nostrils, really works for once.  The lightning claws have just the right curvature to make them suitably sinister and menacing. And the spiked toecaps are a very nice touch. All in all, certainly one of the stronger models from Team Deathwatch!

Vael Donatus:

A very iconic Ultramarine, but that doesn’t have to be a bad thing, especially if it’s as well executed as here: strong pose, very good detail, looking suitably different from the other Ultramarine in the box. Vael Donatus seems like the quintessential Space Marine, really, and I rather like that quality. I also think he would look absolutely terrific in Ultramarines colours°

Zameon Gydrael:

A nice enough model, but not that different from what is already available (or convertable) from existing Dark Angels bitz, which makes this character a bit of a letdown. The way the belt is picking up the model’s motion is a nice touch, and he instantly reads as a Dark Angel, but he really doesn’t bring anything new to the table. Solid enough, but not really all that special.

Antor Delassio:

Also pretty similar to models you can already create from existing Blood Angels bitz, but the face really saves the day here, as it’s more delicate than your usual, broad-featured Astartes mug — something that not even the other available BA heads have managed to pull off so far.

That bit of plumbing serving as the attachment point betweeen the model and the base does seem a bit silly, though. Why not use a nice, chunky rock? And I am also wondering whether the left arm would work far better rotated outward by a few degrees. All in all, however, Brother Delassio boasts enough cool touches to make him one of the better models from the box.

Rodicus Grytt:

The gun is fairly close to looking helplesly OTT. That helmet is excellent, though, providing exactly the right sense of knightly armour. I expect this guy to look great if painted in Imperial Fist colours. the head arguably works even better on true scale models, as the slightly bigger scale gives it a bit more room to breathe. I also like the subtle Devastator touches on the armour and the inclusion of a targeting servo-skull.

Ennox Sorrlock:

Easily one of my favourite Space Marines from the kit, mostly because he adds some really nice elements to the – very small – pool of possible Iron Hands bitz: The face and backpack, in particular, are excellent, and we also finally get a plastic bionic leg — yay! All of that makes for a model that looks at once heavily augmented and suitably implacable. Very nice!

All in all, the aim with these models seem to have been to create models that were archetypal avatars of their respective chapters — and by and large, this objective has been accomplished rather successfully. At the same time, however, this seems to make the group somewhat less coherent, beyond the common colour of their armour. Compare Space Hulk to see how a squad (of Terminators, no less!) can be made to look coherent and effective as a collection, while also having each of its members read as an individual in their own right. Granted, all of those Terminators belong to the same chapter, which must have made things a bit easier. But the fact remains that the Deathwatch Marines do seem a bit too much like solo artists where a band would be required.

Oh, and before we move on, let’s not forget the inclusion of a servo-skull and teleport marker! Even though both of these elements seem to be slightly touched-up versions of earlier bitz, it’s still a nice bonus and something I would love to see more often!

Team Broodkin:

Now these guys are the real starts of the show, and have certainly been highly anticipated by many hobbyists, myself included: The concept of Genestealer Cults has always been one of the more interesting parts of 40k lore for me, especially since it moves the Genestealers a bit beyond their, very obvious, Xenomorph inspirations by creating something that is arguably even more disturbing: The idea of aliens not only invading human society, but of also interbreeding with our species with horrific results. This part of the background had seemingly been dropped by GW, so it’s a fantastic surprise to see it return with aplomb! So let’s take a closer look at the members of Team Broodkin:

Genestealer Patriarch:

First of all, I am actually glad to see that GW has moved away from the old concept of a Patriarch that’s bloated to the point of immobility. Sure, the old models had a grotesque charm, but the Patriarch should work more as an “end boss”, if anything, and the new model is much better suited to that function. There are also some parts of the model that I really love, such as the mean and grotesque face and head and the way some nameless alien …residue has been used to coat those skulls on the base in a coat of vile mucus:

I do think, however, that the Patriarch falls victim to the aforementioned problem of trying to do too much at once: Trying to have him mimick the design of the cult’s wyrm seal in silhouette is a very clever idea, but it also means that quite a few elements have to be crammed together in very little space: That stinger (or ovipositor, possibly?), for instance, is a cool idea in and of itself, but it does look pretty awkward, wedged in there between the model’s legs and the ventilation shaft the Patriarch is standing on. And those dorsal spines are just a bit much, aren’t they?

What’s more, if you ask me, GW already had a pretty much perfect template for an eventual Genestealer Patriarch on their hands. This guy:

The Space Hulk Broodlord gets it all right, in my opinion: The pose is fantastic, creating a sense of menace and malice, but also one of alien elegance and lethal mobility. This guy already looked like a perfect Patriarch for me even before Genestealer Cults were, once again, a thing.

And GW must have agreed with me, because they used the basic design template to come up with this guy, the Spawn of Cryptus:

But you know what? The added tweaks and details actually watered down the excellence of the initial model instead of adding to it. So the Spawn of Cryptus ended up being a pretty cool model, but arguably inferior to its predecessor.

And, unfortunately enough, the designers seem to have used the Spawn of Cryptus, in turn, as a template for the Patriarch, adding yet more stuff on top. And I just wish they had gone back to the original Space Hulk Broodlord for inspiration, cutting out the middle man, so to speak.

As it stands, the Patriarch is still a suitably massive and monstrous model, but it lacks some of the finess of the Broodlord and could have profited from just a tad more restraint.

Genestealer Magus:

Confession time: For me, the classic Genestealer Magus from the early 90s is easily one of GW’s all time greats. Just take a look at this picture, taken from the 2nd edition rulebook’s colour section:

Now, slightly tacky retro paintjob notwithstanding, this model just does so much right: It’s diminutive in stature and has a fairly static pose, yet it excudes a palpable sense of menace and alien power. I love the quasi-organic shapes of its armour, especially the high collar. And the face is just something to behold: Those slightly alien features that could never quite pass for human upon closer inspection. That subtle scowl. He knows things, this guy.

Now GW’s sculptors must have known they already had solid gold on their hands with this design, because they simply emulated most of it for the modern incarnation:

The armour shape, flowing robes, staff and alien head — all of that is still there, nicely updated to the current design standard. Along the way, the Magus became quite a bit taller, but I don’t really mind — I like my centre piece models with a bit of stature. I also really like the way the stole adds another layer to the Magus’ clothing, while managing to incorporate some more cult imagery   — very nice!

If I do have one minor quibble about the model, it’s the head: It just doesn’t match the older version’s quiet malevolence. The main reason for this is that they slipped up and made it look too angry and shouty (why does he need to shout in the first place? Doesn’t he communicate with the brood through some kind of psychic link?) I think much of the original Magus’ impact came from that inscrutable facial expression, and the new version unfortunately falters in this small – but crucial – way. I also feel the head could have been recessed into the collar a bit more, although the converter in me thinks that it’s good that we won’t have to painstakingly dig it out. Anyway, it’s a problem that should be easy enough to rectify by replacing the head with a less shouty one from one of the 3rd/4th generation hybrids, I suppose?

The model is still excellent, though, all the more so because its one disadvantage should be easy enough to get rid of.

Familiars:

The Broodkin get some bonus models as well, and they are even brand new sculpts. Now granted, those familiars do seem ever so slightly awkward and silly (especially the one on the left), but they are also a delicious reminder of the yesteryear, when there were lots of strange little models and familiars like that. An awesome little bonus! And if all else fails, they could make for excellent, subtly disturbing statues when painted in suitable colours, especially the crouching guy on the right.

Genestealer Primus:

I really like the idea of expanding the various types of hybrids beyond the already established phenotypes, so the Genestealer Primus is a very interesting addition! Although I do have to say that, in the context of the game, this guy seems a bit undecided as to what he wants to be: He’s not quite human enough to blend in with the populace, but also not quite alien enough to work as a killing machine like the Patriarch or the purestrains. And the face is, once again, arguably the model’s weakest point, failing to capture that (admittedly very tiny) sweet spot between believably human and subtly alien (I do like the tube feeding into the model’s nostril, though).

That’s not really that much of a problem, though, as there are so many cool parts about the model: I love the clawed (and augmented) left hand! We finally get a plastic needle pistol! And I think it’s easy to see why the body will become *very* popular with converters — in fact, half a dozen of my fellow Ammobunker forumites are busy cutting up this guy as I write this. And to wit, I already have one of these coming in the post😉

So while I don’t see this guy as a hugely relevant addition to the Genestealer lore, the model is a godsend for converters! One last thing, though: Let me take a moment to share my thoughts about those alien daggers we see on the hybrids: They…do not make a whole lot of sense, do they? At least not when you think about them: Are they manufactured? That seems like a bit too much work for a mere CC weapon, especially when you’ve got a set of scything claws hidden under your mackintosh, right? Are they organic? Do the hybrids grow these as separate weapons? But that would run counter to the whole Tyranid concept? Or do they, I don’t know, break them off bigger organisms that we have yet to see? The mind boggles…

Probably best not to think about this stuff too closely, however. They do look awesome, and that’s good enough for me😉

Purestrain Genestealers:

Now these guys don’t really get much coverage, to the point that the GW homepage doesn’t even feature any pictures of them, but we do get two purestrain Genestealers with the kit. But that’s possibly due to the fact that they are mostly the standard Genestealers we already know. A small voice in the back of my head says they should have taken the effort to give us bigger, “true scale” Genestealers for this game, to really make them look like the Apex Predators they are presented as, easily able to take out a Space Marine, even if the latter is wearing Terminator armour. But that’s well beyond the scope of this game, especially since we already get so many original sculpts in the box. So let me mention one small detail I like: Both models have been outfitted with hideous, Xenomorph-like ovipositors — a very nice and fitting touch, given the setting of the game!

Genestealer Aberrants:

I was really excited about the inclusion of these guys, because, like I said, it always felt like it would be interesting to explore more possible variations of the hybrid concept, beyond the tried and true generations we already saw in the old fluff. GW seems to have decided to do just that, giving us hulking, malformed brutes that seem quite a bit less genetically stable than their smaller brethren, just like the  kind of unforeseeable half-breed you would probably end up with, were you to wildly tamper with human and Xenos genetics.

And in spite of their rather mono-pose nature, i really like these guys: They are hulking and overmuscled and lopsided and make for a stunning visual contrast among the smaller, more human cultists. Plus they bring back the concept of working with rather striking silhouettes:

All in all, these are a fun little addition, and I would love GW to experiment with further Genestealer hybrid types (what about lithe, almost daeonette-like female hybrids? Just saying…)

Acolyte Hybrids:

Now here’s where the real fun begins, as the various hybrids are easily the most exciting part of the release for me.
All of the hybrids so a perfect job of recreating the strangely organic shape of the classic models’ armour while also giving it a somewhat believable context: It’s miners’ equipment, complete with lamps and rebreathers, and while it will make the hybrids useful far beyond their original function, it also really beautifully approximated the older design.

The Acolyte Hybrids are the more bestial members of the Brood, looking like a missing link between humans and purestrains. I like the subtle progression between the 1st and 2nd generations: They look very similar when seen from afar, but upon closer inspection, subtle differences become visible. It’s a tough and delicate look to get right, but these really succeed at capturing the look of breeding out certain alien characteristics over the generations.

I only have two, very minor, quibbles with these: One thing I really loved about the classic metal hybrids was how puny some of them looked, with seemingly atrophied claws hidden under their tattered robes. By comparison, the new models seem almost too formidable and monstrous — but then, they arguably make a better fit as dangerous, lethal combattants, so it’s all okay (I can always build my own, pathetic hybrids using Crypt Ghouls, Flagellants, Plague Monks or what have you).

The second problem is that they are slightly too uniform for my taste, with the same number of limbs appearing in the same configuration on too many models — this should be really easy to remedy, however, by cutting off and reattaching some limbs for greater variety.

All in all, the hybrids are excellent redesigns of the older versions, taking all the right ideas from the classic models and bringing them into the 21st century.

Neophyte Hybrids:

And finally, arguably the best models to come out of this boxed game: The 3rd/4th generation hybrids brilliantly continue the trend of becoming gradually more human, and its their humanity that makes them into such fantastic and versatile models — but all in good order.

First of all, this is one of the few cases where the classic models were really rather terrible: The almost human hybrids of the yesteryear ended up looking pretty silly and hideous, and in all the wrong ways. The modern versions are far more subtle: These guys could really pass for humans…almost.

I also really like the way their miner’s gear and ribbed armour plates hint at their darker nature, in spite of having a perfectly plausible in-universe explanation.

Possibly the best single model is the guy with the glasses:

Now for all intents and purposes, he looks perfectly human and could be used as such. But that’s the beauty of the piece: Place him among his more openly alien brethren, and he becomes one of them, by virtue of a common visual heritage. But remove him from that context, and he could become a voidfarer, a miner, or any other human archetype. I also think that head is one of the best faces produced by GW — Eat your heart out, clunky metal Delaques!😉

At the other end of the spectrum comes this, rather heavily mutated, heavy weapons guy: Good thing he has that third arm, eh?😉

To have a collection of models with so much variety yet also such an unified look is nothing short of a brilliant accomplishment. The restraint and subtly evident in these models is something so very rare in recent GW releases that it really needs to be pointed out: This is brilliant stuff!

And possibly the best thing is how freaking many of these guys we get in the box — trust me, converters all around the world are going to have a field day with these. But we’ll be getting to that in a minute!

In closing, let me talk about the paintjob GW chose for the official models: In my opinion, ‘Eavy Metal knocked it out of the park with regards to the hybrids’ clothing: The colour of the armour and fatigues are just perfect, evoking the design and colour of the spaceships and props from the Alien series — which seems extremely apt, for obvious reasons. It’s a brilliant little shout out, and one that is far more subtle and delicious than the very overt Giger-influences exhibited by the Genestealers.

There’s also a part of the paintjobs, however, that I am not all that happy with, and that’s the way the actual Genestealers (and Genestealer body parts) have been painted: Now I am pretty sure that we all have a certain fondness for the classic blue and purple Genestealer paint scheme — but it’s really rather a nostalgia thing, and I think those colours just seem a bit too outlandish for alien creatures nestled at the heart of human society. Since the Tyranids so obviously take design cues from Giger, I think they would work far better when painted in a more restrained, organic and ultimately disturbing palette, in order to reproduce some of the Xenomorph’s creepiness. Take, for instance, Stephen Flack’s Genestealer scheme here. I think that’s what modern Genestealers should look like! It’s funny that the ‘Eavy Metal painter seem to have adapted the Alien look so readily when painting the models’ clothes, but have shied away from it on, you know, the actual aliens.

I like this approach much better, and if (when) I am starting my own Hybrid warband, I think I’ll be trying something more along those lines. And even before that, I would really love to see someone take the new models along a more realistic route, such as this.

On a semi-related note, painting the Magus’ robe red seems like such a strange idea — Thraxas of Turai’s approach here shows how the Magus will arguably look quite a bit cooler when painted closer to the “classic” colour scheme for once.

All in all, the box certainly provides us with a huge pile of brilliant models! The Broodkin are a fantastic reimagining of the earlier sculpts, a few very minor slipups notwithstanding, and easily one of the best surprises in a long time. If anything, the Space Marines seem a bit lacking by comparison, mostly because GW seems to be going through the motions a bit when designing Astartes these days. Make no mistake, some of those models are very nice, and even the worse ones are still more than solid. But compared to the sheer brilliance of those Genestealer sculpts, they just seem a bit uninspired.

Conversion options

Okay, so much for the models, but what about the possible conversions? Allow me to share some ideas and to point you towards some particularly interesting examples:

Deathwatch:

Now this is the easy part, as the various models will certainly be useable for all kinds of Space Marine projects, especially with a bit of deft cutting: It seems to be easy enough to remove most Deathwatch trappings, turning these into characters for their respective chapters (or, at the very least, Deathwatch veterans). By the same token, it should also be easy enough to turn most of the models to members of different chapters, successor chapters or what have you. And of course some of those helmets, weapons etc. will certainly become sought after conversion bitz: The IF helmet, the IH augmented head — the list goes on.

On the other hand, some of those Deathwatch bitz would of course be perfect for any kind of Deathwatch project moving beyond the chapters included in the game — or even beyond the scale of the models. For instance, Commissar Molotov is making excellent use of the various Deathwatch bitz for his true scale Deathwatch, and some of those bitz really shine when used at the slightly bigger scale.

One of the Space Marines’ biggest strength is the compatibility of their various kits — and even their clamshell characters. So as long as you’re careful and use a sharp knife, those new models should provide you with lots of options, if you’re a Space Marines player.

Broodkin:

Here’s where the  conversion fun really begins, as most of the Broodkin models could be used for several different projects, armies and warbands. Just off the top of my head…

Genestealer Patriarch:

Well, who am I kidding: He’ll always look like a massive Tyrandi/Genesealer monster. That said, he’d obviously make for a pretty cool Broodlord in a Tyranid army — or for a great “boss monster” in games of INQ28 and Necromunda. Moving on…

Genestealer Magus:

This guy is quite a bit more versatile. Personally, I’d try to give him a less shouty head and he would be perfect. But even beyond Genestealer cults, he could be turned into all kinds of characters with a bit of work: A Navigator or Astropath? A radical Inquisitor? A renegade psyker or Chaos Sorcerer? It all seems quite feasible to me!

Genestealer Primus:

Like I said, the INQ28 scene is already in love with this guy. And rightly so, for he’s a great base model for all kinds of possible characters, among them…

• Inquisitors, especially for the Ordo Xenos
• Chaos Demagogues or cultist leaders
• a Magos Explorator of the Adeptus Mechanicus
• a slightly more militaristic Navigator

Aberrants:

I think it should really be easy enough to get rid of their obvious Genestealer characteristics and turn them into big Mutants, Scalies or Traitor Ogryns.

1st & 2nd Generation Hybrids:

It would take a bit of work, but I think these would make for excellent mutants, Scavvies or particularly downtrodden Traitor Guard soldiers.

3rd & 4th generation Hybrids:

And finally, these may just be some of the most versatile human-sized models ever released by GW, easily on par with the Dark Vengeance cultists! Depending on which bitz you use, these could become…

• Imperial working crews or miners
• voidfarers, naval crews or crewmen of a Rogue Trader’s vessel
• all kinds of cultists or Traitor Guard
• Tech Gangers (or alternate Delaque Gangers for Necromunda — just use Skitarii trenchcoats and you’re set😉 )
• Members of an explorator team, hive delvers, maintenance workers or all kinds of underhive adventurers
• members of a Navigator’s retinue — their somewhat astronaut-like clothing would work really well for that!
• members of an Astra Militarum regiment or a planetary defense force

And all of those ideas have only taken me five minutes to come up with. In fact, I would argue that, between the Skitarii, Genestealer Hybrids, Dark Vengeance Cultists and Tempestus Scions, we now basically have the perfect toolkit for making every kind of grimdark soldier/explorer/footman at our fingertips. For starters, check out the following projects:

• Jagganath is using the more human cultists for a very interesting project to build underhive explorers, cultists and similarly shady characters here.
• Marcominius has recently begun using those hybrids as building blocks for creating some absolutely unbelievable Proto-Mechanicus Techno-Barbarians. Must see!

And it goes without saying that I cannot wait for weirdingway to start using the new models for his Navigator House Merz-Itano. That’s going to be brilliant, trust me!

So yeah, this is really a rather brilliant kit and a fantastic way of revitalising a part of the lore that we had thought permanently eliminated. As far as I am concerned, they could even have dropped the Space Mariens from the deal — but that just shows my excitement for the new Broodkin models. It seems like GW’s designers are always at their very best when coming completely out of the left field. And the subtlty of the hybrids is certainly something that some of the future kits (especially for Age of Sigmar) would do well to emulate!

So what are your thoughts on the new models? And do you have any crazy conversion ideas to share? I would love to hear your feedback in the comments!

And, as always, thanks for looking and stay tuned for more!

Today I would like to share some new models from one of my recent projects with you. You probably still remember the kitbashed pit slaves I created fairly recently, along with the first ideas for a small gang of escaped former slaves and mutants from the world of St- Sabasto’s Reach (and if not, you can always go back and read up on it all here😉 ). Anyway, here are the two gladiators I had when we last heard of this particular project:

I have begun to refer to this growing warband as “The Road Crew” in the back of my head for some reason. Maybe it’s because they do take a bit of an inspirations from settings like the one in Mad Max: Fury Road (as well as tangentially related settings from videogames like Fallout, Borderlands, or what have you). Maybe it’s the yellow reminding me of heavy duty construction engines? Or maybe I just like the sound of the name?

Now the next model in line for painting was this mutant brute based on the Bloodstoker from the Age of Sigmar starter box:

I think you’ll agree with me that there’s a pretty obvious Mad Max vibe going on here, especially with regards to the facemask and trophy pole, right? Anyway, I painted the model, applying the recipe that had already proved fairly successful on the pit slaves.

Here’s the finished model, Tiny the Brute:

Now if you look at Tiny next to my recently completed pit slaves, you’ll see that there’s a common look and feel to the models, in spite of the new model being fairly different in nature:

I think the paintjob does play a fairly big part in drawing these models together into a cohesive whole, but there’s also a certain feeling of coherence beyond that. And that is really something I want to explore with this warband: a collection of models of different shapes, sizes and archetypes that still read as a fairly cohesive gang. I think I’ll be drawing lots of inspirations from classic Necromunda gangs, such as Goliaths, Pit slaves and Scavvies, but I would also like to blur the lines between those factions a bit: The hard divisions between the various gangs make lots of sense for a game like Necromunda, where you simply need several different factions. But there’s also enough overlap between the various gangs that a warband taking inspirations from several different sources should work out really well — and in any case, INQ28 is all about the grey areas and thus has little need for clearly defined borders, right?😉

So since I really wanted to take the idea of exploring different shapes and sizes for the various gang members further, I chose something even more extreme – in a way – for my next model:

A diminutive mutant wielding a huge evsicerator. The model was originally one of those “bonus gnoblars” you get with several of the Ogre Kingdoms kits. I love those guys, both because they are very characterful and because it’s fairly easy to convert them into something that seems right at home in the 40k universe: In this case, all it took was a hooded head from the AdMech Skitarii Rangers, a Khorne berzerker chainsword and some odd bitz and bobs.

Painting this guy was a fairly quick affair, yet the challenge was to make the recipe I already had in place work on a model that is very different from the hulking brutes I had painted so far. In the end, it came down to featuring enough of the yellow to serve as a visual tie-in. And I had cunningly added another armour plate to the model’s right shoulder beforehand to give myself an extra yellow area😉 Anyway, without further ado, heeere’s Chopper:

This has mainly been a quick and fun model, and I don’t really see him as a character with huge ramifications for any greater narrative, but I think he provides a nice extra bit of flavour to the warband and manages to move them beyond mere pit slave archetypes.

Funnily enough, Chopper has also managed to attract a bit of a fan club at various forums: DexterKong even mentioned his intent to put the small guy on a T-Shirt to wear at the gym. So if anyone wants to follow his lead, I whipped up a small T-Shirt design for your perusal:

A hires version of the image is, of course, available😉

So here’s a look at the models I have so far:

I am pretty happy with these guys, especially since they have come together so quickly and organically. I also think they look rather striking as a group — it must be the combination of deadly weapons and that bright yellow😉

One thing I have decided not to include on these models are hazard stripes, though, even though they might seem like a natural addition. This is something I decided right out of the gate, ecause I really wanted to suggest a slightly industrial look without overdoing it, and hazard stripes would just be that little bit too much. I also didn’t want these guy to look like Iron Warriors auxiliars😉

So what else is in store for the Road Crew? Well, I have already started building the next member, a former Tech-Priest, codenamed “Doc” for now, serving as medicae/mechanic/possible leader?! to the escaped slaves:

This was a slightly fiddly conversion, because I had to make the Ruststalker legs conform to the general shape outlined by the Skitarii Trenchcoat. It all worked our rather well in the end, however, and I rather like Doc’s tall, gaunt appearance.  The mostly organic face was also a very important (and conscious) choice, as it represents a certain amount of humanity, something we don’t see often in a member of the Adeptus Mechanicus. Somehow I really like the idea of a former Tech-Priest who rediscovered a part of his humanity in the slave pits of St. Sabasto’s Reach and went rogue as a consequence.

DexterKong also suggested this guy may be the Road Crew’s “bookie” as well as their mechanic, organising fights and assignments for the group to enable them to assemble the credits and tech to keep functioning as a fairly independent outfit. Anyway, it feels like this guy is definitely a keeper!

Maybe this twist witch doctor I built a while ago would also be an interesting addition to the gang:

Now he may seem like a pretty odd fit at first glance, but keep in mind that I would really like to branch out into some more out there character types: I actually want to get a bit more visual variety into this warband, so that they don’t read as merely pit slaves or mutants, but as a coalition of escaped slaves, shady characters and lost men. I think a shamanistic twist witch doctor might just be the colourful touch I need for that. He could even be a follower of a particularly devolved and archaic variation of the Imperial Creed, with the Emperor as some kind of totem?! We’ll see…

One thing that I definitely want to add to the gang at some point is this:

An old Gorkamorka trukk that I’ve had in my bitzbox for quite a while. The original plan was to use it for my Traitor Guard, but it seems far more appropriate in an INQ28/Necromunda setting. Plus it would be a cool asset to have for INQ28 games in general, once painted. So I tweaked the driver a bit, making him look suitably postapocalyptic:

The vehicle itself needs some more bitz and bobs – a bit of additional gear here and there, but nothing too drastic. I think much of the appeal will come from a suitably grimy and weathered paintjob.

I think these models would make for some rather neat additions and create just the kind of visual variety, different shapes, sizes and archeytpes I want for the Road Crew:

More than anything, though, these guys really are a fun diversion, and it’s pretty cool to just go with the flow and see where inspiration takes me. Of course it goes without saying that I would love to hear any ideas and feedback you might have, so just leave me a comment or a suggestion!

And, as always, thanks for looking and stay tuned for more!

This week, let’s head back to the Heresy for a bit, as I show you my latest conversions based on models from the Betrayal at Calth box. So you’ll be seeing a lot of unpainted plastic, unfortunately, but also – hopefully – a conversion idea or two that might inspire you😉

One thing that I have always loved about the Horus Heresy in the pre-Forgeworld days is how sketchy and adventurous it all seemed: Back when the original Visions of Heresy artbooks were released, you could get the feeling that the artists really had a lot of leeway when it came to interpreting the various armour marks and war machines of the Heresy era Astartes legions. So you would see all kinds of crazy armour designs (Wayne England’s Heresy artwork is a prime example of this), and then people would go and convert models based on that, and it was all pretty great.

Forgeworld created a more streamlined and and standardised look for the Legiones Astartes, and there’s a lot to be said for that: The various armour marks, for instance, are excellent and suitably different now, and they really allow for lots of customisation to achieve the exact look you want for your army. However, at the same time, I cannot help feeling every once in a while that some of the craziness of the pre-FW Heresy days has been lost along the way, with the new models sometimes seeming a bit less interesting than the old artwork.

Nowhere is this more obvious than with the Cataphractii design. To wit, here’s an early Cataphractii illustration (probably the first one, at that) courtesy of John Blanche:

Cataphractii illustration by John Blanche

Even beyond the hallmarks of John’s personal style, there’s something cool and barbaric about this individual: He looks far more than a tank than the 40k Terminators, yes, but there are also elements like the pteryges and the massive topknot that give the Cataphractii the look of a Roman legionary turned up to eleven — and that’s really just what Space Marines are, in a nutshell, right?

Forgeworld’s Cataphractii design ditches some of the zanier parts of the old art, particularly the topknots, which I think is a shame. And the plastic Cataphractii included with the Betrayal of Calth box are probably, at the same time, the best and the worst part of the entire release. The best part because a fully customisable multi part squad was definitely more than we could have expected. And the worst because the models are painfully generic and vailla, even moreso than the rest of the models from the set!

But vanilla wasn’t what I wanted for my own Cataphractii: I wanted to turn them into World Eaters, so they needed to become slightly more interesting, slightly more gladiatorial and slightly more feral, while their possible allegiance to Khorne during the latter stages of the Heresy needed to be kept at least somewhat abiguous without straying too far into 40k levels of Khornate decoration: To go all spiky and baroque on them would ultimately have lead to a 40k chaos look, and I still wanted these guys to be recognisable as 30k models. So a bit of character was needed, but not too much of it. Oh, and I also wanted to incorporate some of the small touches from the older artwork that have since fallen by the wayside. That’s quite a lot on one plate, right?😉

I started by experimenting with a couple of bitz, and while this lies beyond the scope of this post, one thing that I have found out is that it’s relatively easy to make Cataphractii that resemble various legions’ dedicated Terminators simply by virtue of using different heads: Just discard the stock “half heads” you get with the kit (or better yet, keep them in the bitzbox for the future), and shave away that one small piece of plastic from the inside of the torso’s cowling to allow the torso to accept different heads. You will also need to shave down the heads and helmets you use a bit, so they fit snugly into the recess, but it’s really not that complicated. Just check out my quick study for Sons of Horus Justaerin and Deathshroud-like Deathguard helmets here:

It took me only a couple of minutes and some different helmets to make these, and I wasn’t really serious about the endeavour, either. On a related note, check out thamier’s excellent Justaerin based on the plastic Cataphractii to see where you can take these humble base models with a bit of work.

Regarding my own Cataphractii, however, it took another puzzle piece for things to finally fall into place: Fellow hobbyist weirdingway (yes, the guy with the amazing Navigators) sent me some leftovers from the AoS starter box Bloodreavers. And while I own a full set of – mostly – mint Bloodreavers myself, it was while playing around with those leftover heads, daggers and doodads that I realised that the Bloodreaver parts where perfect for adding some oomph to my Cataphractii!

And once I had that idea, I just started building. So let me show you the different models in the squad, one by one:

This is actually the second Cataphractii Terminator I built, but the first model I want to show you, because the plan here was to incorporate several elements of that JB drawing shown above: The horsehair topknot was an auto-include, since it’s such an iconic piece of the Cataphractii design for me. After experimenting with various topknots and hair pieces, I ultimately decided to use the old horse tails from the WFB Empire Knights, both because I still had some of those lying around, but also because I rather like the volume and slightly stylised look of the hair. I realise that this part may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but I really think the topknots do a pretty good job of recreating that vintage look.

I also wanted the pointy fingers on the power fist, at least on this one model, so I carefully spliced together the original Cataphractii arm with a CSM power first for that slightly more vicious look. As for the head, I experimented with a shaved down Grey Knights head for a while, and it ended up resembling the illustration rather closely. But then I found the option pictured above, which I liked even better, even though it doesn’t resemble the artwork: There’s just something brutal and menacing about that Bloodreaver head that really sells the character, if you ask me.

Speaking of Bloodreavers, another part of those models was added to the model, and it’s a part that would turn into a recurring element with the squad: A Bloodreaver dagger was added to the every model in the squad, and I think it really creates a nice bit of continuity. My idea for the 4th assault company’s background is that, even during the latter days of the Crusade, their identity as hunters had already begun to assert itself, so it only seems right that each of their Cataphractii veterans should bear an ornate flensing knife, right? At the same time, the daggers also subtly hint at the World Eaters growing allegiance to a new master, as their decorations feature touches of Khornate inconography here and there.

I am really happy with this guy, as he just has the lumbering, menacing look that I think is  just right for a World Eater in Cataphractii armour.

Now you already know this guy, as he was my first Cataphractii test model from a while ago. However, I have changed the pose back to its earlier version, as the “screaming at the heavens in rage” just never gets old, especially for a World Eater😉

Since we last saw him, though, I’ve added a Bloodreaver dagger and a stylised daemon face belt buckle to him, and I think those elements provide just the right amount of flavour to seel him as a World Eater — the heavily scarred Bloodsecrator head helps as well, of course.

Knowing myself as well as I do, I was aware of the danger of just giving each of the Cataphractii some crazy combination of viciously barbed CC weapons (as I’ve done on my 40k Terminators). I forced myself not to indulge that urge, however, as I wanted to keep at least a bit of that more regimented, orderly 30k look. So I needed to stick to a more subdued weapons loadouts while also finding a way to make them look slightly more interesting. This next guy was an attempt at getting this right:

While he does use a fairly pedestrian bolter/chainfist combo, I made the chainfist look quite a bit more vicious by splicing in the blade of a CSM chainsword:

Moreover, the scarred head, while originally just a placeholder, has really grown on me, as it adds another subtly feral element to the model.

Next in line was the Sergeant. I thought it would be cool if one model of the squad were to sport the classic “bunny ears” as a sign of a growing devotion to the war god. What’s more, the classic Khornate helmet crests have received some official 40k background: They are called the “Caedere Remissum” now and form a gladiatorial tradition from Angron’s “homeworld” Nuceria.

The sergeant was the obvious candidate for this element. I also gave him a slightly daemonic looking (Blood Warrior) pauldron as a test, although I think it works fairly well. Oh, and I recycled the leftover combi-bolter/melta from the Praetor for this model (we’ll be getting to the Praetor in another post, although let’s just say that he won’t be needing that combi-weapon anymore…):

My original plan was to exchange the sword for a chainaxe, but I really rather liked the elegant look of the weapon, mostly because it seems so very at odds with the lumbering brute wielding it.😉

Here’s a closer look at the headcrest and the right pauldron:

The one thing I am not quite happy with yet is the position of the head: I realise that it should be turned towards the combi-weapon even more, but I have already shaved quite a bit of plastic from that Bloodreaver helmet in order to make it fit, and I am actually slightly afraid of ruining it for good…

All in all, I am pretty pleased with the sergeant, though.

And finally, the heavy weapons guy. This was arguably the hardest model to get right, mostly on account of the somewhat dopey looking leg pose. I also considered arming this guy with a Reaper autocannon for a while, but eventually went for the heavy flamer included with the kit due to, you know, that whole “Kill! Maim! Burn!” thing…

So here’s the model:

The legs remain slightly awkward, but I tweaked the pose until I could live with it. Beyond that, it was mainly a question of adding some gladiatorial touches, such as the marauder shield on the flamer. I also chose a – pretty old – rebreather head, both because a flamer guy needs a rebreather and because I really like the head’s scarred look — it doesn’t photograph to well, unfortunately, due to the older plastic.

When I posted my first Cataphractii conversions on Dakka, fellow hobbyist Anvildude suggested – only half-jokingly, I suspect – adding an “axefist” to one of the models. Much fun was had by everyone involved, trying to figure out how such a weapon would even work, but in the end, I am always up for a little fun, and I also didn’t want to repeat myself too much with this squad. So here it is, an axefist:

My overarching impression of the plastic Cataphractii kit is that it has a lot of potential, but it also needs quite a bit of work to produce models that are a bit more characterful than the stock versions. The kit also has some slightly strange idiosyncracies — some of the arms just seem decidedly too short for me. And some of the power fists are pretty terrible, to be honest. And there’s always the fact that we don’t get any arms that allow for easy modification into CC arms, that one measly power sword arm notwithstanding. In my opinion, they should have made the chainfist an optional power first upgrade and rather included some CC arms.

At the same time, there are things that the kit does incredibly well. Chief of all among these is the fact that the finished Cataphractii really end up looking like walking tanks to a much greater degree than any 40k Terminator: They seem like massive, lumbering brutes, which I think is a great match with their depiction in the background.

Ultimately, putting in some serious work to transform the squad into something a bit more original was really worth it. I am very happy with these guys, if I do say so myself:

They are still recognisable as Cataphractii and Legiones Astartes warriors. They are brutal and vicious enough to read as World Eaters. Some subtle, Khornate influences are already in evidence, although they do not overpower the models. These guys are hopefully going to look great in white and blue! And they have the classic topknots — what’s not to like?😉

So yeah, so much for converting the Cataphractii from Betrayal at Calth into proper World Eaters. It goes without saying that I would love to hear any feedback you might have! And, as always, thanks for looking and stay tuned for more!

For todays’s post, let us return to plastic models wearing Cataphractii Terminator armour for a bit. Because, even with the squad of five Cataphractii finished, there was still the matter of the Praetor model that came with the Betrayal at Calth box to take care of:

In many ways, it’s a rather strange model: On the one hand, it’s well designed and fairly elegantly engineered. Like most of GW’s newer plastic characters, it’s made up of a number of parts that lock together in a very clever way, creating a character model that definitely has the right amount of bulk, detail and depth. The armour is also a nice step up from the standard Cataphractii design and, along with the flowing cape and the more detailed pteryges leather straps, instantly communicates the fact that this guy is an officer. So far, so good, right?

But then there’s the pose: I cannot even begin to guess what made GW’s designers decide on such a rigidly posed model. Maybe they merely wanted to provide the model with some agency, instead of going for the classic “posing with outstretched weapon arms” look of the yesteryear? Or maybe the Praetor was designed as an opposite to Forgeworld’s own Praetor in Cataphractii armour?

Whatever the reason, the pose is definitely one of the model’s weaker parts for me, and it seemed like the one factor that would make any conversion rather challenging. Even with quite a number of fairly clever conversions appearing over at The Bolter & Chainsword, few versions of the Praetor managed to get rid of the somewhat pidgeon-toed stance of the base model — which really seemed at once central to the conversion and fairly challenging to me.

And maybe it was  that challenge that drew me towards attempting a conversion in the first place. I had originally planned to leave this guy for last, but when I recently started hitting a bit of a roll with my Catapphractii, I felt motivated enough to start working on the Praetor as well. There was just one problem, however:

You may remember that my 30k models are supposed to represent an earlier incarnation of my 40k army of choice: The World Eaters’ 4th assault company. And the 4th has one commander, and one commander alone: Lord Captain Lorimar. And I even already had a 30k model for him:

The model shown above was originally mostly built and painted by AgnostosTheos, and I bought it from him when he sold off his collection of World Eaters about two years ago. It took very little work to turn the model into an earlier incarnation of Lorimar, and I am still reasonably happy with the way both versions of the character look next to each other — incidentally, you can read more about the models and the character that informed them here.

So was there actually any room for yet another version of Lorimar? Or for a different character serving as Praetor? Of course this whole discourse only really makes a lick of sense if you take the whole background part of the hobby seriously, but I am just funny that way in that I tend to build and paint characters, not just playing pieces. At least that is what it feels like to me.

In the end, however, the urge to create a badass Cataphractii Praetor got the better of me, and I decided to play this one by ear: If the resulting model ended up as another version of Lorimar, then I would find a place for him in my collection somehow.

So I started making some adjustments to the base model, and here’s what I ended up with after putting in the first bit of work:

Like I said, the base model is pretty cool in principle, but it’s also severly hampered by the somewhat rigid (and slightly uncomfortable looking) pose, so that was the part I really needed to change. I also knew that it wouldn’t do for a World Eater to focus so much on a shooting weapon, so I changed the model’s entire orientation.

The most important part was to cut off the right leg above the knee and slightly rotate it inwards. Such a small thing, really, but it was really key for making the pose far less awkward — in fact, it’s a neat little trick that I would recommend to anyone trying to change the model’s pose around a bit:
You cut right between the kneecap armour and the armour plate covering the hip (directly under that one line of decorative trim on the leg). There’s really only an area of about 0.5 mm width where you can make the cut without damaging either armour plate, so the sweet spot should be easy enough to find. Then you rotate the leg inwards, stopping once you’re happy with the pose. There’s going to be some damage, especially if you are trying to have both feet meet the ground at the same angle, but it’s really easy to repair with some plastic glue and some plastic shavings, plus the damage will be nearly invisible from the front. And if you are using the stock model’s cape, the damage will be neatly camouflaged by the Praetor’s cape.

The other considerable change I made to the base model was to cut off the hand holding the combi-bolter and replace it with that massive chainsword from the Space Wolves Upgrade Pack — incidentally, that sword was one of the two reasons that made me pick up that sprue in the first place, and its mass and length seemed ideal for a World Eaters Praetor.

And finally, I cut away the model’s original head, mostly to allow for a head facing in a different direction. As it happened, however, I had an extra head from the chaos warshrine priest still knocking about – the exact head I also used on 40k Lorimar – so I decided to use it in my early mockup.

With the basic pose out of the way, the next part was to add some detail that would make the model read as an actual World Eater. Seeing how the stock model’s armour was already very detailed, I had to try not to go overboard, lest the model end up looking too busy. In the end, I think I managed to come up with a fairly good solution, though:

The bandolier of skulls is a classic for World Eaters, especially since the more recent fluff has given it a deliciously ambiguous nature: Are those the skulls of enemies, displayed as trophies? Or are they the remains of honoured battle brothers, allowed to see the field of battle once more? Or a little from column A and a little from column B, perhaps?

I also added another shackle bit from the AoS Bloodreavers — as DexterKong astutely pointed out when commenting on my Cataphractii, shackles are such a tragically fitting accessory for 30k World Eaters, are they not?

And finally, I tried to give the a slightly more ornate version of the topknot the other Cataphractii have, spliced together from a topknot that came with the chaos chariot and the tail of a Marauder horse. I like how the front of the piece could be seen as a stylised Iron Halo or as the iconic arrows of chaos…

The one thing that didn’t sit right with me was the chainfist. Granted, it works pretty well with the tweaked pose — arguably better than on the stock model, really. But I just couldn’t help it, I had to mock up an alternate arm holding an axe.

I used the upper arm from a plastic 40k Terminator (which had to be shaved down quite a bit) and the forearm from an Age of Sigmar Stormcast Eternal, as the curves of the armour fit the overall Cataphractii look pretty well. As for the axe, I chose the same blade I already used on 40k Lorimar. And here’s the model with an alternate arm:

And seeing the axe arm in place actually decided things for me: I would be turning this guy into a representation of Lorimar, after all.
Incidentally, when putting all three models in a row, I realised that there was a really nice sense of visual progression between the three. Take a look:

The version on the left represents Lorimar as a younger officer, say a Secutor-Sergeant, during the latter stages of the Great Crusade, or even as a young Captain, having just taken command of the 4th after winning his captaincy in the fighting pits. The new version in the middle is him during the Heresy: The more ostentatious armour shows his newfound confidence in his command. And he has started to discard the trappings of a loyalist Astartes: Where his younger version is armed with weapons bearing a strong aquila motif, his new weapons are more vicious and cruel-looking, and there’s not an aquila to be seen — I really like how his weapons get less Imperial as he goes! Finally, the model on the rightis him in the 40k setting, now in fully Khornate regalia.

So basically all that was left for the conversion at this point was some cleanup work. One interesting part is that I have not yet glued the different parts of the model together — I think this will make painting quite a bit easier in this case, because the seams between the parts are cleverly hidden. Anyway, here’s the model as it looks right now:

One thing I still want to do is to make his axe look slightly less chaotic. I am going to fill in the chips and nicks in the blade with GS, provided I manage to pull it off in a clean enough way. As for the chaotic eye, a fellow forumite on a big German forum came up with the idea to keep the eye, but to fill in the chaotic arrows around it, making it look like some kind of decorative jewel. I think I rather like that idea, as just removing everything would just create a huge flat area on the axe blade.

One small detail I am really happy with is how I have used some leather straps from another Cataphractii Praetor model to close the gaps between the straps that were already there:

Shaving these off from the source model’s shoulders was slightly fiddly, but the extra effort was definitely worth it!

And here’s a look at the model’s back. Careful observers will spot the stylised Khornate rune adorning the crossguard of Lorimar’s sword (I put it there to replace a wolf skull):

All in all, I am very happy with the model, both because it makes for a pretty cool “missing link” between the two versions of Lorimar I already have, and because I have managed to tweak just about everything that I didn’t like about the stock Cataphractii Praetor. In fact, having discovered how easy it is to carefully turn the base model into something quite different, I would basically recommend this guy to every hobbyist looking for a characterful base model to turn into a commander for their own Space Marines! What’s more, as has already been postulated by Commissar Molotov, the Praetor is also a pretty ideal base morel for a true scale conversion — as it happens, I am working on a true scale Chapter Master based on this model right now, but that is a story for another time😉

Before I wind up this post, here’s a look of Captain Lorimar with his Cataphractii bodyguard:

As always, thanks for looking and stay tuned for more!

In between all of the unpainted plastic, let’s look at something a little more colourful this week, because it is that time of year again: I’ve made the most of the good weather and assembled the World Eaters’ entire 4th assault company – or at least the part of it that has actually been painted so far – for a new round of army pictures.

Now I’ll have to admit that there haven’t been that many additions to the force since last year’s showcase article (except for one pretty big addition, but we’ll be getting to that), but all in all, the army still remains my biggest hobby achievement.

Just to remind you, this is what Khorne’s Eternal Hunt looked like back in 2012, the year I started this blog:

And this is the army earlier today:

Quite a development, if I do say so myself! At least for a glacially slow and immensely lazy painter like yours truly…😉
Bigger versions of the army pictures can be found here and here, by the way.

The most noticeable addition to the army is the towering form of Gilgamesh, my converted Chaos Knight, now finally marching to war alongside the 4th assault company’s coterie of Daemon Engines:

Another part of the army that I am still tremendously happy with is the Master of the Hunt, Lord Captain Lorimar, surrounded by his Terminator bodyguard, Lorimar’s Fist. Take a look:

And there are many other parts of the army that make me happy whenever I look at them. For instance, this was just a happy accident, but I really love the way my true scale Khârn seems to get psyched-up for battle in the following picture:

And I didn’t even stop with the World Eaters either, but took photos of my entire 40k Chaos collection while I was at it! Next in line was my small detachment of Traitor Guard, known as “Urash’s Marauders”:

Now this certainly isn’t a big army by any stretch of the imagination. But then again, it’s a rather sizeable collection when you consider the fact that these guys were mainly built on a whim, back when there weren’t even any proper rules for using Traitor Guard (beyond the Vraksian Renegade rules put out by Forgeworld, that is). Anyway, the Marauders can provide some support to the 4th assault company when needed, plus most of the models can do double duty as cultists in a CSM army.

I’ll really have to return to these guys at some point: Looking at them again makes me realise how happy I am with my chaotic Tempestus Scions:

I still have an unpainted icon bearer for this squad — maybe I should paint him next?

Anyway, it’s a fun little army project that can complement my World Eaters but can also work on its own — at least from a visual perspective😉

But there’s more: Over the years, I have dipped my toes into several smaller chaotic warbands and sub-factions, and each of them could be expanded into a stand-alone warband or detachment at some point. For instance, remember the four models I built back when the then-brand-new 6th edition Codex Chaos Space Marines was released? One Astartes for each of the Cult Legions:

I tried to capture the visual quintessence of each of the four legions aligned with a major chaos power, and I am still pretty pleased with the outcome. From left to right: Malchius Blight of the Death Guard, Gades Elphenor of the Emperor’s Children, Suresh Asp of the Thousand Sons and Targon Kel of the World Eaters.

Read more about his project here, in case you are interested.

Then there are my Blood Wolves, of course, created to fill the role of Chaos Space Marines with the Mark of Khorne in my World Eaters army:

Joras Turnpelt and his damned brethren surely warrant some more attention — in fact, I have quite a few models already built for a whole squad of Blood Wolves. Ahh, so much unpainted plastic, and so little time (and, let’s face it, even less discipline).

There’s a squad of Plague Marines big enough to actually use in games, if the 4th assault company should ever require their scrofulous assistance:

Let’s not forget Warsmith Greimolt Sturm of the Iron Warriors and his first two soldiers, either. Iron Within, Iron Without!

Once again, these are merely the first models for a small kill team of Iron Warriors that will definitely be finished one of these days! Scout’s honour!😉

Oh, and last -but very definitely not least – is PDH’s wonderful version of Lord Zhufor the Impaler, given to me as a fantastic gift a while ago:

So yeah, that’s the painted part of my 40k chaos collection. I just love chaos in all of its colours (especially in red, though), and I actually see the many projects I have already started – or partially finished – as great little or small hobby endeavours to get back to whenever I feel like it.

Anyway, so much for my collection. I hope you’ve enjoyed these latest pictures and I would love to hear any feedback you might have! As always, thanks for looking and stay tuned for more!

Hey everyone, after speaking – at length – about my conversions using the Cataphractii Terminators from Betrayal at Calth and about my experiences converting that Cataphractii Praetor from the same boxed set into yet another 30k version of Lord Captain Lorimar, let’s return to the wonderful world of Cataphractii once more and discuss another conversion. The base for today’s project was, once again, the Betrayal at Calth Cataphractii Praetor:

Messing around with the model had already taught me that it didn’t take much to really transform the stock version of the Praetor into something else — but I wasn’t quite finished with the model yet, because I had to remember Commissar Molotov’s very interesting proof of concept for a true scale Astartes based on the Cataphractii Praetor. And after learning for myself how relatively easy it was to get rid of the model’s pidgeon-toed stance, I couldn’t get this idea out of my head. And when I recently had the chance of picking up another Praetor for cheap from fellow hobbyist Mineralwasser, that basically settled the deal. And what better way to convert this model again than to make it into the Chapter Master of my DIY Chapter, the Golden Legion?

I started by creating a very simple first mockup:

The main objective here was to get a basic feel for what I wanted the model to look like. As you can see, I made the exact same adjustment to the legs I used on my Lorimar conversion earlier. Beyond that, a couple of things were pretty easy to decide, even at this early point: I really, really wanted to use that fantastic, bearded head from the Sternguard kit (possibly one of the best Space Marine heads ever), and some ostentatious shoulder pads from the same kit would be used for the Chapter Master’s pauldrons.

Regarding the overall look of the armour, I think the Cataphractii Praetor is a really promising base model for a true scale conversion, as the armour could easily pass for an older mark of regular power armour or some kind of artifcer armour. Possibly the best part is that the layered armour on the arms and legs believably looks like enforced standard power armour — unlike plastic 40k Terminator parts that will always look like Terminator armour, unless you are prepared to invest quite a bit of work.

Anyway, here’s a comparison picture with the early mockup version and my previous Golden Legion Astartes, Praetor Janus Auriga:

The next step was to nail down the pose I wanted as well as the overall feel of the model, in order to decide on the additional bits I would need . For instance, the Praetor’s stock arm with the combi-bolter worked reasonably well, but it wasn’t what I had in mind for the Golden Legion. In my background notes, swordplay is a huge part of the Legion’s culture and mythology, so it goes without saying that the Chapter Master would need an especially ostentatious sword. However, as the following picture shows, using the stock arm and weapon would work really well for an Astartes with a slightly more standard set of equipment!

For the left forearm, I decided to use an arm from the Stormcast Eternals models from the Age of Sigmar starter box: I already knew at this point that I wouldn’t be keeping the hammer, but the vambrace has a very nice lion design on one side, plus it really worked well scale-wise for a true scale Astartes.

But yeah, I wanted a sword, so I browsed through GW’s entire catalogue until I came upon a bit that I thought might do the trick — I even made a crude Photoshop mockup of the whole shebang at this point😉

So I ordered that sword from the Deathwing command squad, along with a small collection of additional bitz — we’ll get to the result in a second. Before that, however, here’s a look at the model’s back, warts and all, to show you the construction I used:

The model’s back is basically a shaved down GK Terminator torso back, which fit surprisingly well with a bit of shaving here and there. What’s more, the shaved-down back vents really make for an excellent point of attachment for a standard Space Marine backpack without any further work — I used the same approach on my first true scale Marine, incidentally.

One thing you will also have noticed in the picture above is that I did try to add a stylised deathmask to the model’s right pauldron. The idea was that this is the Deathmask of St. Sabasto, the Velsen Sector’s patron saint, so to speak, and that the Golden Legion is using it almost like a chapter badge. I felt mighty smart when I press-molded a Sanguinary Guard mask with GS, because I thought a GS duplicate would ultimately conform to the shoulder pad’s curvature far better — but unfortunately it ended up looking pretty hokey! I did find a very simple solution for this problem, though.

So here’s a look at a far more complete version of the Chapter Master:

As you can see, the Deathwing sword works really well with the stock arm, even though it turned out to be even longer than I had anticipated. I also added a cape from the same Deathwing kit, because, let’s face it, Chapter Masters just need to look suitably ostentatious😉

As for the mask on the shoulder pad, the solution turned out to be almost disappointingly simple: I simply grafted an original plastic Sanguinary Guard faceplate to the shoulder pad, and it worked much better than the GS copy I had on there earlier (even though it made me feel a bit stupid for even trying the long way around, so to speak):

As I have mentioned earlier, the idea behind the deathmask is that it’s the stylised face of the Imperial Martyr Sabasto, patron saint of the Velsen Sector. The Golden Legion were his personal guard of honour when he defended  the sector against an incursion by the forces of the Arch-Enemy about 1,500 years ago, and his ultimate demise at the very forefront of the Crusade remains a mark of shame to the chapter, and a reason for their fanatical need to protect the Velsen Sector against any enemies from without.

At this point, most of the conversion was basically finished:

All that was left to figure out was what to do with the left hand: I considered – and ultimately discared – many different weapon and equipment options, because they all ended up feeling a bit too pedestrian to me. But then again, leaving the hand completely empty also seemed like a bit of a missed opportunity.

Fortunately, JaggedToothGrin came up with the excellent idea of having the model hold some kind of rosary or amulet, and EdT suggested using the left hand of this Age of Sigmar Paladin Retributor:

I instantly liked this idea, but I didn’t know how easy it would be to source the required bit — but it soon became obvious that I wouldn’t even have to find that particular hand, because I discovered yet another suitable part on the Sternguard sprue.

So here’s Orestes Prabian, Lord Commander of the Golden Legion, finished except for maybe a bit or two😉

The small chain with a Crux Terminatus dangling from it was originally part of a Sternguard torso, but it seemed like a natural fit, so I carefully snipped it off and grafted it to an empty fist from the same source, and I am really happy with the result:

The area where the backpack meets the cape will require some minor cleanup, but that shouldn’t be too much of a problem. After that, it’ll mostly be a case of carefully adding a bit more bling to the model here and there😉

I think the finished conversion is suitably iconic to work as a Chapter Master — and, maybe even more importantly, it also believably works as a true scale Astartes! Here’s another comparison picture with Janus Auriga:

Granted, upon closer examination, Janus may be ever so slightly taller than his Chapter Master — a result of my cobbling together a recipe while I was going on the first model, whereas the second Astartes was mostly based on a rock solid base model. In the end, I didn’t want to mess up the Chapter Master’s proportions by awkwardly splicing in any spacers, though — and who knows, maybe Janus is just a big guy, even for an Astartes?

Here’s another picture, showing both the Chapter Master and my 30k Lorimar version — both of them are obviously based on the same plastic Cataphractii Praetor:

While I wasn’t completely sold on the stock model for a while, it has really grown on me, due to its surprising versatility. And it does make for a pretty much perfect base for a true scale conversion, if you ask me!

And with that, we can mostly consider the Cataphractii case closed — expect to see more of these guys once I get some paint on them😉

Until then, as always, thanks for looking and stay tuned for more!

So in spite of rather sad recent events, I did manage to get some hobby time in — but then I did have an incentive, too! Once again, The Bolter & Chainsword is running its annual “E Tenebrae Lux” event, and once again, I have decided to join in on the fun — once more on the side of chaos, of course. Unlike last year, however, I fully intend to complete my vow this time around, and I can already happily announce that I have managed to make some headway! But we’ll be getting there in an minute.

One reason for failing to complete the models I had pledged last year was because I was simply too ambitious, including my Chaos Knight in the deal and then failing miserably to deliver. Granted, Gilgamesh did see completion eventually, so it all ended well enough, but I wanted to take it a bit more slowly this time around. So I went through my collection of unpainted chaos models and chose an ensemble of miniatures that would present a realistic challenge — but equally important was to choose some models that I really, really wanted to finally see finished! So here’s what I came up with for my first vow:

From left ro right, a counts-as Skulltaker that was converted when the Skullreapers/Wrathmongers were released, a converted Kastelan Robot now pledged to Khorne’s Eternal Hunt, and finally: Lord Dumah, the 4th assault company’s Apothecary. This last model had already been a part of my failed 2015 vow, and I have already made several attempts at painting it — so many, in fact, that I was just about prepared to consider the model jinxed for a while there. So he would definitely have to be a part of this year’s vow, if only in order to finally break the spell😉

Before I started in earnest, however, I needed something fun and easy to get me in the mood: It has been quite some time since I painted my last World Eaters, so something to ease me back into the flow of things.

Fortunately enough, an idle half-hour’s work provided just the thing: I came acorr the huge icon of Khorne that originally belonged to the Bloodsecrator model from the Age of Sigmar starter box. But while the piece was brilliantly designed, it was also freakishly huge and certainly too big to be lugged around by a mere footlslogger… but then I started thinking about turning it into an optional banner to be mounted on my Chaos Knight, Gilgamesh, and then things just started falling into place. And I ended up with this:

As you can see, the icon’s size is indeed pretty much ideal for a Chaos Knight! And I was lucky enough to find a leftover piece from an old model truck kit (I am really getting quite some mileage out of those old leftovers, come to think of it!) that neatly fit into the hole at the center of the Knight’s carapace. Painting the icon itself was a quick and fun affair, because I could really make the most of the brilliantly executed bone texture:

It was mostly a matter of basecoating, then washing with brown wash, and then appyling two quick sets of selective drybrushing. That first coat of paint was a bit of a slog though, as it was pretty hard to get the paint into all those nooks and crannies.

Anyway, I am pretty happy with the result, especially since this was mostly just a fun little gaiden project😉 Possibly my favourite part is how the icon neatly slots neatly into that hole in the middle of the top carapace without any need for glue or magnets. So I can add the banner or take it off again at will — maybe it could even work as some kind of extra equipment?! Whatever, I imagine Baron Harrowthorne just has the Sacristans mount it in place whenever he is feeling especially Khornate…😉

So with this small appetiser out of the way, I turned my attention to the first proper ETL model. I chose the Skulltaker conversion as the first model to work on:

There was a reason for this, too: Ever since I first watched Duncan Rhodes’ very interesting two-part video series about painting the plastic Bloodthirster, I have wanted to try that recipe on a model of my own. And the Skulltaker conversion seemed like the perfect occasion to give it a try, both because I wanted the model’s skin to resemble that of Duncan’s Bloodthirster, and because I needed a model to serve as a “test run” to see if the recipe might work on my own Bloodthirster as well at some point in the indeterminate future.

So I faithfully reproduced almost the entire first video on my own model (albeit using far smaller brushes, for obvious reasons😉 ), and after a short while, I had this:

The skin was mostly painted with several passes of drybrushing using different shades of red, rounding things off with a coat of the Bloodletter glaze and the application of some final highlights on the most prominent parts. I really loved the result and felt like I was definitely on to something here!

For the second half of the paintjob, I decided to deviate from Duncan’s tutorial: With the model’s skin looking fairly different from the red appearing in my World Eaters army, I decided I wanted to use the armour and weapon to create a bit of visual consistency, so I painted those areas using the same recipes for brass and daemon weapons that you can also see on my World Eaters. So only a short while later, the model looked like this:

I was actually really happy with the result, and all that was left at this point was to add some finishing touches and to provide the models with a suitable base, so that’s what I did. Now under normal circumstances, I  I am not a big fan of skull bases, but it did feel appropriate to use one, just this once😉

So here’s my first completed model for this year’s ETL, base and all: Calvarax the Exalted, my counts as Skulltaker (actually my first daemon of Khorne, strangely enough…):

And here’s a closer look at the (admittedly somewhat tacky) skull base:

Like I said, one thing that was important to me was that, although there would be a clear (and intentional) difference between the colours used on the daemon and the colours used on my World Eaters, the model would also feature enough visual touches to read as an ally to Khorne’s Eternal Hunt. And I think the sword and bronze part of the armour do a pretty good job with achieving that. Take a look:

I am really very happy with the model, to be honest! It may not look like it, but I really moved beyond my comfort zone with this piece, especially when it comes to the recipe for the skin! By the same token, I can only recommend you check out Duncan Rhodes’ video tutorials linked above, as it really provides a teriffic and very well-explained approach to painting Khornate daemons!

And with that, my first model for ETL V has been completed. Next up, that blasted Apothecary that I couldn’t seem to finish yet😉

Until then, as always, thanks for looking and stay tuned for more!

With my first model for this year’s ETL successfully finished, I found myself quite motivated to continue! Next in line was a model that I had actually attempted to finish several times — enough times, to be honest, that I was almost prepared to consider the model itself jinxed😉 The model in question is the converted Apothecary/Chaos Lord I built for Khorne’s Eternal Hunt almost two years ago:

It’s a fairly involved conversion, combining parts from no less than four models from the Dark Vengeance boxed set: The torso of a Ravenwing Biker sergeant and the legs of a CSM Chosen were spliced together to form the Apothecary’s body, with arms from a different Chosen and the censers from the backpack of the limited edition Interrogator Chaplain added for good measure. Anyway, all in all, I think it’s a pretty elegant conversion, if I do say so myself, and one that reads both as a World Eater and an Apothecary — plus it should really make for a rather convincing Counts As version of Fabius Bile as well😉

In the interest of full disclosure, this isn’t even the first version of Apothecary Dumah I’ve built: He is one of my older characters, and a first model for Dumah was built all the way back in 2010/2011:

As you can see, the original version really played the whole Grim Reaper-angle to the hilt, but when the time came to paint the model, the whole concept just seemed a bit too on the nose for my taste, so I rather built a new version put more focus on a detached, slightly sinister feeling, instead of merely going for the Skeletor look😉

Anyway, back to actually getting the new model painted: This was actually made quite a bit more complicated by the fact that I would also have to come up with a slightly tweaked recipe for the red parts of the armour: So far, my World Eaters colour scheme has always been heavily based on GW’s old Blood Red colour, but with this particular shade now OOP (and no direct replacement readily available), I would need to find a new approach to painting red. After messing around with some of the new red colours, I found a recipe that gave me a fairly convincing shade of red (albeit one that looked slightly different from the red on my older models). Take  a look:

Under the given circumstances, I am really rather happy with the result. The red still retains a certain vibrancy – in fact, it’s actually even brighter than the old version – while also seeming suitably gritty for a follower of Khorne. And I also made sure that the rest of the paintjob, particularly the bronze areas and detail work, matched the rest of my army to create a sense of visual coherency in spite of the slightly different red.

One “special effect” I really wanted to add to the model was to paint the various vials on his belt and inside the massive syringe adorning his Narthecium gauntlet as though there were liquid sloshing around inside of them — this has been a favourite effect of mine ever since JeffTibbetts’ included  a similar effect on his Imperial Knight’s chainsword arm.  Anyway, I was fortunate enough to come up with a fairly effective result, especially given the tiny size of those vials. Take a look:

Since I basically had to “reverse-engineer” Jeff’s original effect, I thought you might like to read a mini-tutorial for painting this kind of liquid-filled vials on your own models. So here goes:

Mini-tutorial: Painting glass vials containing liquids

Disclaimer: There’s probably a thousand ways to do this, and may approaches that are ultimately better than mine, but it’s a quick and simple recipe that has worked rather well for me so far. And like I said, thanks must go to JeffTibbetts, as it was only after seeing the aforementioned effect used on his “Queen Bee” that I began to wonder how to achieve something similar myself.

I’ll be using a turquoise colour scheme for this, both because it’s a recurring spot colour in my army and because it produces a result that resembles liquid-filled glass vials reasonably well. This should really work with any number of different colours, though. The three colours I use are Vallejo’s Halcon Millenario Turquoise, black and white (any brand will do for these last two, obviously). And now for the actual steps. I made a diagram for you:

Step 1: Mix your main colour (turquoise in this case) with a drop of black to take away some of the pop. Then paint the entire vial using this colour. Adding the black is optional, although in my case the stock turquoise was *very* bright and stunning, so I needed to take the edge off a bit😉

Step 2: Add more black to the mix and paint the lower third or so of the vial in this darker colour. If you are doing this while the paint is still moist, you may even be able to pull off a bit of wet-blending here.

Step 3: Use your original main colour and paint the area immediately below the upper third of the vial with this. What you want here is a gradient moving from the original turquoise to the much darker mix at the bottom. Again, if you are fast enough, the efffect will look all the more convincing. But if the vial is very small,the effect will work even without any wet-blending involved, so feel free to take your time.

Step 4: Add a drop of white to the turquoise and paint a thin line at the top of the layer from step 4. This is our “waterline”, so to speak.

Step 5: Add even more white to the mix (until there’s only a hint of turquoise in there) and use it to paint thin vertical lines along the vial to suggest light reflecting off the glass. Don’t overdo it! One or two thin lines are enough. They also need to be really thin, lest they end up covering all the paintwork underneath.

That’s it — you can now add a generous layer of gloss varnish to make the vials look even more like glass.

One last piece of advice: The above recipe is intended for vials that are perfectly straight. If you know in advance that your vial will be held at an angle, make sure to align the waterline accordingly: Unless there’s a lot of speed (and/or centrifugal force) involved, the waterline should still be parallel to the ground, even when the vial itself is not! Like on these vials that appear on the arm of my Chaos Knight:

Anyway, adding smaller tweaks like this was really what helped me to transform this model into something special, although I am also reasonably happy with the tweaked red recipe I managed to come up with. So without further ado, here’s the finished Apothecary Dumah:

Unfortunately, the lighting in the pictures eats up quite a few of the subtler red higlights, making the armour look flatter than it actually is — you’ll just have to give me the benefit of the doubt here😉 Beyond such small technical issues, however, I really think he’s quite the character! And finally finishing him after such a long time (and after several attempts, no less) does feel pretty good!

I’ve had the character in the back of my head for quite a while, so it shouldn’t really surprise you that I’ve also come up with some background to match the model — or rather, the model was actually conceived to match the background in this case:

Apothecary Dumah, Chooser of the Slain and Keeper of the Seed, Primus Medicae of the World Eaters’ 4th assault company

The presence of Lord Dumah could be one of the most important reasons for the ability of the 4th to still function as a fairly coherent fighting force, for it is due to his art that the company still has access to a way of replenishing its ranks instead of being left to slowly bleed out over the millennia: Apothecaries are a rare enough breed in the traitor legions, and especially so among the World Eaters, whose Apothecaries have succumbed to the bite of the nails for the most part, abandoning their former battlefield role in favour of bloodshed and insanity.

During the times of the Great Crusade, Dumah served directly under First Apothecary Fabrikus, and he was among those tasked with duplicating the archaic and little-understood neural implants Angron had been outfitted with on Nuceria. While working on the task of implanting an ever increasing part of the legion with those “Butcher’s Nails”, Dumah became aware of their debilitating nature and began in-depth research into the possibility of mitigating the negative effects of the implants.
Yet there was little tolerance for this kind of experimentation within the legion, as the Red Angel himself regarded any attempt at tampering with the function of the nails as a way of compromising their effectiveness and purity. So this line of research was quickly abandoned by all but a few Apothecaries, while the legion fell deeper and deeper into madness and bloodlust.

Ten millennia later, Dumah still serves as the 4th assault company’s Primus Medicae and has earned the epithet “Chooser of the Slain”, as his task is twofold: As a dark, Grim Reaper-like figure, he moves among the fallen and chooses which geneseed to harvest from fallen World Eaters and which to leave to rot, because it is too twisted and curdled by corruption to be safely used for implantation any longer. And he looks for those fallen enemies whose prowess in battle and martial honour have made them eligible for being inducted into the XII legion – either by being granted the kiss of the nails or, in very rare cases, a full conversion to an Astartes in the first place.

When off the battlefield, Dumah still continues his experiments with the aim of countering the nails’ degrading effects, and he feels that he is coming closer to a possible breakthrough with every generation of new implants and with every harvested progenoid. The only question is if there will still be enough of the company left to profit from his eventual success…

So here’s the comparison picture showing the different red recipes, like I promised:

The Terminator Lord in the middle uses my original recipe, based on the now OOP Blood Red. The Lheorvine Ukris conversion on the right uses a somewhat more experimental version of the recipe I used for the Apothecary: It’s slightly closer to the original colour than the red on Dumah, admittedly, but it’s slightly more messy and less elegant as well, so I think I may ultimately be sticking to the new recipe, after all.

Anyway, here’s the finished recipe, for all those of you who may be looking for a similar outcome:

• basecoat with Khorne Red
• wash with Army Painter Strong Tone
• add a layer of Mephiston Red
• add some highlights with a 50:50 mix of Mephiston Red and Evil Sunz Scarlet
• glaze with Bloodletter
• selectively apply some Druchii Violet into the recesses
• add some final highlights with almost pure Evil Sunz Scarlet

As for the ETL, my first two models re now officially finished. Yay!

So that means two done, one to go, right?😉

With another chief officer of the 4th assault company now finished, I also took some new photos of the various Huntmasters of Khorne’s Eternal Hunt, and sharing these with you seems like a great way to wind up this post!

So, first up, a picture taken against a black background, including all the individual characters’ names:

And here’s another picture, taken against a brighter background, that arguably does a better job of capturing the colours as they look in real life:

In a way, these picture really serves as a short visual history of my last five years in the hobby, as the first of these guys must have been built shortly after I got back into the hobby in late 2010/early 2011, while the most recent one (Dumah) was finally finished just now. Anyway, I am still very happy with this collection of blood-crazed murderers, as you can probably imagine!😉

It goes without saying that I would love to hear any feedback you might have! And, as always, thanks for looking and stay tuned for more!

EDIT: As Archangel very helpfully pointed out in the comments, the fact that the pictures were no longer expandable by click was a problem, especially for the group shots. So I’ve gone back through the post, and now clicking on each picture should take you to a full size version of that image again — I am not even sure why WordPress changed this in the first place…

Hey everyone, after last week’s rather unpleasant events, let us return to this blog’s main subject, as I show you the next finished model for Khorne’s Eternal Hunt.

Having spent most of last Thursday and Friday watching the news of Brexit hollow-eyed and with a constant sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach, I decided I might as well try to transform my sadness into something more productive and started working on my converted Kastelan:

Now this model was originally built shortly after the release of the Kastelan Robots, in an attempt to transform into one of them into a particularly Khornate battle engine — and I believe I have definitely succeeded in that regard. And after sitting on a shelf for quite some time, the model was now ready for some paint, in time for the ETL event over at The Bolter & Chainsword.

The model is basically as tall and wide as a Contemptor, as you can see in this picture:

So I included it in my ETL vow as a Counts-As-Contemptor — and indeed, that is also the role the model will likely be filling if it should ever see the tabletop.

But before that, I had to get the thing painted. I took off all of the chaotic armour plates for this, in order to give me access to the model’s body, and interestingly enough, this made the model look almost like a standard Kastelan for most of the painting process:

But fortunately, as the armour plates came back on one by one,…

…the model started looking increasingly chaotic again😉

From a technical perspective, I decided to work over a coat of Leadbelcher spray paint, and as it turned out, not only did this make for a really good base for the red I added on later, but it also made sure that all the internal workings of the machine could simply be left metallic, which makes for a pretty convincing look. It would have been really difficult to get back into all those little nooks and crannies with a brush, so the silver undercoat turned out to be a very good call!

This strategy, combined with a motivation fueled by a particularly mixture of sadness and madness saw me complete the model in record time. Take a look at the finished Khornate Kastelan conversion:

Thanks to a bitz drop from fellow hobbyist Helega, I was able to add a cool wrist-mounted gun to the Kastelan’s right forearm, courtesy of one of Pertuarbo’s guns: I will admit that the thought of using it on the model felt frivolous for maybe half a minute, but it did solve two problems at once (adding some bulk to that hand and wrist and finding a way to feature an integrated weapon in spite of the hammer), so I decided to go for it.

As you can see, I also added some decals to the model, in order to underline its nature as a machine even more. In fact, I couldn’t help myself and had to add a really ancient decal from the early 90s’ plastic Khorne Berzerkers:

Let me tell you, that decal sheet still holds some of the best Khornate decal designs, even today!

And here’s a closeup of the model’s entirely humourless face:

All in all, I am really rather happy with the finished model. And not only does this mean one less unpainted model, but it also marks the completion of my first ETL vow:

Together with my Skulltaker conversion and Lord Dumah, the 4th assault company’s Apothecary, that’s a cool additional 500 points for Khorne’s Eternal Hunt!

But wait, there’s one last thing: I am still looking for a snappy name for this new combat automaton! And although I have already received quite a few cool suggestions on various forums, I would really love to hear your ideas as well!
I’ll be needing both the pattern designation for the machine as well as the name of this particular model, so I’d love to hear your suggestions! Please refrain from going Age of Sigmar levels of cheesy on me, though😉

And of course it goes without saying that I would also love to hear any feedback you may have! As always, thanks for looking and stay tuned for more!

With my first vow for the current ETL V event on The Bolter & Chainsword finished, I found myself in a mostly unprecedented situationof still feeling very motivated to keep painting stuff — certainly not something that happens to me a lot, I can tell you! So I actually found myself considering a second vow, and my glance fell on a long running backburner project of mine. This guy:

A bestial Daemon Prince built all the way back in 2013. Many of the thoughts that went into the model as well as the actual building process have been documented here and here, but just to give a short recap, the model basically started when I found myself in the possession of both a WFB Manticore and some leftover Maulerfiend limbs. My idea for this somewhat haphazard collection of parts was to create a grotesque, feral creature that would serve as a very different kind of Daemon Prince, in keeping with the background of my World Eaters: I was inspired by a throwaway line in Codex: Chaos Space Marines about the elevation to daemonhood basically signifiying and unending life of servitude. And I also thought of Angron’s ascension at the tail end of Betrayer, an event that leaves the tortured Primarch even more bestial and doesn’t exactly transform him into a darkly angelic creature…

So I came up with the concept of a Daemon Prince that embodied both the 4th assault company’s strong theme of the Hunt and their fear of letting go, of losing control and of completely turning into mindless beasts, and that’s where this model came from.

Alas, it had been sitting at the bottom of a box since an unsuccessful painting attempt last year. This is what the model looked like when I dug it out of its shameful temporary abode:

The dark brown you see on the body is proof of the fact that I didn’t really know what I was doing last time around — but at the same time, getting the skin right would be instrumental for this particular paintjob. But something was different this time: Not only was I motivated, but I already had a daemonic skin recipe that had already worked its magic once:

That’s right: I would be using the skin recipe from Duncan Rhodes’ voideo tutorial for painting the Bloodthirster again, this time on a far bigger model.

And in fact, the recipe worked just as wonderfully this time around, leaving me with this promising result after only a very short amount of time:

The skin was an absolute blast to paint. The oily metal emerging from the arms and legs, though? Not so much — Due to the way the machine parts are woven in among the muscle, this was both a finicky and exhausting part of the model to paint, and I was really glad once I was finished with it!

Even at this early point, I gave some extra attention to the creature’s mouth area, as that part would become really hard to reach with the ears and horns attached to the sides of the head. So I made sure now that the mouth cavity was suitably wet and glistening😉

By far the trickiest question was to figure out what to do with the armour plates: The bronze trim was a no-brainer, but I didn’t want to go for predominantly black armour in order to avoid the Black Legion look. I also tried to paint them red (my old red recipe, even), but the result just lacked contrast when compared to the skin. And then I realised that all bronze armour plates might end up looking very Khornate: Now I have this image in the back of my head of the red parts of the armour turning into blood and running off during the Daemon Prince’s ascension, or boiling away as the daemonic brass underneath becomes visible. And in any case, since this guy was basically a just for fun project, I might as well try some new stuff, right? So with that decision out of the way, I was able to finish the model:

As you can see, I painted the patterns etched into the shoulder pads with Tamiya Clear Red — I didn’t want to risk a silly looking OSL effect here, and the blood seemed like a nice fit.

Speaking of the shoulder pads, one thing I want to point out is how I’ve included several visual elements that hint at the Daemon Prince’s Astartes roots, in spite of his animalistic look: The shoulder pads, the fused remains of the Astartes backpack on the shoulders and the sockets appearing on the Daemon Prince’s body where he used to be connected to his power armour all hint at the fact that this creature was once a proud Space Marine:

And what’s more, the chains emerging from the creature’s mane (actually the transformed Butcher’s Nails implants) and the jagged Triumph Rope scar crisscrossing its torso are both remnants of its previous life as a World Eater:

I think that all of these elements make for some rather neat visual storytelling, really. But even so, I do of course realise that the model is a bit of an acquired taste, as there is a misshapen, overmuscled look to the creature. Let me just clarify though that his was very much an intended effect: Like I said, the idea for this model was to show how a World Eater, at the height of his madness and bloodlust, maybe wouldn’t be transformed into a darkly angelic figure, but into a feral daemonic beast.

Here’s a closer look at the model’s face, an area I am especially happy with:

I actually really love the Manticore’s face, both for the amount of animalistic rage it exudes, but also because it’s such a dead ringer for the Behemoth, an iconic recurring enemy from the Final Fantasy series of video games😉

So all that was left was a base for the beast, and I had already constructed a base that would make it look as though the Daemon Prince were barreling forward, almost on all fours, and/or reaching down to crush one of its pesky opponents with its massive paw. So here’s the finished model, base and all:

The Curse of Daemonhood

Not a single World Eater, no matter how deranged after millennia of warfare or driven to madness by the bite of the Butcher’s Nails, could ever forget the moment of Angron’s ascension. The image of the tortured Primarch transforming into a daemonic god beast amidst a howling vortex of balefire was permanently seared into the World Eaters’ collective memory at the climax of the Purge of Nuceria. For some, Angron’s transformation became an example to be followed during the millennia of the Long War, his new form the ultimate reward for a life of slaughter.

The members of the 4th assault company, however, regard Angron’s fate as something far different: They see no boon in the ascension to daemonhood, but rather feel a lingering fear at the possible changes wrought on a mind stripped of that last shred of humanity after a lifetime of rage and bloodlust: The muscles swollen with daemonic power and warped into something grotesque. The Butcher’s Nails transfigured by the powers of the warp into the shackles they always were in mortal life. The blood turned into hellfire, pumped through a monstrous body by the beating of an eternal daemon heart, forever bound in service to the Lord of War as a true Avatar of the Hunt.

No, Angron’s ascension has not been forgotten by the warriors of the 4th. It marks a pivotal moment in the legion’s fate. And to those willing to look, it serves as a grim reminder of a fate not far removed from the curse of spawndom.

I am actually really surprised at how much I actually enjoyed painting this big lump of plastic! And what’s more, I believe the colours and recipes used on the Daemon Prince and Skulltaker conversions will factor rather heavily into any additional daemons that may be in the cards for my army — for instance, after two successful test runs, you can expect the recipe for the skin to appear again on my Bloodthirster (*wink*wink*nudge*).After all, this recipe has really served me rather well so far, wouldn’t you agree?

For now, however, I am mostly happy about having finished an unexpected second ETL vow — and another long running project! Huzzah!

It goes without saying that I would love to heary any feedback you might have, so feel free to drop me a comment or two. And, as always, thanks for looking and stay tuned for more!

Alright, one more post about the ETL, and then we’re off to…well, whatever’s next, really😉

With three finished vows under my belt, I was basically prepared to call it a day, but I couldn’t help noticing that the amount of points I had pledged was still below the 1,000 points mark — by 70 points, to be exact.

Now I didn’t harbour any ambitions to contribute a huge amount of points to the ETL, as there are some other people who have that particular corner covered much better than I ever could. But somehow I did want to read the 1,000 points mark — and as it happens, I realised that I had one last model on my unpainted pile that perfectly fit the bill:

Some of you may remember my first “Thamier-pattern” Obliterator, based on some excellent, custom parts provided courtesy of my fellow hobbyist Thamier (hence the name). Those parts allowed me to finally come up with an excellent Obliterator design that fit my army as well as the outline of what an Obliterator should look like:

Back when Thamier sent me those bitz, he was awesome enough to include enough parts for two Obliterators. But I only ever managed to finish one of them and just couldn’t seem to settle on a final configuration for the second one.

For some reason, however, this changed after finishing my Bloodthirster recently — something must have been shaken loose in the back of my head, and suddenly I knew exactly how to build this guy, easy as that. A short while later, I had the finished conversion in my hands:

And as luck would have it, a single Obliterator can count as a squad and is worth exactly 70 points — just the amount I was still missing! So I decided to finish my contribution in this event by making a fourth and (final) vow. I was really looking forward to finally owning two finished Obliterators of this size and design!

Besides, it was just a single model, right? So what could possibly go wrong?

Unfortunately, the last couple of days have been the hottest days of the year so far in northwestern Germany, with temperatures of more than 30 degrees Celsius outside. Hardly the perfect weather to be painting miniatures — quite the opposite, actually!

However, I realised that losing momentum was the biggest danger for me, so I soldiered through the paintjob. And I managed to finish the Obliterator yesterday. Take a look:

And here’s a closer look at the weapon arms, spliced together from many, many different bits and kits:

Now it has been pointed out to me by Thousand Eyes and Augustus b’Raass that the armour trim needs some cleanup work here and there — particularly on the leg greaves! And I happily agree — painting this guy in the sweltering heat – and in a slightly darkened room, no less – certainly didn’t do the exactness of my paintjob any favours. But I think those problems should be easy enough to solve with some minor touchups when it’s a bit colder, and I am still reasonably happy with this guy: Now I have two massive juggernauts that can lay down quite a bit of fire between them. YAY!😉

And with the points of all the models I have managed to finish not at exactly 1,000 points, I think this is also the perfect moment to consider my contribution to this year’s ETL concluded: I’ve already done three vows more than I had originally planned, and while it has been a blast, I think it’s important to end things on a high note. I also don’t want to fail again, like last year!😉

But even so, I couldn’t be any happier with my performance: Granted, 1,000 points isn’t all that much when compared to the amounts of stuff some of the crazier contributors have come up with, but then I think I have really managed to complete some rather cool models — some of this stuff is arguably my finest work to date:

Another thing that pleases me immensely is that each model is one I have wanted to get painted for quite a while.

And while waiting for the opportunity to purchase some new Chaos Black spray halfway through the event, I actually made the most of the downtime and painted two “bonus models” (that had already been undercoated earlier), in order to keep my momentum going.

The first of those was a berzerker that I had already considered beyond saving earlier: I originally wanted to use the model as a test piece for the Mephiston Red spray paint, back when it was released. So I undercoated it with the – then brand new – spray paint, hoping that the paint would become a mainstay of my World Eaters recipe:

Unfortunately, the stuff performed rather terribly, and I ended up with a test model that was a slog to paint. Everything still looked pretty nice until after spraying, with a nice red undercoat across the whole model. But when I began to pick out the details in different colours, I realised that the undercoat had a somewhat strange, sandpapery texture that made the colours on top behave strangely, turning the whole painting progress into an exercise in frustration:

Now this is about as far as I got with the model:

But when the colour actually started rubbing off in places, revealing the bright red undercoat, I basically abandoned the whole project as a failure — and the half-finished model kept sitting on a sideboard, daring me to finish it at some point.

And that moment had finally come! So I thought “What the heck?” and gave the model another try: I repainted the armour with my new red recipe and persevered, because I really rather like this particular conversion and didn’t want to abandon it completely, and here’s what I ended up with:

Now this is hardly my best work – and it couldn’t be either, given the damage done by the original undercoat – but this guy is at least presentable enough now to take his place amongst the rank and file, and I am pretty happy that I’ve managed to finish the paintjob, after all!

The other additional model I painted is one that I am really happy with: An icon bearer for my Traitor Guard that I had wanted to finish for quite a while:

As you can see on the – mostly painted – model shown above, the conversion was based on another Tempestus Scions model. The head from one of the Dark Vengeance cultists champions creates a very palpable Blood Pact vibe (which was quite intentional), while the use of some WFB Skaven bitz creates a pretty cool, almost asian influence.

The icon was painted to resemble flayed human skin, and it goes without saying that it needed a suitably gruesome design added on top. So I broke out the Tamiya Clear Red and ended up with this:

Nothing says Traitor Guard quite as clearly as a crude heretical symbol daubed on in blood, wouldn’t you agree?😉

What’s really cool is how this model finally rounds out my first squad of Traitor Elites, arguably creating one of the best squads in my entire collection:

So when I include those two “bonus models”, that actually brings the number of models I have managed to complete during this year’s ETL up to…eight. How auspicious, indeed! I certainly hope Khorne is pleased…

So yeah, I am really happy with the outcome!

But wait, there’s more: In addition to the stuff I managed to complete myself, there’s also the fact that fellow hobbyist Augustus b’Raass chose to honour me by naming an absolutely brilliant World Eaters Contemptor for his growing Khorne Daemonkin force after me.

Meet Ancient Ka’Ruat of the World Eaters’ 59th assault echelon, ladies and gentlemen:

model converted and painted by Augustus b’Raass

model converted and painted by Augustus b’Raass

What an utterly fantastic surprise! And quite an honour, too! Make sure to check out Auggie’s ongoing WIP thread over at The Bolter & Chainsword, by the way: That guy is on fire!

All things considered, this has been a really enjoyable – and successful – ETL for me! Best of luck to those hobbyists who are still working on their vows and/or are planning to finish even more models for the glory of chaos! I’ll be watching your amazing work from the sidelines while offering snide comments every now and then😉

It goes without saying that I would love to hear your thoughts and feedback, so feel free to drop me a comment! And, as always, thanks for looking and stay tuned for more!

Hey everyone, it has been quite some time since the last review here on the blog, because for what is probably the first time in my hobby life, I am productive enough to keep showing you finished models instead of talking about releases. Go me!😉

At the same time, however, the backlog of released stuff I want to talk about keeps building up, so the recent release of Death Masque seemed like a good excuse to dip my toes into this particular pool again (I also want to discuss Silver Tower in more detail one of these days, probably as the last hobbyist in the world, but that will have to wait until I finally get my act together and write the rather comprehensive post I know the game deserves).

Anyway, here we are with a new boxed game, and it’s centered around the Deathwatch once more. Which is pretty cool, because the Deathwatch has always been a bit of a red-haired stepchild, at least when it comes to the Inquisitorial Ordos’ Chambers Militant: The Ordo Malleus’ Grey Knights have now enjoyed full faction status for years, and the Sisters of Battle, allied by ancient decree to the Ordo Hereticus…well, let’s not get into the whole drama and tragic release history surrounding them right now — suffice to say that they at least did form a complete army at one point.

The Deathwatch, on the other hand, was always restricted to a couple of conversion bitz, so if you wanted to run a Deathwatch killteam or, god forbid, an entire army, some OOP metal conversion bitz and a couple of plastic shoulder pads were all the material at your disposal.

All of this has changed with Deathwatch:Overkill, which provided us with some pretty excellent characters that already defined a general outline of what the modern Deathwatch could look like. And now we get another boxed game — this time chock-full of actual multi part kits and delicious conversion fodder! We also get a Deathwatch Codex to boot, but as my perspective is chiefly that of a converter, let’s focus on the models and discuss their strenghts and flaws as well as possible conversion ideas:

Team Xenos

The Xenos are definitely getting the short end of the stick in this box — at least in terms of new sculpts: All of the models (except one, but we’ll be getting to that in a minute) are the plastic Harlequin kits that were released a while back. They are still pretty cool, of course, but there’s really no need to talk about those models again — all my thoughts on the plastic Harlequin models can be found here, in case you’re interested.

But like I said, there’s one notable exception. This guy:

Eldrad Ulthran, Farseer of Ulthwé

Well, quite a surprise, this one! I don’t think many people were expecting a plastic version of this classic 2nd edition character, seeing how Eldrad seemed to have died a typical Disney villain death at the tail end of the Eye of Terror campaign all those years ago, but mostly because the original Jes Goodwin sculpt is certainly one of the most iconic 40k models:

Confession time: I consider this one of the best 40k models ever, period. Easily one of my top five if one considers the whole 40k catalogue, and certainly one of the models you should show somebody if you were trying to explain to them what 40k is. Sure, the model is slightly two-dimensional, being very much a product of its time, but the amount of detailing, strong triangular composition and perfect pose make this model one for the ages, in my opinion. And now they have chosen to update this piece. Ho hum…

GW’s respect for the original Eldrad model shows in that they basically chose to keep almost every part of the original model: The staff and sword are virtually identical, as are most of the clothes and various doodads dangling from Eldrad’s belt and arms. The helm is also really similar, although I really hate the fact that Eldrad now sports one of those silly “pharao beards” that have been the bane of every Farseer design for quite a while now.

The pose is also very similar to the original, but while adding a bit of depth to the original sculpt, it also ends up looking ever so slightly less iconic. Now maybe this is just nostalgia getting the better of me, but for some reason the new Eldrad, for all his excellent detail, doesn’t seem to be quite as tightly composed as the original piece:

While some will certainly welcome the slightly airier pose and sense of depth and motion to the model, but I just cannot get over how brilliant the original is. Nothing is better proof of this than the fact that the new Eldrad instantly becomes far inferior if you drop the sword arm and use the alternate, “casting” hand for him:

Of course it’s a huge boon that the new model is plastic, so it lends itself to converting much better than the old metal model, allowing for using it as the base as a customised Farseer conversion (or for smaller tweaks like, for instance, getting rid of that beard…):

When all is said and done, it’s a very nice and fitting model when taken on its own merits. When compared to its legendary predecessor, however, I have to admit that it doesn’t quite hold up: If I were to build the new plastic Eldrad, I would do my darnedest to make him look as much as the original metal model as possible by tweaking the pose (and by GETTING RID OF THAT BEARD!), and I think that says al lot about which version is the superior one…

I wonder what this means for the (rumoured) plastic update of Khârn the Betrayer…?

Team Deathwatch

It takes no rocket scientist to figure out that the Deathwatch are the more appealing faction in this particular set, mostly because there’s more original content for them. But even so, the Deathwatch side of things also makes heavy use of pre-existing kits: It looks like you basically get one Vanguard and Venerable Dreadnought kit and then the new Deathwatch Veteran sprue to build five Veterans and use the remaining bitz to spice up the other models to your heart’s content. Regarding the base kits, all of them are excellent kits, whether you’re starting a new Astartes force or adding to an existing one. Some detailed thoughts of on the Vanguard kit can be found here.

But yeah, beyond those kits, there’s the new Deathwatch Veteran sprue — and quite a sprue it is:

Looks like we are getting lots of weapons and decoration, but also a dedicated set of bodies and legs, which is very nice! And here’s what the bitz from the sprue will look like when used to create a squad of Deathwatch Veterans:

The inclusion of already establised visual elements, such as the Inquisition symbols, shoulder pads covered in scripture and special bolters, was a given, of course. What I really like, however, is how the main point of this new sprue seems to be to give the Deathwatch its own visual identity: Deathwatch Marines basically used to be standard Marines with a special bolter and one slightly more interesting shoulder pad. The new parts, however, really create a new look for them:

Their armour has a more streamlined and modern look to it (is that an Mk8 breastplate, I wonder?), which befits an Inquisitorial special force. If anything they have a sleek “Spec Ops” looks that is rendered even stronger by their armour being black.

It’s very interesting to see how they differ from their obvious counterparts, the Grey Knights: The Grey Knights look like, well, Knights: very ornamental and medieval. The Deathwatch, on the other hand, look like a particularly bad-ass black ops team from your favourite 90s military shooter, thrown into a blender and turned up to eleven — which also happens to make them look far more believably like an Inquisitorial sub-organisation now!

In addition to the sleek new armour designs, the sprue also seems to be featuring some of the Ordo Xenos’ more…esoteric gear, such as the sword on the squad leader:

Seems like we’ve been stealing some tech from the Necrons, eh?😉 Now while this particular weapon seems a bit hit or miss to me, I still think it’s neat that some of the equipment seems to be both more esoteric and seemingly inspired by Xenos tech.

For those of you who want boisterous and ostentatious instead of sneaky and subdued, however, the good news is that the new Deathwatch bitz seem to allow for that option as well:

Ah, what would we be without huge hammers and crazily ornate boarding shields, eh? They are looking awesome, though!

But whatever happened to the handle on this poor fellow’s hammer…?

There’s also a collection of shoulder pads bearing quite a plethora of different chapter symbols on the sprue, which should really help to make any given Deathwatch force look like it has actually been assembled from Astartes hailing from many different chapters. And the fact that we don’t just get yet more heraldic elements of the “big” chapters like the Ultramarines, Dark Angels or Blood Angels, but rather a collection of more obscure iconography, is both a great shout out to the wider 40k lore and a great modeling opportunity!

And finally, the bitz on the sprue can also be used to convert Dreadnoughts into a Deathwatch variant:

All in all, the new sprue seems like a deliciously versatile new toy, and I can see it becoming really popular, both with 40k players and the INQ28 crowd alike! For instance, Commissar Molotov, being both the Godfather of INQ28 and quite the Deathwatch fiend, will probably find much to like about the new sprue😉

Watch-Captain Artemis

Well, this was another really excellent surprise: Whom do we get as the Deathwatch commander but a veteran of 54mm Inquisitor? For those of you who haven’t been into this hobby for years and years, Artemis will merely seem like a cool enough Deathwatch model. But if you remember the old 54mm Inquisitor line of models, you will also remember Artemis, arguably one of the most spectacular models at the bigger scale. And just check out this comparison to see how closely the new model matches the earlier incarnation:

For the sake of the comparison, both models are displayed at the same size, when they are really anything but…

It’s really crazy how GW’s sculptors have managed to incorporate almost all of the visual elements from the 54mm Artemis! Especially if you consider that one of the huge draws of the original Inquisitor models was how 28mm plastic couldn’t hope to capture the same amount of detail — I think it’s a testament to the quality of GW’s modern plastics that almost all of the detail has been retained at about half the size!

There are some smaller differences: Artemis seems to have done rather well for himself since we last saw him , earning the right to wear a snazzy cape. His Deathwatch boltgun has also been exchanged with an actual combi-weapon, and both his sword and his backpack have received some additional bling. I kinda miss the Crux Terminatus necklace, though, as it provided a nice extra bit of dynamism to the model. And I think I’d add a purity seal to the front of his left shoulder pad, just for old times’ sake😉

The main difference is in the face, if you ask me: Where 54mm Artemis’ face is classically handsome (in the way many retro Space Marines used to be), the 28mm models have noticeably broader features — whether this is merely due to technical factors or an actual attempt at giving him the broader, heavier features that seem to be a trademark of Space Marines in some of the literature, I cannot say. Personally, I prefer the 54mm face, not because of the additional detail, but because the callback to the older, more handsome Marines appeals to me in an entirely nostalgic way. Curiously enough, the bare head that came with the old Dark Angels veteran sprue really resembles 54mm Artemis, though, so if you want to change that part, that’s the face I’d recommend — in fact, there’s a fantastic older 28mm Artemis conversion by Siamtiger that happens to be using the head in question.

But that’s obviously nitpicking: Artemis’ new incarnation is a brilliant call-back to a classic miniature and also a fantastic looking centrepiece for a Deathwatch army in its own right — very nice!

Conversion options:

It goes without saying that I won’t be discussing the general conversion options for the older kits contained in the boxed kit, for obvious reasons, although my thoughts on possible conversions may be found in the aforementioned reviews of the respective kits linked above.

So this leaves us with the two special characters and the new Deathwatch sprue to discuss:

Eldrad could obviously become a building template for your own custom Farseer with just a few cuts and a bit of kitbashing. The prospect isn’t hugely exciting, certainly, mostly because we already have a generic clamshell Farseer who can fill that role, although it’s nice to have the option. Seeing how his breastplate (with most of the Eldaresque decoration) seems to be a separate piece, it should be possible to use the model as the base for a non-Eldar robed character, such as an Inquisitor, Imperial Psyker, Chaos demagogue or what have you. And of course it goes without saying that his sword and staff would also be cool conversion bitz for any Eldar players.

But really, when all is said and done, there’s no doubt that this model should probably be used to build Eldrad, above all else. So the most appealing conversion options here would be to make minor tweaks to make him resemble his classic incarnation even more closely (rotating the head counter-clockwise by a few degrees, and OFF WITH THAT BEARD!).

Artemis should be easy enough to tweak as well with some careful cutting — but once again, I find myself strangely reluctant to even think about using the model for a conversion. It’s such a cool shout out to the 54mm model, and using it for anything else would just lose that — and there’s really no shortage of Space Marine bitz to use, so we might as well leave this guy in one piece, eh? Just this once😉

Come to think of it, the one tweak I think would improve the model would be to slightly rotate its head so as to mirror the 54mm version’s pose even more closely.

So with the two special characters best left untouched, for the most part, the Deathwatch sprue is obviously the true star of the show here, and rumours have it that GW really intends to package it with a huge number of Space Marine kits to give the Deathwatch a real push. And why shouldn’t they? The designers have been building up the compatibility of the various Space Marine kits literally for decades now, and towards this end, releasing a sprue that will allow you to turn virtually every Space Marine kit into a Deathwatch kit is a pretty shrewd move!

There’s also the fact that the sprue seems far more comprehensive than the Dark Angels and Black Templars sprues that were its distant predecessors (and those weren’t half bad either): If you carefully divide the contents of the sprue between your squads, you’ll get quite a bit of mileage out of those bitz!

Possibly the best part of the sprue, however, is that it really plays to the appeal of the Deathwatch: The great thing about them is that they allow you to build a Killteam or force that is very much centered around the individual models, as they all hail from different chapters. So if you want to test some ideas for a DIY chapter or build a model belonging to one of the more obscure chapters, building a model for your Deathwatch project will allow you to do just that without having to commit to an entire squad or army.

And we finally get a distinctive look for the Deathwatch — one that goes beyond the concept of standard tac Marines with black armour and a silver left arm. True enough, these are still Space Marines, but even if they lack the plethora of kits the Grey Knights have nowadays, at least they now have their own visual identity!

The flexibility of the sprue means that it should also become quite popular with converters: Whether you are looking to add a killteam (or a single Deathwatch veteran) to your army or want some suitably original and esoteric equipment for your chapter masters or Inquisitors, there should be something for you on this sprue. Even if you are going for true scale Deathwatch (because true INQ28 aficionados will only ever settle for true scale Astartes), you’ll be thankful for the Terminator-sized Deathwatch shoulder pads.

All in all, Death Masque seems like a cool boxed set that basically combines several of GW’s most successful recent ideas: If you look at the kits in the box, that’s some pretty major bang for the buck. The game functions as a standalone entity, drawing in new people and working as yet another gateway drug, so to speak. The redesigned Deathwatch will pluck at the heartstrings of veteran players and hobbyists. And the special characters provide that extra bit of sugar sprinkled on top — well played, GW!

So what’s your take on the new models and conversion bitz? I would love to hear your opinion, so feel free to drop me a comment! And, as always, thanks for looking and stay tuned for more!

Prologue

I have been thinking a lot about Angron lately.

I’ve explained before how I think Matthew Farrer’s “After Desh’ea” and Aaron Dembski-Bowden’s “Betrayer” have managed to turn a bad comic book villain into a much more rounded, tragic character, and I still stand by that sentiment: Even in a series of tie-in fiction, Angron has become a strong and interesting character. He’s the most monstrous of the Primarchs. And, in some ways, also the most human. He is a tragic villain. And also utterly irredeemable. All he ever wanted was freedom. From the high-riders. From the Emperor. And he ended up being one of the first of his brothers to ascend to a life of eternal service. That’s quite a development, from generic angry guy bit-part (“Angry Ron”, indeed) to a much more interesting key player in the Horus Heresy.

There’s also the fact that Angron has been depicted in some rather excellent artwork over the years. I suppose everything must have started with John Blanche’s depiction of the World Eaters’ Primarch:

Angron by John Blanche

John’s trademark style goes for shock and awe tactics here, showing us Angron as a hulking barbarian warlord, if anything. Even after all these years, this still seems like an apt interpretation of the character, and it’s quite fascinating to see how most of the elements from this drawing seem to have found their way into subsequent depictions (and even the official model!).

Then there’s this piece by the late, great Wayne England, one of the wonderful illustrations that used to define the look of the Horus Heresy prior to Forgeworld:

Angron by Wayne England

What I really love about this piece is how it plays with the character’s duality: The barbarian warlord is still there, but Angron seems more regal and composed than the JB version. And yet, there’s that strand of viscera dangling from his fist: Even as a powerful Imperial warlord, this man remains a dangerous beast, indeed.

And there’s the far more recent, official piece of artwork from Forgeworld, of course, depicting what is effectively a picture-perfect representation of Simon Egan’s Angron:

It’s another very cool piece of artwork — although those axes seem awfully small, come to think of it.

And finally. two more pieces of art that define Angron as a character for me, both from brilliantly talented artist slaine69:

Angron sketch by slaine69

This first one actually had me gasping out loud when I first saw it: What we see here is a much more monstrous, almost grotesque, take on Angron — and yet it almost perfectly matches the description of the Primarch appearing in Aaron Dembski-Bowden’s stories: After more than a century of warfare, Angron looks like a scarred and disfigured stature of a legendary hero — this is exactly how I imagine Angron during the Nuceria campaign and shortly before his ascension to daemonhood!

The other piece is more moody in nature, but arguably even more effective:

“Portrait of an angry guy” by slaine69

The quality of the writing and artwork slowly made me realise that, as a dedicated World Eater, I would need some model version of Angron at some point. And the growing feeling of wanting to do the Lord of the XII Legion justice in model form, in turn, led to the start of this project: But if I wanted an Angron model, what was I to do?

I. Do it yourself…

Of course getting the (fantastic) official Forgeworld model would have been the most obvious solution — but for some reason that seemed, too easy and too complicated at the same time: I didn’t want to go through the process of having to order the model, really, plus I am not a big fan of resin. And if I was to build Angron, I wanted it to be a conversion project.

As is so often the case, all it took to knock me over the edge was the right piece of inspiration. And it came in the form of invivos’ plastic Angron conversion:

Angron conversion by invivos

Now that conversion is just clever, wouldn’t you agree? It uses some fairly readily available components to create a model that definitely reads as Angron — I especially love the use of half a Space Marine shoulder pad to create Angron’s characteristic high collar!  What a neat little touch! If there’s one – very minor – problem with the conversion, it’s that it might just be a bit too small to represent a Primarch (at least by modern FW standards). But it’s still a wonderfully elegant little conversion — and it served as proof to me that a plastic version of Angron was possible!

And then, one day, I found myself at the Hanover GW store with an AoS Slaughterpriest of Khorne in my hand and a plan beginning to form in the back of my head. So I picked up the model and started with an early mockup:

The stock Slaughterpriest body and head were basically perfect for the project, and the model was tall enough to read as a Primarch. Even at this early stage, however, I realised I would have to make some tweaks: The Slaughterpriest arms were holding a two-handed axe, and I knew right away that I rather wanted my Angron to be wielding twin chainaxes, like his official incarnation. However, with the axe left off, the arms were in a rather awkward pose, plus they also ended up looking puny, so I replaced them with Ork boy arms. The chainaxes came from FWs Cataphractii models, and the shoulder pad I used in my mockup had been sent to me by Augustus b’Raass a while ago (it’s either from MaxMini or from PuppetsWar, I believe).

Now when it came to the model’s back, those horns growing from either side of the Saughterpriest’s spine definitely needed to go! I chose to keep the hideous, exposed spine, though, both because I rather liked its look and because it seemed like a suitably brutal surgical alteration (either performed by the ringmasters on Nuceria, or by the Imperium in order to allow Angron to interface with is armour):

And while this version was still fairly rough, it definitely felt like a huge step in the right direction!

The next obvious step was to add the thing that defines Angron like nothing else: His Butcher’s Nails implants:

This actually turned out to be really easy, mostly due to a lucky discovery: When I took a closer look at the Sicarian Ruststalkers princeps’ head, I realised that the cabling forming a “beard” of sorts would work perfectly as Butcher’s Nails with very little additional work:

While I was at it, I also carefully shaved off the Khornate rune from the armour — seeing how Angron never even realised he was the Blood God’s champion before his ascension to daemonhood, it just seemed more fitting this way:

And as you can see in this size comparison picture, my plastic conversion was really quite a bit taller than a standard power armoured Marine and even than a World Eater in Cataphractii armour:

So the final thing left to do was to replace the white modeling putty with solidly sculpted areas of greenstuff, in order to rebuild Angron’s back where needed, and add a detail or two. While I am not especially handy with GS, this turned out to be a fairly straightforward affair. So here’s the finished Angron conversion:

As you can see, I even managed to add Angron’s “Triumph Rope” scar, an element described in “After De’shea” and also prominently shown on the cover of “Butcher’s Nails.”

Here’s the finished back:

And let me just point out that I think the Slaughterpriest’s face is easily one of GW’s best face sculpts, with the set of the muscles beautifully supporting the look of boundless rage:

I even thought about a “GW-friendly” version of the model: If I should ever endeavour to send some pictures of the finished model to White Dwarf, for instance, I’ll have to replace the shoulder pad with a GW bit:

Which of the two pauldrons do you prefer?

But yeah, I am really happy with the finished model, because I think it’s instantly recognisable as the XII legion’s Primarch: I also like how it’s pretty abiguous whether the model represents Angron during his time as an arena champion on Nuceria or rather during a sparring match with his sons in the fighting pits aboard the Conqueror. Whichever might be the case, he seems just seconds away from the iconic pose appearing on the cover of “Butcher’s Nails”:

Now while I have decided to keep my Angron bare-chested, let me tell you that it should really be easy enough to build an armoured version using the same basic approach. For instance, the Stormcast Eternal breastplates are a pretty good fit for the model’s torso and also resemble the type of armour worn by Forgeworld’s Angron. Here’s a quick mockup:

As it happens, my buddy Biohazard is working on an absolutely spectacular armoured version of Angron based on the same Slaughterpriest model. Take a look:

Angron conversion by Biohazard

So if you should ever find yourself wondering about how to start a plastic Angron conversion, I’d suggest taking a look at the Slaughterpriest — in fact, if you have access to both versions of the Slaughterpriest, you might be able to come up with an even better version. But anyway, I am really happy with my kitbashed Angron, and I am also looking forward to painting him, hopefully in the near future!

2. The Universe has a sense of humor…

…or so they say, because no sooner was my plastic Angron conversion finished than I was contacted by Adam Wier (of Between the Bolter And Me fame), who told me that he had an almost complete Forgeworld Angron that he would be willing to send over. And indeed, he was awesome enough to go through with it, so a short time later, thanks to Adam’s kindness, I found myself in the possession of the “official” model as well:

And what can I say: I am really happy with my converted Angron, but I also remain a fan of Simon Egan’s “official” version — I’d even go so far as to say that I believe Angron is still one of the best Primarch sculpts (in spite of also being the first Primarch to be released), mostly because the model takes visual cues from all the various depictions of the character and combines them into something that is, amazingly enough, a really good match for each piece of artwork while also being an excellent model in its own right!

And now one of those models was mine, and it even came perfectly cleaned up, probably due to Adam’s meticulousness😉

So the first thing this allowed me to do was to actually make a comparison between my converted Angron and the official model:

And you know what? I think that, at least from a size perspective, my Slaughterpriest-based Angron holds up fairly well. Granted, he may be slightly smaller than Forgeworld-Angron (if the latter were to stand perfectly erect). But the model is also tall enough to read as a Primarch, if you ask me — plus he’s mostly out of his armour, so there’s that, too😉

At the same time, it was also clear to me that I really wanted to paint both versions of the model now, perhaps creating snapshots from different moments in the Primarch’s life, so to speak.

I had one problem to solve however: While the model was almost complete, some parts were missing. Mostly minor stuff, really, but the one thing I would need to replace was the cloak. And it took me a while to think of a solution — but then I was saved by a bitz drop from fellow hobbyist Helega, and now my Forgeworld-Angron looks like this:

A slightly tweaked version of the chain cape from the WFB Chaos Lord on Manticore seems like a pretty ideal replacement for Angron’s standard cape — the conversion isn’t quite finished yet, but I do think I am on the right track.

So that’s two versions of the same character for me to paint, right? Seems like I have my work cut out for me. Wait a second, though, because we are still not quite done…

3. Things to come…

What you maybe don’t know yet is that, in addition to the two versions of Angron in “regular” (super-)human form, I have been planning for quite a while to also build and paint a version of the Primarch after his ascension to daemonhood. So that makes three Angrons, which is why this project has now officially become a triptych! My version of Angron’s daemonic form definitely deserves a post of its own, due to the sheer scope of the project, but allow me to share one teaser image with you, while we are here:

Trust me, you’ll be seeing *a lot* of this guy — and soon!😉

So yeah, I think this is going to be a rather exciting project: Three versions of the Lord of the XII Legion, and I really want to do each of the models justice and paint them to the best of my abilities — wish me luck! During my last visit to the Hanover GW store, the manager even suggested making a diorama of the three finished versions and present it at the store as part of their “Armies on Parade” event in October — we will see…

Anyway, I would like to extend a heartfelt “thank you” to those amazing people who have made this project possible by providing inspiration, bitz or even entire freaking Forgeworld models (cheers, Adam!)!I’d love to hear your thoughts on the project so far!

As always, thanks for looking and stay tuned for more!

Prologue

So here we are with part two of this mini-series centered around Angron, the Lord of the XII Legion, and today I would like to focus on my interpretation of Angron in his post-ascension form as a Daemon-Primarch (a project already teased in my last post). Now it may seem counter-intuitive to deal with this last and (canonically) latest version of Angron first, but I have long stopped wondering about when and how inspiration strikes, electing instead to just go with the flow. And in this particular case, there was ample inspiration to be had, indeed — but we’ll be getting to that in a minute!

Let me start by telling you that this particular project has been long in the making. It actually started over a year ago, when I received a second plastic Bloodthirster as a gift. Back then, my first Bloodthirster (bought immediately upon the new kit’s release) had already been assembled, and I didn’t really want to merely build another one. But I also didn’t want to just put the kit away into my cupboard of shame, so my mind started wandering…would it actually be possible to build a version of Daemon-Primarch Angron using this kit…?

Following my usual approach, I started by doing lots of research. And a huge part of this progress was to check out what had come before. Like this guy:

Angron by Wade Pryce

Wade Pryce’s Angron conversion, based on the old metal Bloodthirster. Now for those of you who don’t know Wade’s army, it’s easily one of the most spectacular 40k World Eaters armies of all time, and one that played a huge part for creating the concept of Khorne’s Eternal Hunt, when I got back into the hobby. And true to the quality of his World Eaters, Wade served as a trailblazer once again with his Angron conversion, being just about the first hobbyist with the actual audacity to tackle such a project.

Now while the model may seem a bit dated, given the ever escalating quality of models we have been seeing over the last years, it still remains important in that it serves as a proof of concept that Daemon-Primarch Angron is possible in model form — to wit, Wade’s model basically served as GW’s quasi-official 40k Angron for quite a while, even being featured on their homepage until fairly recently.

Speaking of official models, there was that hokey Epic 40k model of Angron, of course:

image source: SOLegends

But seriously, it didn’t feel like I could take lots of inspiration from this guy, right? Keep this particular model in mind, however, as we’ll be encountering him in the unlikeliest place before this is over…

I. Research and main inspiration

But anyway, GW wouldn’t be a big help here, at least not when it came to models. So I turned to the hobbyists, and while Daemon-Primarch Angron certainly isn’t a super-popular subject for converters so far, there are some conversions of him floating around. Among this, some seemed especially noteworthy to me due to their quality: VonKessler’s truly monstrous Angron was quite stunning, as was Rumplemaster’s Angron. I am also a fan of this version of Angron in Daemon-Primarch form by Renaes, while we are on the subject — but while all three versions are very cool and rather inspiring, they all use very different base models from the Bloodthirster I had chosen as my starting point.

And then there was Reg, French hobbyist extraordinaire, who, I was flabbergasted to find out, is responsible for more than a dozen different Angron conversions (don’t believe me? Go check up on him — I’ll be waiting). But what’s more, his Angron conversions are among the best interpretations of the character you can find online. And when I recently saw this latest Angron from Reg on CMON, based on the Bloodthirster, no less, I was simply blown away:

Bloodthirster-based Angron conversion by Reg

Seriously, this is probably the best Daemon-Primarch Angron I have seen so far, and really, really close to my own interpretation of the character! A part of me actually hated Reg for having come up with this before me — where was the point in even starting my own project now? But then I calmed myself and started to think and plan and throw around bitz, and while I would be using this as one of my main inspirations and …erm “borrow” quite a few ideas from it, there were also some things that I wanted to do slightly differently. Plus I wanted to incorporate some different sources as well.

The second major inspiration for my own Angron conversion was what I believe is the only official atrwork to date depicting Daemon Primarch Angron, a piece by Alex Boyd (who was obviously channelling his inner John Blanche when painting this piece):

Daemon Primarch Angron by Alex Boyd

I understand this artwork originally appeared in the Visions of Heresy artbooks, but I first saw it back when it appeared in White Dwarf, accompanying some rules for using Angron in games of Apocalypse.

I think it goes without saying that Reg seems to have taken quite a few cues from this piece of art (as did Rumplemaster). And both have come up with models that are looking wildly different from one another while also both being reasonable interpretations of the art. Because what’s really rather amazing about the illustration is that the style is loose and painterly enough to be up to interpretation to a certain degree.

I also really, really love how the art features callbacks to Angron’s human form, as depicted by John Blanche and Wayne England (see my previous post): The three-spiked crest above Angron’s head, the curved shoulder pads and the axe are all elements drawn from those earlier pieces of artwork. The axe, in particular, seems like a daemonic version of the huge two-handed axe appearing in the earlier Horus Heresy artwork, decorative wing ornament and all. What a brilliant sense of continuity!

So I chose this illustration as my second main influence when building and painting my own Angron. But there was one more source that became a major influence:

MINOR SPOILERS for “The Emperor’s Gift” follow!

The description of post-ascension Angron that appeared in Aaron Dembski-Bowden’s “The Emperor’s Gift”

„And there it was. Behind the diseased humidity and stench of fresh blood: a shadow that stained the horde’s core. It rose from the wreckage of a temple, spreading monstrous wings to the sky.

II. Getting started

After assembling all the ideas and bitz I needed, I started by putting together the plastic Bloodthirster’s body. I had already done this once with my first Bloodthirster, so this part was easy work. I knew that I wanted to change the look of the model as much as possible, however, and the main area of interest to sell the conversion as Angron would be the head. So that’s where I started the proper conversion — with a very early, slightly ridiculous looking mockup made from poster tack:

Based on the various descriptions and depictions of Daemon-Primarch Angron, I decided that the standard “human” Bloodthirster face would work perfectly as a base for the conversion. However, I wanted to make two substantial changes to it: One, open the jaws far wider than on the stock model, for that extra bit of madness and body horror. And two, elongating the neck protion quite a bit, both to change the silhouette of the model and to make room for the mutated cables and tendrils representing Angron’s “Butcher’s Nails” implants.

Early during this step, I decided to lose the smaller horns and ears on the stock face, because I really wanted to make the head look different than the standard Bloodthirster face. I also wanted to draw more attention to the sculpted area of the head, but this also meant I would have to come up with some decent sculpting, which seemed like a pretty daunting task. But I didn’t really have a choice in the matter, so I started by using some GS to build up the basic shape of the head and neck:

Admittedly, the model didn’t look like much at this point, and I was briefly afraid of having ruined a pretty expensive kit. But when I tentatively posted these early WIPs on various forums, people immediately recognised the model as a WIP Angron and seemed very enthusiastic — phew!😉

Another part of “The Emperor’s Gift” refers to Angron’s “saurian head”, and I liked the idea that an elongated head gave him a bit of a reptilian look without completely superseding the human origins of the character.

The next part of the conversion was to build up several parts of the model at the same time: More and more cables were added to the head, some of them GW bitz (all the cables from the Space Marine Centurions really came in handy here), while others were sculpted from GS using a fine-tooth comb and lots of patience (thanks to a neat tip from fellow hobbyist Mechanist). At the same time, I also added the various planned armour plates to Angron’s body. Here’s what the model looked like a short while later:

My original plan was to use the Ogre Bull gut plates resembling the World Eaters’ legion badge as kneepads (to emulate the kneepads of Forgeworld’s Angron model), but then I realised that the gut plate also worked really well in its intended function, providing a piece of armour that fit very well while also differentiating the model further from the stock Bloodthirster.

As for the spiked crest you can see above Angron’s head, that is a shout out to several pieces of artwork, as there was always a three-spiked crest above Angron’s head in the older artwork, both in his mortal and immortal incarnation. However, Simon Egan’s Angron model has slightly redesigned this element into a World Eaters symbol framed by what seems curiously like a chaos star. Therefore, I felt that would be cool to hint at the updated design, and so I used a part from the WFB warshrine of chaos as a crest.

The shoulder pads were a part that confounded me for quite a while, and I also felt that this was the part where many Angron conversion, even the truly excellent ones, faltered, trying to add pauldrons made from GS that ended up looking slightly too gooey and awkward.

After much consideration, I discovered some chaos shields from Maxmini.eu which Augustus b’Raass had sent me a while ago in my bitzbox, and they really seemed like an excellent compromise, recalling the pauldrons in the art while also fitting the Bloodthirster model surprisingly well (and featuring the same amount of detail as the rest of the armour plates):

The most involved part of the conversion was to keep adding more and more cables to the head, and this also took far more patience than I normally have. But I forced myself to work in several sessions and kept adding more and more detail to build up the head. You may notice the cables’ different textures. This was a conscious choice, as I wanted to capture the feeling of various cables at various stages of “transformation”, for lack of a better word: There are the more slender, clearly metallic cables, slightly thicker cables that already have a distinctly organic look (and somewhat more gooey texture) and, finally, fleshy tendrils that no longer really look like cables at all. I wanted this ensemble to look like the nails had actually become a part of Angron’s very being upon his ascension, and I planned to underline this even further during the painting stage.

So with the model’s body finally taking shape, this was also the right moment to think about the weapon I wanted Angron to wield. Canonically, Daemon-Primarch Angron is armed with the Black Blade, a massive daemonsword forged for him during the Heresy by Vel Kheredar, at the behest of Lorgar.

Coming up with a suitable blade would have been a rather neat challenge (I considered Nagash’s sword for a while, or the sword from the Nemesis Dreadknight), but the longer I thought about it, the more I realised that I really wanted to incorporate that huge axe that appears both in the early Horus Heresy artwork and in Alex Boyd’s illustration.

I knew from looking at Reg’s model that this could work really well, using one of the Bloodthirster axes. However, I diverged from his design by using the big, two-handed axe rather than one of the smaller ones. Here’s the finished, slightly tweaked axe:

The haft was shortened and straightened a bit to make the axe seem slightly less unwieldy (I also thought the crooked haft did look slightly silly). And I definitely needed that huge wing ornament on the axe head — I took inspiration from Reg’s model here, using a wing from a Dark Vengeance Ravenwing bike and gluing it to the axe.

So here’s a mockup of Angron holding the weapon:

And as you can see in the pictures, there’s also a little something in Angron’s right hand: This is perhaps the second rather substantial difference from Reg’s amazing version: I really wanted to do something with the empty hand, and it seemed like the perfect chance to incorporate another shout out to Alex Boyd’s illustration: The artwork shows Angron gripping an unlucky Astartes, probably an Ultramarine, in his off-hand, so I chose to create a similar effect on my own model. A Grey Knight would have been an interesting alternative, but I ultimately chose an Ultramarine, both as a callback to the art and because using a Grey Knight would have “dated” the model:

You see, Angron was one of the first Primarchs to ascend to daemonhood, during the Mid-Heresy. Yet at the same time, it stands to reason that his appearance as a Daemon-Primarch would still be roughly the same several millennia later. So using an Ultramarine here would ultimately allow me to use the model both for 30k and 40k (as a piece linking together the two versions of my World Eaters, if you will), which I thought was a pretty nifty bonus!

Towards this end, I tried to make the Ultramarine’s armour look like it could have originated during the Heresy, mainly using Mk IV components:

I do realise that gory trophies like these can be a bit of a divisive feature, but I chose to cut the Ultamarine apart at the waist, showing how Angron must have torn his opponent in half moments earlier. I think having an entire Astartes dangling from his fist would have ended up looking rather awkward, so the legs will appear on the base. I tried to keep the splatter factor pretty low though, avoiding lots of dangling innards and limiting myself to a barely visible spine and one coiled rope of entrails:

My take is that the Marine is still alive, by the way, if only just barely — “Only in death…”, and all that: I reckon this guy has one last swing left in him, not that it’ll do him any good. This is also the reason while he is still facing towards Angron:

So with both hands completed, it was time to attach the wings and add the final details before the conversion was ready for paint:

The most important part to tidy up was the head, although I found I didn’t even want to add lots and lots of additional cables, as I was really rather happy with the way it looked. In addition to the cables, some small chains and several skulls (both from the Empire Flagellant kit) were nestled in between all the cabling and fleshy tendrils, in keeping with both the art and ADB’s description. As for the face itself, the two final additions were some gruesome spikes on each cheek and some studs carefully added to the forehead, both as a way of approximating similar elements appearing in the artwork:

And there was one last “special effect” that I wanted to add to the model: Because I had made such a lot of changes to the model’s head, there was no way to use the crest of fur that normally runs down the stock Bloodthirster’s head. So I used this area to add another detail differentiating my Angron conversion from the stock ‘Thirster, while also serving as a shout out to my plastic Angron conversion.

As you might remember, my plastic Angron kept the exposed spine from the Slaughterpriest model:

Now I thought it would be a cool, if somewhat grisly, in-joke to use the same element on my Daemon-Primarch Angron, so I used the big spine from the AoS Bloodsecrator of Khorne and some GS to create this:

And with those final additions, the conversion was finished. Let’s take a look at how the model looked before painting:

Here’s a comparison picture showing Angron next to my Bloodthirster: Considering the fact that it’s basically the same model, I do think I’ve done a reasonable job of making the conversion look different:

All in all, I am really extremely happy with the conversion: While it’s very obvious that I have taken a fair bit of inspiration from Reg’s Angron conversion, I also think that I’ve made enough tweaks on the formula for my model to be able to stand on its own. At the same time, I also feel the model is a pretty fair, if not 100% picture-perfect, representation of Alex Boyd’s artwork, even if I’ve had to switch hands on my model, for the sake of practicality:

I am particularly happy with the face and head:

Yup, looks like Daemon-Primarch Angron to me😉

Now, do you still remember that silly Epic 40k version of Angron shown at the beginning of this post? Now what if I tell you that my buddy Biohazard is currently working on his own version of Daemon-Primarch Angron (because the both of us seem to be having a bit of an Angron conversion arms race going on at the moment), and his version is actually based on that Epic 40k model?

It is also completely awesome:

Daemon-Primarch Angron conversion by Biohazard

As you can see, Biohazard’s even arming Angron with the proper Black Blade, having made a fantastic kitbash utilising the Nemesis Dreadknight’s sword. I love the fact how we’ve chosen to build the same character and use the same stock model, yet our respective interpretations should end up looking wildly different! Keep track of Biohazard’s brilliant conversion work here.

As for my own version, there was one last test to pass: We are all prepared to cut a conversion some slack while it’s still in different shades of grey and green, but the truly magic moment comes when it’s all brought together by the same colour — or not. So it was with some nervousness that I spraypainted the entire model black:

And yet with only the black undercoat in place, I think it’s already obvious how the different parts of the head (and, by extension, the conversion) merge together fairly seamlessly, wouldn’t you agree?

Once again, the armour plates were being kept seperate during the painting process, in order to make painting easier and avoid hard to reach nooks and crannies:

Right, time to get this bad boy painted, eh?😉

So stay tuned for the next part of this series, when I’ll be walking you through the painting process. Until then, I’d really love to hear your feedback on the conversion so far and my working process for this project! And a heartfelt thank you to all those who have provided the necessary inspiration – or bitz – for this particular project!

And, as always, thanks for looking and stay tuned for more!

Welcome to part three of this mini-series about my various interpretations of the XII Legion Primarch! Today, we’ll finally get some paint on my conversion of Angron in his Daemon-Primarch form!

Before we begin, let me just point out that – interestingly enough – rumours of plastic Daemon-Primarchs have been making the rounds lately, and Angron is supposedly one of the first Daemon-Primarchs to be released. Does this worry me?

Yes, a bit, actually — but even more importantly, it also served as a rather important catalyst for this project to finally take shape. Because while people might still be interested in homebrew Daemon-Angrons now, I doubt there’ll be much interest left once the “official” model hits — the best I can hope for is people coming across my model when looking for the one released by GW (as is currently the fact with my version of Khârn, incidentally…).

On the flipside, the prospect of an actual GW version of the character also serves as an incentive to make my version the best it can possibly be — and that goes for the conversion as well as the paintjob!

Which brings us back to our main subject. Here’s where we left off last time:

Now let me start by confessing that most of the models I painted for this year’s ETL V event were basically test runs for Angron: The Skulltaker counts-as served as a test-run for the Bestial Daemon Prince, who, in turn, served as a bit of a test-run for the Bloodthirster. And once I knew I could paint a Bloodthirster to a high enough standard, I felt that painting Angron had become an attainable goal!

Since GW’s official painting tutorial for the Bloodthirster was such an amazing resource when painting the model, I knew that I would make use of the same basic skin recipe on Angron as well — with one caveat, however: I really liked my finished Bloodthirster, but the skin colour ended up looking fairly dark (actually quite a bit darker than it seems in the following picture):

And while the colour seemed like a great fit for a Bloodthirster, I knew I wanted something brighter and more stunning for Angron. So I tried tweaking Duncan Rhodes’ fantastic recipe for the skin by replacing a single colour – GW Mephiston Red in place of GW Khorne Red – thereby ending up with the following recipe for the skin:

• basecoat using GW Mephiston Red
• wash with Army Painter Dark Tone (or GW Nuln Oil)
• drybrush with GW Mephiston Red
• drybrush with GW Wazdakka Red
• slightly drybrush with GW Evil Sunz Scarlet
• glaze with GW Bloodletter
• highlight with GW Wild Rider Red

If this recipe seems slightly familiar to you, it’s because I recently used it on that one Retro-Bloodletter, who became – you guessed it – yet another test model for Angron

And since I was extremely happy with the skintone on the model, I knew I was good to go!

So here’s what Angron looked like after I had given his skin the same treatment:

Now I certainly don’t have a huge talent for clean highlighting, but the Bloodthirster model is really accommodating in this respect, with the texture of the skin lending itself perfectly to being highlighted! The interesting part was to try and create the same amount of detail and depth on the areas that I had sculpted, so I took some extra time to carefully highlight the ribbed texture of the cables on Angron’s head:

I had still been slightly hesitant about the whole highlighting business back when I painted the Bloodthirster, but things felt far more familiar and quite a bit easier the second time around, so I was able to end up with lots of depth and texture to the skin:

Normally the next step would have been to block in the various bits of leather and bone on the model, but I really wanted to see the head area painted, above all else, to see whether or not it would end up looking as cool as I hoped, so I continued by picking out some of the more metallic looking cables in silver and also painted the various details around Angron’s face and neck:

As you can see, the smaller cables and chains were painted silver. I then washed them with a mix of Army Painter Dark Tone and Vallejo Smokey Ink, for a suitably dark and oily look. The contrast provided by those metallic elements added a lot of depth to Angron’s tangled mane of cables and tendrils:

At the same time, the decision to leave the bigger cables looking identical to the skin colour was a very deliberate one, as I wanted to hint at the changed nature of Angron’s Butcher’s Nails: Where they used to be an implant introduced into the Primarch’s organism as a foreign element, his ascension to daemonhood has transformed the nails into a part of his very being, so that it’s impossible to ascertain where the nails end and his own body begins.

I also picked his teeth out in silver, giving him the same replacement iron teeth he wore in life:

And I also painted the mouth cavity and tongue: Aaron Dembsiki-Bowden describes Angron’s tongue as having the colour of spoiled meat, so I tried to match that description.

Now I really don’t want to sound too full of myself here, but it was at this precise point that I started to feel like I was really on to something

And this obviously provided all the motivation I needed to keep going! Because I was so happy with the way the paintjob was going, I allowed myself the small extravagance of painting the eyes next.

My normal approach would have been to go for a bright blue colour, as per my usual recipes. But I didn’t want Angron to read as just another standard part of my World Eaters, and I also felt I needed something giving the impression of his volcanic rage, so I ended up with a bright orange for his eyes:

As you can see, I also picked out the metallic studs on his forehead in bright bronze at this point.

And here’s a picture that is still one of my favourite impressions of my Angron conversion:

I have to be honest with you: I don’t think I could be any happier with the way the face and head have come out!

I also picked out Angron’s exposed spine in metallic colours, while I was at it:

I imagine it will be painted very similarly on the plastic Angron conversion I shared with you recently.

The next step was to paint lots of different details, such as the leather, bone bronze ornaments and wing membranes, and since I had already gone through all of this before, it was relatively quick work this time around. So a short while later, Angron’s body was mostly finished:

So far, so good, right? Here’s where things really got interesting, however, as the time had come to paint Angron’s armour. Now I wanted the armour plates to have the classic Khornate bronze/brass look while also serving as a callback to the armour worn by Forgeworld’s version of the Primarch. And I felt that my usual bronze recipe, apllied on virtually every single model of my World Eaters army, maybe wouldn’t be quite up to the task this time around.

You see, my normal recipe consists of only three steps, and it goes like this:

• basecoat using Vallejo Tinny Tin
• wash liberally with Army Painter Strong Tone
• drybrush with GW Dwarf Bronze.

This recipe works really well for armour trim or bronze details. But since I knew I wanted Angron’s armour to have a broader tonal range, with brighter highlights and deeper shadows, I tweaked my recipe and spliced in a few additional steps along the way, so it ended up looking more like this:

• basecoat with Vallejo Tinny Tin
• wash liberally with a mix of Army Painter Strong Tone and Vallejo Smokey Ink
• drybrush with a mix of Tinny Tin and GW Dwarf Bronze
• drybrush with pure GW Dwarf Bronze
• drybrush with a mix of Dwarf Bronze and GW Mithril Silver
• and a last, very light drybrush with pure GW Mithril Silver

And to my absolute delight, this recipe worked really well: Here’s Angron after this stage, with an increasing amount of armour plates in place:

Fortunately enough, almost all of the armour plates were detailed enough to allow for a very drybrush-focused approach like this! And what’s more, I think the bronze armour works really well with the red skin (and also makes the model instantly read as a follower of Khorne, which should really be par for the course)

As a fun aside, you’ll have noticed that the right hand holding the Astartes was kept off during the painting process, purely for the sake of practicality. However, this provoked fellow hobbyist Zywus to turn Angron into a proper meme:

Image Edit by Zywus

What can I say? I LOL’ed

This left me with only two parts of the model to paint before Angron himself was done. The right hand with the unlucky Ultramarine and the axe blade.

Regarding the poor smurf, I had never painted an Ultramarine before, so I basically had to play this by ear:

Aw, man, look at him, all prim and proper — alas, it was not to last…

After blocking out the main colours, I added quite a bit of weathering and battle damage to the poor guy, along with a copious amount of Tamiya Clear Red.

Here’s Angron with the finished Ultramarine:

Now the blue might be a tad on the dark side, but I think the guy still reads as an Ultramarine reasonably well, wouldn’t you agree?

As for the gore, I didn’t want to go overboard with this, but there was also no getting around the fact that the Ultramarine had been torn in half, so I did my best to make the effect suitably convincing without looking cartoony or too crass:

Now most of this is hidden from view by that belly plate, at least when seen from the front, but there’s certainly a bit of splatter going on there, if you know where to look…

I already told you that I wanted the Astartes to still look alive, if only barely, so I painted the eye lenses bright red:

I also really like how, depending on how you look at the model, Angron either seems to be focusing on the Ultramarine, probably preparing to devour him, or is already looking at his next opponent, merely gripping his fallen foe as an afterthought…

One last thing to paint, and that was the axe blade. After giving it a bit of thought, I realised that I had already seen a brilliant inspiration for this particular part a while back: ElDiablo’s/Midian’s Bloodthirster axe from when he painted his own Bloodthirster:

painted by ElDiablo

Now ElDiablo is a fantastic painter, but what I love especially about this axe is how he has used the somewhat organic design of the weapon to hint at a fusion of metal and daemonic flesh, and I definitely wanted to incorporate this effect into my own version as well!

And while I am not as neat a painter as ElDiablo, I think it worked reasonably well. Take a look:

I changed the colour of the organic “teeth” to match the rest of the bone present on Angron’s body, and there was also no way to avoid some blood on the blade — but all in all, I think Ive come up with a fairly balanced look that retains my favourite parts about ElDiablo’s axe!

And with that, apart from a few very minor touchups, Angron was finished. And I am not going to lie here: I am over the moon about this guy:

What can I say? I know I am hopelessly biased, but this guy certainly does look like Angron to me:

Do you want to hear something funny, though? We are not nearly done here! For one, there are those minor touchups that I already talked about. But even more importantly, a model of this caliber certainly deserves a suitably impressive base as well. And I’ve already let the Bolter & Chainsword crowd cajole me into doing something far more involved and opulent than I had originally planned on that account — I swear, those guys will be the death of me one day…

But that is a story for another time — for the next installment of this series, to be exact. Until then, I would love to hear your thoughts on the painted model! And, as always, thanks for looking and stay tuned for more!

Another look at Angron this week, as we finally put the big red daemon-monster on its own base. Don’t worry, it won’t be nearly as boring as you might think

“But wait! Wasn’t this supposed to be a triptych? Then why are we already on part four of this series?”, I hear you asking. Now I know how to count to three, of course — it’s just that the whole triptych idea refers to the three different forms of Angron I will be working on, while there can (and will) be many more posts than three. There, glad to have that out of the way

So anyway, here’s where we left off last time:

So far, so good, but Angron needed a proper base, indeed. And this is where things got a bit out of hand. Allow me to explain:

Possibly the biggest challenge was that I had already basically given it my all with the base for my Bloodthirster model, pulling out all the stops and ending up with something pretty ostentatious:

At the same time, it was perfectly clear that I would need to come up with something even better for Angron, because…well, it’s ANGRON we are talking about here, right?

So I spent a lot of time thinking about this, and then it suddenly hit me: What if I were to base Angron on the big aquila terrain piece from the Honoured Imperium boxed set?

I bought the kit a while ago – mostly for the Space Marine statue – so I still had the aquila piece. I also really liked the allegoric nature of the idea: What better way to base a Daemon-Primarch than on the shattered remains of the Imperium’s most iconic symbol?

The problem was the size of the aquila, because it was considerably larger than the oval base that came with the Bloodthirster kit. This would make gaming a whole lot more complicated, but that wasn’t really that much of a concern to me, mostly because I don’t exactly consider my Daemon-Primarch conversion a playing piece. However, the whole ensemble ended up looking and feeling a bit too clunky, so I wasn’t perfectly happy yet.

When I posted my idea on The Bolter & Chainsword, people were quick to suggest a modular display base resembling the ensembles released as part of Forgeworld’s Horus Heresy Character Series, such as the display base showing the duel between Garviel Loken and First Captain Abaddon:

Having the bigger part of the aquila as an optional addition that the actual gaming base could be slotted into? That actually sounded absolutely awesome! However, after taking a closer look at the aquila piece and trying to decide where to possibly make the cuts, I was just about prepared to discount the idea as unfeasible…

…and then my buddy Biohazard posted a few ideas about how to make it work after all, and down the rabbit hole I went, eagerly sawing through the thick plastic with my cheap-o hobby knife from the DIY superstore — at the cost of several blisters on my right hand, I might add. But here’s what I ended up with:

That’s the complete aquila, and yet you can already make out the line where I cut a smaller part from the ensemble. Now let’s take the two apart:

And as you can see, the entire left wing and the left head make up a piece that fits fairly neatly onto the stock oval base. Which gave me this basic shape for Angron’s base:

Not bad, not bad at all! Especially since the part still clearly read as a symbol of the Imperium of Man, even though the biggest part of the aquila was actually missing. The part I had cut out also seemed to fit the base almost perfectly, right?

But let’s take a look at another perspective:

Here you can see the huge hole left underneath the (hollow) aquila piece that I needed to fill up with something — and whatever that something would be, it was clear that I would need to pay attention to make sure both parts of the aquila would still line up correctly afterwards.

Even so, I was still energised by this small success. I also made a quick and dirty Photoshop mockup to get an idea about how Angron would fit on the finished base:

The basic idea was to have him charging towards the centre of the aquila — and, by extension, whatever would be added to the other side of the base.

But first, I needed to fill in those huge holes! Thankfully, my good friend Annie provided me with some Milliput for the task, and so when we met for a little hobby session recently, she kept painting away at her crazy-awesome pirate-themed Blood Bowl team (to be featured here on the blog in a future post, scout’s honour!), while I plugged all the holes in the base using Milliput, and added some structure by pressing some cork into the putty after it had begun to dry, stamping a rocky texture onto the surface.

As you can see in the above pictures, some additional detail work also took place during this step. My usual mix of cork, slate and sand was added to the empty parts of the base and sealed with PVA glue and plastic glue. The effect was also used to blend the seams between the different areas and materials together. I also added some skulls to the front of the base, both to make the area look more interesting and also because, well, Khorne! (DUH!). Two spiky poles were used to add even more of a chaos feel to the base.

Possibly the longest time was spent on the missing half of that poor Ultramarine officer clutched by Angron: I used a pair of plastic Mk IV legs and made quite a few tweaks to them to ensure that their position on the base seemed suitably natural and organic:

And with that, the basic setup of the base was more or less complete:

So all that was left before I could break out the paints was a final round of touchups and additional texture. Augustus b’Raass very helpfully suggested applying some Liquid GS to the stony parts of the aquila, in order to create a slightly more believably texture and make the whole thig look less like smooth plastic, so that’s what I did:

And I used some regular GS to tidy up all the rough parts of the Marine legs, filling gaps in the legs, adding flex fitting and a profile to the sole of the right foot and scultping all the gribbly bitz pouring out of the body…ewww!

And with those final details out of the way, Angron’s base was finally ready for painting!

So everything was covered with a nice and even Coat of Chaos Black spray,  which once again did wonders for pulling all of the different elements together:

Now at this point I spent a fair bit of time detailing the other, bigger side of the eventual display base, but I’ll be focusing on that part in a dedicated post. From a purely logical standpoint, it would surely have made much more sense to paint both parts of the base at the same time before adding Angron to the smaller part of the base, but seeing how this whole project had already expanded into something far more involved than I had usually planned, I knew I needed a milestone achievement somewhere in there and decided to focus on finishing Angron his “gaming base” first.

So for now, you’ll have to content yourselves with a teaser picture of the two parts of the aquila in all its basecoated glory:

I added a slightly more controlled spray of Army Painter Uniform Grey on top of the Chaos Black. Now at first glance it might seem as though we were back to square one (the unpainted plastic), but upon closer examination, the grey works really well with the Liquid GS-based texture to create a slightly sandy, stony look on the aquila parts. There’s also a slight shading effect on the areas that aren’t part of the shattered aquila, as a consequence of focusing the grey spray on the actual stone.

So from here on out, I basically used my usual recipe of painting the earth dark grey, then washing and drybrushing the entire thing to bring out lots of texture. I also painted the extra bits, such as the skulls, spiky poles and the legs of the fallen Ultramarine, of course. Here’s what it looked like after this step:

The legs also received some serious weathering to tie them together with the Astartes’ upper half: Charadon Granite was carefully sponged on with a bit of blister sponge, and metal scratches were created with a detail brush and some Leadbelcher. The best part about this kind of weathering is that you can keep repeating the various steps to achieve a more and more battered look, until you’re happy.

And then, finally, the blood came out

I will say that I am probably really, really careful with adding blood effects, especially for a World Eaters player: There’s almost no other effect that is so easy to overdo and that can ruin a model so thoroughly: With too much blood, every model ends up looking cartoony and overly-edgy in a “bad 90s’ video game” kind of way. Only very few models warrant massive amounts of blood, so when in doubt, less is more.

With that in mind, I thought about where the blood on the base would probably come from (hint: the Ultramarine’s maimed remains) and how the blood would behave, given the slightly angled surface. I also remembered that, according to the lore, Astartes blood starts to clot super-fast, so that was yet another reason to go easy on the gore. Then again, there was no getting around the fact that the guy had been torn in half. So with all these factors in mind, here’s the solution that I came up with:

Ultimately, I tried to use as much blood as was necessary and as little as I could get away with. I also mixed a tiny drop of black into the Tamiya Clear Red to create the centre of the various pools of blood, than added pure Clear Red on top and around the darker areas in order to add some depth and tonal variety to the puddles.

One part where I tried to achieve a fairly realistic look was the blood running along the crevices in the stone, with the aquila statue’s features basically acting like small drain channels:

I also think I’ve done a fairly good job of blending in my Milliput additions with the rest of the base:

Granted, the finish could probably have been even smoother, but let’s not forget that it all needed to line up with the other half of the base!

And finally, Auggie’s suggestion about creating extra stone texture with a thin layer of Liquid GS turned out to be golden, as the aquila really looks like it’s made of stone, rather than plastic, now

So all in all, I was really happy with the finished gaming base:

No more excuses, it was time for the Lord of the XII Legion to put his foot on the ground!

Now actually gluing Angron to the base was actually an exercise in frustration, seeing how the point of attachment between the model and its base was so small. And it definitely took a lot of super glue and swearing. But I persevered. And I triumphed. And thus I give you…

Angron, The Red Angel, Daemon-Primarch of the World Eaters and the Blod God’s Favoured Son

Now here’s a closer look at the base:

As you can see, I have added two more “special effects”: One is an additional spot of blood directly below the Ultramarine’s torso (for obvious reasons). The other effect is something I had never tried before, and I am rather happy with the outcome: I wanted the stone in the direct vincinity of Angron’s right foot (and the flames below it) to look as though it were heating up due to the Primarch’s daemonic presence. The effect was achieved by carefully building up several layers of Bloodletter glaze:

And with the model and base now combined, our brave little smurf finally gets reunited with his lower half. Well, after a fashion, at least…

I know I am probably boring you to tears by saying this, but I am still so incredibly happy with Angron’s head and face…

Here’s a comparison shot showing Angron next to my “regular” Bloodthirster model:

Both models’ skin tones actually differ far more in real life than is obvious from looking at the picture. However, I do think I’ve done a pretty good job of surpassing the base on the Bloodthirster and of making both models look pretty different, in spite of being built from the same stock model.

And here’s a hint of things to come…

For now, this has been an incredible ride! I think Angron is easily one of my best models – if not the best model – so far, and while this has project has certainly veered outside of my comfort zone more than once, it has been a blast! Thank you so much to everyone who provided ideas, suggestions and critical feedback! Thanks to those who provided bitz and materials for this project! And thanks to thosw responsible for my main inspirations, Reg’s fabulous, Bloodthirster-based Angron conversion, Aaron Dembski-Bowden’s hugely evocative descriptions of Daemon-Primarch Angron — and, of course, Alex Boyd’s illustration that probably served as the most important reference piece!

Speaking of which, here’s a little something that I made using Photoshop and Pixlr, to celebrate the occasion:

“It turned its eyes to us. The skeletal landscape of its face turned with a slowness I could only describe as bestial, but it most definitely saw us. The coal pits of its eyes steamed as blood bubbled and boiled in the thing’s swollen tear ducts. Slowly – still so very slowly – its jaws opened to reveal a quivering tongue the colour of spoiled meat, with pinkish saliva roping and stretching between rows of sharkish teeth.“

Aaron Dembski-Bowden, The Emperor’s Gift

And here’s Alex Boyd’s illustration again:

illustration by Alex Boyd

While my Angron is far from a perfect match (Reg and Rumplemaster score far higher marks on that account!), I do believe he looks like a plausible interpretation of the same character, wouldn’t you agree?

Anyway, I am super-proud of this guy! One down, two versions to go Until then, however, I would love to hear any feedback you might have! And, as always, thanks for looking and stay tuned for more!

Hey everyone,

I think I’ll be turning “State of the Hunt” into a semi-regular feature to show you smaller stuff I am currently working on and to discuss various subjects that maybe wouldn’t warrant a post of their own but are still important to me. So today let’s look at a collection of Khornate Miscellany:

I. A Champion Reborn…

What else could be the first item of interest for today, if not the release of the new plastic version of Khârn the Betrayer? There have been rumours about new versions of the iconic Chaos characters for a rather long time now, and now here’s Khârn, hopefully ushering in a slew of releases (one can always dream…):

Now before we take a look at the new model, allow me to mention that I have written at lenght about Khârn and his various incarnations in the art, the lore and in model form, so you may consider the following thoughts a late addendum to the respective post from 2014.

So as I’ve said in the aforementioned post, I really consider the original Khârn the Betrayer a model for the ages (but then that’s Jes Goodwin for you). I would also argue that the old model has managed to age far more gracefully than most special characters from 2nd edition. For instance, while Abaddon just looks rather puny next to the much bigger modern models in Terminator armour, Khârn still seems imposing, even twenty+ years later. He’s also a thoroughly iconic piece, debuting (or at least refining) so many of the visual elements that define the look of the World Eaters and the Khorne Berzerkers in particular to this day: the chains, the skull motifs, the bare arm. And, of course, the iconic crested helmet.

Now updating such an iconic model is not without its dangers, and when a new plastic version of Eldrad Ulthran was recently released, I felt it lacked the original model’s iconic quality. So what about Khârn then?

When we look at both versions side by side, I think the one thing we can all agree on is that the new version still definitely reads as Khârn — and that alone is no small feat! In my opinion, the best decision of the new model was to basically stick to the classic design of the helmet and only make very minor tweaks to it. Back when I converted my own true scale version of Khârn, I quickly found out that no model will look like Khârn unless that particular helmet design enters the equation, and by the same token, Khârn’s helmet is the one helmet that isn’t easy to kitbash by using available bits. So basically leaving the helmet alone was a fantastic – and ultimately crucial – design decision, in my opinion!

All of the other classic elements are there as well: The bare right arm (after Forgeworld’s Khârn version switched the axe to the other arm, it’s interesting to see how GW chose to stick with the layout of the 90s version), the chains wrapped around it, the various skull motifs adorning the armour, and countless other little touches. All of this sells the model as Khârn without a doubt!

Of course things only really get interesting when one considers the parts that have been changed when compared to the original model: First of all, Khârn seems to have bulked up quite a bit, to account for about two decades of scale creep. And he wears it really well, as a look at some additional angles reveals:

Another really cool part is how GW has managed to bring the armour in line with the very baroque look of the Dark Vengeance Chosen or the plastic Raptors/Warp Talons without resorting to adding any wanton mutations: I think this basically works as the perfect template for new chaos models: Give us more jagged and baroque looking armour that clearly differs from the smooth contours of loyalist Astartes armour, but focus the gribbly stuff on optional bits and upgrades. That way, everyone would be happy, right?

Anyway, the redesign achieves the trick of making the new Khârn look right at home next to both vintage and modern chaos models, which is great, and arguably my favourite part about the model!

Then there’s the pose, of course: Where Khârn’s pose used to be very static (and powerful), he is now running forward like mad — which, admittedly, is a pretty great fit for the character. Now to be perfectly honest with you, I wouldn’t have minded a static pose on the new Khârn, but then most people seem to have taken issue with it, and the new running pose also creates a nice resemblance with Forgeworld’s Khârn model, albeit mirrored:

Of course the problem with highly dynamic running poses is that the model in question might end up looking as though it were tripping over its own feet, and the new Khârn is getting a bit of flak over possibly tripping over those dangling skulls — but seriously, I am not really seeing it. In my opinion, the running pose is more believable than the slightly awkward pose of Forgeworld’s version. And if you take a look at the 360 degrees view of the new model over at the GW website, there’s a depth and three-dimensionality to the model now that is hard not to admire.

So do I love everything about the model? No, I do have my gripes, of course. So let’s take a look at the bad parts:

Those weighed down chains dangling from Khârn’s left wrist are easily my least favourite part of the model: They just seem too clunky and kill the flow of the model. I think I would have gone with something a bit more subtle, and my first tweak to the model would be to take off those chains or pare them back a bit.

It also seems to me that the ripped muscles on Khârn’s bare arm look slightly too angular and sculptural, although that could always come down to the paintjob. I will say, however, that the pose is maybe slightly too stylised for its own good, with Khârn looking more like the statue of a running guy that an actual running guy, if that makes any sense.

And my third gripe with the model is the design of Gorechild, Khârn’s axe:

Considered on its own, it’s a very cool and vicious looking Khornate axe — and look, they’ve even redesigned the teeth to more closely resemble the Mica-Dragon teeth from the lore. So the design is pretty cool, but by changing it, the entire sense of visual continuity goes out of the window. Because one thing I have always loved is that, regardless of whether you were looking at Forgeworld’s Angron, Forgeworld’s 30k Khârn or the 40k Khârn model, they were all definitely wielding the same axe, and that sense of continuity is now lost. Now you could argue that the axe had probably undergone some warping and mutation over the 10,000 years of the Long War, but after so much work on the sculptor’s part has gone into ensuring that the axe looks exactly the same on all three models, this change almost seems like an oversight now, and while the axe itself looks cool enough, that really, really bothers me (because I’m an obsessive weirdo like that ).

I have one very minor gripe: The backpack seems strangely narrow to me, but I’ll reserve judgement until I have seen the model firsthand.

Interestingly enough, a closer look at the sprue reveals that the model might actually be pretty conversion-friendly:

For one, it should be pretty easy to return the new model to a more static standing pose, should you want to: Just some careful cutting and maybe a set of DV Chosen legs, and Bob’s your uncle! Those bothersome chains should be easy enough to leave off or tweak as well, seeing how they come as a separate part. And I guess one could even replace Gorechild’s blade, if one were that way inclined.
The fact that the plasma pistol arm, axe and backpack could easily be used as conversion bits is a definite plus as well!

So, what’s the final verdict?

All in all, I am pretty happy with the new Khârn! Where the plastic version of Eldrad failed to capture the coolness and iconic nature of the original model, it feels like Khârn is definitely a step into the right direction! While I do have a couple of minor complaints about the model, the new version also brings enough to the table to be a strong model in its own right. Maybe it’s not quite as timeless a classic as the original Khârn, but that also seems impossible to ascertain right now, especially given the fact that I’ve grown up with the original 2nd edition model. Anyway, I like this guy! Where Eldrad was a bit of a disappointment, Khârn is – at the very least – a modest success.

At the same time,  I still think my custom, true scale Khârn from 2014 manages to hold up:

At the same time, I can pretty much guarantee that I’ll also be purchasing the new version: I think it’s a pretty awesome new interpretation of an iconic character, and the parts I don’t like about the model should be easy enough to tweak. I’ll keep you posted

II. Travelers from afar…

My hobby life has been massively improved by other people’s generosity for a rather long time now, and I’ve been fortunate enough to receive two more incredible additions for my collection from fellow hobbyists recently.

First came BrotherJim, who recently completed a rather stunning Nurglite CSM force as part of the ETL V event: I provided some feedback to him, and he actually built me a model and sent it over to me by way of thanks — how awesome is that? Now the really cool thing about BrotherJim’s conversions is how much they are inspired by Adrian Smith’s rather iconic art from the 3.5 Codex Chaos Space Marines, and how BrotherJim is pretty much the first person to have managed to give his models the same, massive, lumbering look. This leads to a very distinctive style, and I was really happy the day one of his creations arrived allll the way from Australia to bolster the forces of Khorne’s Eternal Hunt:

Conversion by BrotherJim

Note the amount of gear and the imposing backpack, both trademarks of BrotherJim’s style. Now I was really happy with the model, but wanted to make one small alteration – a different head – mostly because that particular berzerker head already appears on more than one model in my army, and I felt this guy deserved something more original. So I spliced together a suitably ornate helmet, and here’s the new Huntmaster soon to be part of the 4th assault company:

Model converted by BrotherJim

Model converted by BrotherJim

Model converted by BrotherJim

Model converted by BrotherJim

Model converted by BrotherJim

Just get a load of the amount of weapons on this guy!

Anyway, thanks again to BrotherJim for this amazing gift! And make sure to check out his excellent work on a growing chaos collection here.

But wait, there’s more: When I came home yesterday, the cutest little package had arrived from the UK. Inside I found this wonderfully sinister and bloodied champion of the War God built and painted by none other than spectacularly talented Terrain-Overlord extraordinaire Neil101 of Opus Maius’ fame:

Model built and painted by Neil101

Model built and painted by Neil101

Model built and painted by Neil101

Now I was already aware that Neil had built this model for me a while ago, but the fact that he also chose to paint it in his trademark style was a wonderful surprise indeed! The result is something far more painterly and visceral than anything I could have come up with, and I am really in love with this guy right now. And that wasn’t all, because accompanying the Khornate champion came a wonderfully macabre “Bucket o’ Blood” (followers of Khorne never leave home without it!):

Model built and painted by Neil101

As is usually the case with Neil’s work, there’s a wonderfully macabre and demented nature to the whole affair, calling to mind both the infamous Yggdrassilliumme as well as the kind of characters you would see in the golden days of Realm of Chaos. And while I am already hard at work figuring out a suitable angle for this guy as a part of the Velsen Sector (he’ll be a member of the so-called “Duelists”, an insidious Khornate lodge operating in the sector), Neil was also kind enough to provide his own little vignette of background:

Models built and painted by Neil101

Coal black eyes kindled the embers of hate, as the headsman daubed his breastplate with the aged ichor of his enemies. His skull face plate chafed at the nape of his neck, the fitting too tight for comfort.

So much he had given, but the Blood God’s bucket had a hole. Never enough, always more.

The unsaturated hunger for power, for glory, always gnawed at his soul. Like the itch of his helm, the one he couldn’t scratch…reminding him that his work was never done. His bucket never full.

Anyway, thanks to Neil for the fantastic model! Job’s a good ‘un, mate!

III. Twenty years of bloodshed…

I myself have not been idle either, even though I felt I needed something small and fun to unwind after my recent, rather massive Daemon-Primarch-related shenanigans…

But the right opportunity did present itself, fortunately enough! Back when I showed you this OOP mid-90s Bloodletter…

…fellow hobbyist AMaximus offered to send over some old metal Bloodletters of his own. Now the models he offered me were a slightly never incarnation, released around the turn of the century (teehee), between the mid-90s design you see above and the modern plastic Bloodletters. I had never been a huge fan of those particular models, feeling they didn’t really bring anything new to the table, but there’s always time for a little fun, so Andrew and I worked out a small bitz swap, and I got my hands on another Bloodletter version.

My eye was instantly drawn to one of the models that was missing his two-handed axe, and I decided to paint him right away and add a small tweak or two while I was at it. So here’s the mostly finished model (still missing its base):

Like I said, the standard armament for this model would have been a two-handed axe, but I decided to replace it with one of the modern plastic Hellblades (once again, I might add). And I actually think the model is improved by the change! I also had to replace the left hand, and a severed head seemed like a logical choice. It has been pointed out to me – and correctly so – that the head seems to be the victim of some wonky physics, but I think we can just consider this a match for the stock model’s inherent clunkiness and move on, eh?

Seriously, though, this guy has really grown on me! This particular incarnation of the Bloodletters turned out to be a bit of an evolutionary dead end, and from a time of occasionally strange and slightly uneven releases on GW’s part, no less, but I think the model works pretty well with my established daemon recipe in place

And while I was at it, I also painted one of the modern plastic Bloodletters in the exact same way:

And, once again, I am pretty happy with the result — take note that this model still makes used of the slightly tweaked skin recipe taken from Duncan Rhodes’ Bloodthirster tutorial!

Ultimately, the guy above will be joined by a full unit of Bloodletters. Until then, I have a nice little comparison of Bloodletter models from the last twenty years:

I should probably paint one of the spindly, serpentine first edition Bloodletters to complete the set, but I really don’t like that particular version of the daemon, so this is not really a priority project at the moment. If someone wants to get rid of an old Bloodletter, though, I am always open to suggestions…

On a related note, AMaximus was also awesome enough to include a pretty old vintage Bloodthirster head in his bitz drop:

Now what am I going to do with this lovely face…?

IV. Out of the woods, at last…

Now this last subject has nothing whatsoever to do with cutting up little plastic men, but I am still very happy to inform you guys that my time as an unemployed slacker is finally at an end: Starting October, I will finally have gainful employment once more! Yeehaw!

Now it’ll only be for a limited amount of time so far, but it sure feels good to be back in business! And while this could mean less hobby time in the immediate future, my sigh of relief when I learned the news could still have extinguished a raging bonfire. Work for the Work god!

So anyway, so much for this latest news roundup. It goes without saying that I would love to hear any feedback you might have! And, as always, thanks for looking and stay tuned for more!