Plastic for the Plastic Throne! Pt. 2

Another round of World Eaters conversions for today, although I’ll be focusing on the actual new berzerker kit a bit more. At the same time, I also have some converted characters to round out the post. We’ll be getting to that in a minute!

For the sake of completeness, let me point out that I actually treated myself to the limited edition of the World Eaters Codex, during the ridiculously short period of time when it was up for grabs:

I cannot (and will not) really say anything much about the rules, mostly because those concerns are mainly behind me these days. As for the flavour text and production values, I’d say it’s a rather nice little book: Where the army background is concerned, it offers a pleasant enough collection of texts, containing a nice, concise (and newly written!) writeup of the World Eaters entire legion history so far, plus enough little vignettes and warband descriptions to serve as inspiration and food for thought — even if Gladiator Cadre 331 basically cribs half of the backstory of Khorne’s Eternal Hunt, if you ask me… 😉

I said I wasn’t going to talk about rules, but one thing that stuck out to me is how, in its background text, the book actually goes out of its way to allow for all kinds of variety in the shape and form of World Eaters warbands, describing warbands holding on to a concept of personal honour, or those strongly based on vehicle use or on heavy weapons, when the actual rules present in the book only really allow for one type of army: One that does allows for nothing but close quarters combat. I certainly hope that a future wave of releases may yet round out the army a bit more, or at least open the way towards some of the interesting options that already appear in the fluff.

But I am honestly rather happy with the way “my” legion gets presented in the flavour text: There’s enough craziness and bloodshed, yes, but there’s also no small amount of hints at Angron’s and the legion’s tragic backstory. Oh, and I also really LOVE the cover artwork, especially since it features all kinds of interesting characters. Not something we sell too often these days, when a lot of GW’s artwork is strongly geared towards showing off only those characters and units that have actual kits, and precious few of the crazy, intricate and inspirational tableaux of yore.

And seeing how I had already gone all-in on the Codex, I also made sure to pick up the World Eaters collector’s coin during a recent visit to my local Warhammer store:

An indulgence, certainly, just like the limited edition codex. But on the other hand, I have been playing, building and painting World Eaters for almost thirty years at this point, so it would have felt even more stupid NOT to add these items to my collection… 😉

So, anyway, on to the actual models: Here’s a look at the Khorne Berzerkers I have been building using the new berzerker kit:

I might have to write up my thoughts on the new kit(s) in a more detailed shape and form at some point, because there’s really a lot to talk about. For now, suffice it to say that I like the new Khorne Berzerkers kit a great deal, especially the many shout outs to the earlier plastic kits AND the metal miniatures that came before. At the same time, the look of these models has been thoroughly modernised and nicely refined.

I do have some minor quibbles with the kit: For one, while it is more versatile than many of GW’s recent kits, it is maybe not quite as versatile as it seems at first: The bodies only ever really go together in one specific way, for instance, although that is not such a big deal, given the fact that you actually get ten unique bodies in the kit. A more immediate problem is the fact that you get two different types of gloves on the hands – standard CSM gauntlet and a modernised version of the classic berzerker leather gloves (looking far less clownish this time around) – and while I love the inclusion of the latter, this also means that you cannot simply combine any two arms from the kit without the result ending up looking a bit dodgy.

But anyway, I am still feeling my way around the kit, which is why the first couple of models have been mostly built “by the book”, so to speak:

Sure, I have subtly tweaked a pose here and there, but so far, the models are still fairly cookie cutter, which is really the biggest problem right now, as I still want them to feel like unique characters. So I will yet have to make a few tweaks and adjustment, find the perfect heads and helmets for these,… all in an effort to make them more unique. But I think I’ll be getting there in the end.

Then there’s this guy that I keep coming back to:

The original plan was to build a model stepping forward in a challenging way and bellowing out a challenge. I really wanted to use one of the shouting, bare heads for this, but as it turns out, they are not entirely unproblematic: Due to the way they are built, they can end up looking a bit strange when used on actual models (the open mouths resulting in a bit of an elongated neck). So I’ve fallen back on using a rebreather head for now, but of course this means you lose some of the intended viciousness.

One smaller breakthrough was to actually ditch the stock Berzerker backpack and swap in an Mk. III backpack: I think its more concentrated bulk works a lot better with the outline and mass of the model. But in any case, expect the pose & bitz on this chap to still change quite a bit before we are done 😉

The one case where I have already committed to a slightly more involved conversion is the squad’s vexilla/icon bearer:

Look, I am old skool to the bone: Backpack mounted banners and trophies are strictly for champions in my book. The icon bearer needs to be lugging around an actual icon: I love the idea that even the World Eaters will take it upon themselves to carry banners and icons into battle, all in an attempt to bring more glory to Khorne — they absolutely need to look suitably vicious, of course, so they could believably be used as weapons in their own right, should push come to shove.

I also like it when every squad has their own, original icon, so I am working towards that goal as well.

The icon bit itself came from the 1st edition Age of Sigmar Blood Reavers. I really liked its vicious, barbed look, and it has a lot of skulls, which is always a plus. I had to shave off the – slightly too reedy – Blood Reaver arm holding it. That area was covered up with yet more skulls, and a Wrathmonger arm was swapped in for its added mass:

So that’s how far I have come with the new berzerker kit so far. On a more general note, this should not come as a surprise, but the kit, and the models resulting from it, work very well alongside the more recent chaos kits, like the vanilla Chaos Space Marines. Here’s a quick side-by-side comparison with two berzerkers, one made completely from the new kit, while the other one almost exclusively uses Vanilla CSM and Blood Warrior parts:

Granted, the new berzerkers may be slightly taller (and wider!), but not too noticeably so. By the same token, all of the bitz can also be safely mixed into other conversions: Here’s a guy I just quickly tacked together from leftovers, using bitz from the berzerkers, vanilla CSM and Blood Warriors:

Works pretty well, doesn’t it? Alas, the poor chap has already been torn apart again, in an attempt to create an extra World Eater wielding a two-handed eviscerator for one of the old squads. Another kitbash made purely from leftovers, so to speak. Take a look:

The body is one of my usual mixes of vanilla CSM legs and a Blood Warrior torso. The arms are those of an AoS Slaughterpriest of Khorne (actually the very same model I used to build my gladiatorial version of Angron). I think the leftover weapon works fairly well as an eviscerator. The arms are maybe a bit too long, but I think we can just chalk that up to mutations 😉

Beyond that, there’s a backpack from the Dark Vengeance Chosen, a head from the vanilla CSM kit, a Blood Warrior shoulder pad on the left arm and an old FW World Eaters shoulder pad on the right.

My original idea for the axeman was to use a set of legs from the – supremely ungainly – Wrathmongers/Skullcrushers kit, but while the pose worked really well, the proportions were completely off, making the model look almost twice as tall as its intended squadmates. But I wasn’t quite done with those Wrathmonger legs yet, so I tried using them to build some kind of Raptor champion:

(Yes, I realise that Raptors are no longer an official part of the army — but frankly, who cares?)

The legs arguably work much better here. The scale problem is still there, but you can explain it away with the model just landing, so it almost, kinda works…

Before I tune out for today, I promised you some converted characters, right? So here goes: Two old acquaintances:

First up, some long time readers may remember the Terminator Lord wielding twin lightning claws that I built a long time ago, then kept tweaking for years:

I always wanted the model to be in something resembling a very classic “Wolverine” pose (you can almost hear those claws going “SNIKT!”, am I right?), and I was still pretty happy with that part of the model. so I really wanted to salvage this guy for the latest incarnation of my World Eaters. However, the slightly dodgy old Termie Lord legs no longer worked all that well, in my opinion. Well, some problems call for drastic measures. So here’s the reborn version of this particular model:

Yes, I tore apart two models to make a tweaked, new one — completely normal, nothing to see here. In my defense, the new legs (originally from Forge World’s Lord Zhufor model) work much better, wouldn’t you agree? And while this change may seem supremely wasteful, I would argue that both models had just been sitting there unused and unpainted for years, so some bold action was needed!

Yet another rebreather head from the Khorne Berzerkers is also doing a great job here — those heads are, in fact, one of the high points of the kit for me.

Funnily enough, while comparing the model to one of the new Khorne Berzerkers, I realised that the new berzerker torso pieces are actually wider than the older Terminator chest pieces! So I added those small pieces of swinging chain links, not only to support the model’s sense of dynamism, but also in order to visually stretch the torso — it’s a cheap trick, admittedly, but I think it works well enough.

And here’s one last WIP model for today: A long time ago I painstakingly created this model here. Huntmasker Alrik Skarn, Captain Lorimar’s second-in-command:

Back in the day, the model was inspired by a fantastic conversion on a – now defunct?1 – hobby blog called “Prophet Miniatures”. Come to think of it, the model must actually have been built about ten years ago, give or take, and it seemed like such a towering achievement back then. But I didn’t get around to painting Skarn, as is so often the case for me, and then the model’s time kinda came and went: I did make a couple of attempts to tweak him and bring him back in line with the rest of the army, adding different helmets and swapping in new chainswords, but for some reason, the magic spark had just gone out of the model. I still kept thinking of a way way to re-create or update the character, though.

This character was also on my mind when I started to work with the new CSM kits, back in 2019/2020, but I have held off on building a new version of Skarn until now. Well, no longer! Here’s what I have so far:

To be fair, this is still a fairly early build, but having danced around this particular project for years at this point, I finally had this “Eureka!” moment, and I already like him quite a bit! What do you guys think?

And with that, today’s kitbashing extravaganza concludes. Once again, I would love to hear any thoughts and suggestions you might have. And, as always, thanks for looking and stay tuned for more!

Plastic for the Plastic Throne! Pt. 1

…Okay, let’s finally get down to brass tacks, so to speak: Time to show you some of the kitbashes I have been working on recently. Be ye warned, though: There be lots of unpainted plastic and crude WIPs ahead 😉

Now when the World Eaters release was first teased by GW, I was relieved to see that all of my most recent, painted World Eaters stuff – from back in 2019/2020 – would probably still make the cut when placed next to the new models. It’s good to know that “The Hateful Eight” have not been made obsolete by the new release!

But of course my first action was to go through the as-of-yet-unpainted models and see whether I might be able to tweak and improve them a bit. To be perfectly honest, not only did I do this to bring them up to the level of the new models, but also as a substitute for actually getting to work on the new bitz, as I was still waiting for my first box of new Khorne Berzerkers to be delivered at this point 😉

First up on the table were these three gentlemen:

All of these have been tweaked a bit, but without using any of the new parts. This was really mostly about bringing the existing conversions up to snuff and about straightening out any remaining kinks and areas I didn’t like. Let’s take this model, for instance:

I must have tweaked and re-tweaked this particular kitbash half a dozen times by now, but now I am finally happy with the conversion: The model combines the head, torso, upper thighs (and half of a weapon arm) of an AoS Blood Warrior with the lower legs from the plastic Mk. III Marines. I threw in shoulder pads from the vanilla Chaos Space Marines and the old FW World Eaters conversion kit. What really sells the conversion, in my opinion, is the left arm (from the Age of Sigmar first edition starter box Blood Reavers): I knew I needed at least one berzerker to carry some freshly taken heads, and now this noble task falls to this particular gentleman.

Next up is a model I was already very happy with back in 2020:

The original plan here was to build a World Eater wearing massive, archaic & spiky Mk. III armour, and the plastic Plague Marines presented me with the perfect body for that look. The shoulder pads and left arm came from the vanilla CSM; while the right hand gripping an axe came from the Blood Warriors included in the old AoS starter box. The one tweak I chose to make was to exchange the somewhat dodgy FW Red Butcher axe the model had before…

…for the Chaos Space Marine chainsword you can see above. I’m not quite sure yet whether I want to keep this version — we’ll see.

The other fun thing I did for this model was to convert a helmet for it: I found myself wondering what a suitable helmet for this massive set of warplate might look like, and then inspiration struck. Here’s what I came up with:

The blunt, brutish helmet from an easy-to-build plastic Plague Marine made for an almost perfect design, with an ancient, Mk. II-ish look, and the bladed crest added character to the helmet, making it suitably vicious and gladiatorial for a World Eater. And while I will definitely keep the bare head for the model (it’s from the plastic Custodians, but I think it just works so well), I am now thinking about maybe keeping the head exchangeable — my original plan was to merely put the helmet on the model’s belt, but it actually seems much too cool for that. So maybe I will just keep both heads optional, so I can swap between them whenever I feel like it 😉

Finally, there’s this gent here:

Another 2020 conversion, this one. This is what he looked like before I worked on him:

Granted, the model seems cool enough in that photo, but the proportions were really all over the place, with a right leg that was MUCH too long. The model seemed cool at first glance but became dodgier and dodgier the longer I looked at it. So the right leg was shortened, leading to a slightly different pose. The infuriating thing is that it’s now much harder to find the right angle to show off how the model has been improved, as the legionary is aggressively thrusting forward his chest. It works really well when seen firsthand but is a lot of trouble to photograph right…

The conversion was, once again, based on one of the Blood Warriors from the AoS 1st edition starter box, and I think the armour works really well for a World Eater, looking much more archaic and gladiatorial than standard Astartes warplate. In this case, I didn’t replace either of the shoulder pads, because I really wanted to embrace the gladiatorial look.

The one thing I added to bring the model more into the 40k universe was to add some GS Butcher’s Nails to its head:

Granted, compared to the new stock heads, these nails seem pretty crude, but I think the model still works pretty well overall. The model still needs a bit of cleanup and gap-filling, but I think the look I want for the character is clearly there now.

Then there’s this converted Khorne Berzerker champion, built around some parts from the – somewhat problematic – Wrathmongers/Skullreapers. It remains a slightly dodgy conversion, but I am still fond of the sense of brutality it exudes. I’ve added a Blood Warrior shoulder pad to the left arm which definitely makes a big difference, even though it’s such a small detail.

And I also built one additional model, mostly by combining CSM and Blood Warrior parts in the already well established way. However, this model was mostly conceived as a vehicle, so to speak, for one particular bit: Its head:

This particular head was a gift from fellow hobbyist Drone21c — and from all the way back in 2015, if you can believe it! I’ve had this part in my bitzbox for so many years that it was finally time to build a model around it. The helmet itself was converted by adding berzerker “bunny ears” to an old Chaos Warrior helmet, I believe, with some customisation and GS cabling making the design look even more original. The body, meanwhile, was my usual combination of CSM and Blood Warrior parts, with arms from the CSM Raptors.

My idea for this character was a legionary who takes a moment to aim a bolt pistol shot at the enemy while advancing, and I think the pose sells that idea well enough:

The next two models were also originally built in 2020, but in these cases, I actually tweaked them by using some parts from the new berzerker kit:

The guy on the left, with his Corpse Grinder Cult circular saw (a bitz donation from my buddy Augustus b’Raass, by the way) originally used a rebreather head from some Primaris kit or other:

Nice enough in its way, but I think you’ll agree with me that the model has really been transformed simply by giving it a “proper” new World Eaters head:

There’s an added element of viciousness to the model that was really missing before. And there’s something subtly feral about those fanged rebreathers that I just love. This is definitely a case where a single bit has managed to enhance an entire model!

The second model was already really close in concept to the new Khorne Berzerkers, albeit converted from CSM and Blood Warrior parts:

I only really swapped in a different sword arm, as it turned out one of the Berzerker chainsword arms worked a bit better than the vanilla CSM arm I had originally used — although this also has the cool side-effect of leaving the model with one of the rather vicious, hacksaw-like Berzerker chainswords now:

Which invariably leads us to the models that were built using only (or mostly) the new Khorne Berzerker bits — but I’ll be saving those for the next update. Before we wind up this post, let me show you one last fun thing, though:

While I am very much in love with the new Khorne Berzerker kit (more thoughts on that will follow in a future update), I have a few small, almost microscopic, gripes with it. For one, I think it’s a bit of a shame that the new kit doesn’t feature a modern interpretation of the “Arx Death Helm”, as it was called in the 3rd edition Codex:

The helmet design wasn’t only a throwaway line in the Codex, however — it actually existed in model form: You might remember the berzerker helmet with a skull-shaped faceplate, as seen on this older model here:

Granted, the design may seem a little hokey by modern standards, but I still think it was a bit of a shame for it not to receive an update. Which is when I came across the model for something called an “Aspiring Deathbringer” in my bitzbox. I picked it up when I bought the one-off game “Gorechosen” at a very good price a couple of years ago:

The model itself is easily the dodgiest, most awkward sculpt from that box, and not easy to completely convert into a 40k character, not least due to the enormous lenght of its legs 😉 But upon closer examination, the head definitely warranted a bit of attention: I couldn’t help wondering if I might be able to turn this into something really cool…

So a few precise cuts later, I had this:

A simple enough conversion, really: The lower part of the head (i.e. the mouth and neck area) were carefully cut off and replaced with the lower part of an Adeptus Mechanicus Skitarii Vanguard helmet: I could have used a CSM head as well, but the Skitarii heads have the huge advantage of being really easy to cut apart cleanly right above the breathing apparatus. Afterwards, the two parts were carefully glued together, and I must say I am pretty happy with the result!

I don’t even have any plans for the head yet: The truth is that I sometimes just enjoy making involved conversions on one small part that I then just keep around until its big day comes. Which may be next week, in four years…or never. Here it is on a “borrowed” body, though:

As you can see, I decided to get rid of the massive amount of dead space in the middle of the helmet crest by gluing on a medal from the old Khorne Berzerker kit.

Oh, and one of my favourite parts of the head is how, even though it’s originally an Age of Sigmar bit, it does have those grooves running across the top of the head that really look like an artistic representation of the Butcher’s Nails:

Anyway, so much for taking stock of my existing models — and of bringing them into the year 2023. Next time, we’ll be looking at the first models I have actually built from the new Khorne Berzerker box. And we’ll be meeting another old aqcuaintance that has received a rather substantial makeover.

For now, however, I would just love to hear your feedback or questions about these models, so please feel free to let me hear any thoughts and suggestions you might have. And, as always, thanks for looking and stay tuned for more!

I LIVE. I HUNGER.

“To those who find this message:
Let this be our testament:

We sought to emulate our father
To break ourselves upon the same anvil
In that, we succeeded
Like him, we were transformed
Thus were we reborn


There are no words in all of Old Terra’s dead tongues
To name the things we have become
And there is no way back from the precipice


To those who find this message:
Do not follow.”

– Presumed last transmission of XII Legion warship “Aeterna Venator” before leaving Imperial space, early M31 –

More to come soon — hopefully…

State of the Hunt, week 08/2020: Stop…Meteor Hammer Time!

Hey everyone, it’s already mid-February, and the fact that I still haven’t managed to complete the second part of my Eternal Hunt Awards writeup for 2019 has basically become a millstone around my neck that actually prevents me from posting any update at all, and we cannot have that, so here’s what we’ll do:

For today, I would just love to share some of the stuff I have been working on lately with you, seeing how I keep making progress with my little World Eaters kill team project.

As for my various favourite blogs and recommendations, I will commit to turning those into a rather more forward-looking post of its own in the near future — scout’s honour! For those of you who are looking for an excellent look back at the projects of 2019 and want their fix *right now*, feel free to peruse the following, excellent articles courtesy of the Brothers Wier and Wudugast, respectively.

To those of you who had been looking forward to my post, I can only apologise — and promise you that something not quite unlike it will be along sooner rather than later. For now, however, in the interest of keeping this blog going, I’ll just have to go with sharing some stuff I am actually motivated to work on right now. I hope you guys understand!

 

So, anyway, with that out of the way, where were we? Oh, right, I remember: In my last World Eaters related update, I already showed you this guy who is part of my “Hateful Eight” World Eaters project:

I could really kick myself for forgetting, once again, to take step-by-step pictures while I painted him — I guess the model would have made for a pretty cool tutorial. Oh well, next time, I guess…

Anyway, this is what the model looked like with most of the paintjob already in place:

As you can see, I decided to add some glossy blood to the meteor hammer — because it just seemed really, really appropriate in this particular case. In fact, I tried to take this even further with my idea for the rest of the base:

It was always clear that I would want to add some kind of “special effect” to the base. A trail of blood, as the World Eater drags his bloodied weapon behind him, seemed like an obvious idea. But I wanted something even more gruesome:

The idea was to make it look as though the World Eater had just crushed some unfortunate opponent’s skull, so I went the extra mile and included some bone shards 😉

Here’s the finished model:

While the pose remains ever so slightly hokey, on account of the base model I used for the conversion, I am still pretty happy with this chap. The two things I wanted to achieve with him — having a model wearing a massive, ancient suit of armour that also has a bit of a gladiatorial flair, have definitely worked out: In spite of all the quasi-medieval stylings of the armour, you could still imagine a suit of ancient Mk. III Iron Armour as the starting point underneath it all.

And here’s a closer look at the base again, now with the meteor hammer in place, obviously:

And once again, in order to round out my progress report, here’s an updated group picture of the new World Eaters models I have managed to finish so far:

Regarding the general progress of this progress, I’ll admit that these models seem like a bit of an evolutionary step for me in that, after all these years of building and painting World Eaters, I have now arrived at the point where the models actually end up looking very close to the way I’ve always wanted them to be: massive, baroque, highly individual and very sinister. Are they perfect? No, certainly not — there’s still a lot of room for improvement. But it’s not hyperbole to say that these are the closest I have yet come to realising my personal vision of what the warriors of the 4th assault company should look like.

At the same time, however, it’s becoming painfully obvious that I’ll be ending up with more than eight models, mostly because I just cannot stop building stuff. Case in point, here are the next guys in line for the painting desk:

Granted, some (okay, alright: two) of these are older conversions. But I just keep adding to them. For today, I would like to point out two models in particular.

The first model was born from the desire to do something, anything, with that very weird, two-handed Bat’leth-style weapon that comes with the AoS Blood Warriors:

So I shaved off the secondary blade, and used some Blood Warrior, CSM and Mk. III Marine parts to make this:

As you can see, it’s yet another conversion that combines most of the parts from a stock Blood Warrior with Mk. III greaves, although I would argue that the graft is a much smoother one this time around. I also think the somewhat more medieval Blood Warriors armour, when used in moderation, creates a cool, somewhat gladiatorial look that really suits 40k World Eaters and moves the models beyond simply looking like vanilla CSM with bunny eared helmets. It was also cool to be able to re-use the backpack I had originally spliced together for the guy with the meteor hammer! 🙂

I am really stupidly happy with the guy, to be honest — he definitely has some presence, wouldn’t you agree?

Seeing how I have a prospective painting session at Annie’s place scheduled for later this week, and maybe I should just allow this guy to jump the queue 😉

The second model I want to focus on was converted just the other day when I realised the squad/kill team still needed some kind of icon bearer — I am a bit of a traditionalist in that respect: Every squad of traitor Astartes needs an icon bearer, and those new-fangled, backpack-mounted icons just don’t cut it for me.

On the other hand, the idea of a World Eater lugging around a massive standard always seems a bit iffy. However, there was one model I have always loved for just striking the right balance in this respect: the metal World Eaters icon bearer from the mid-90s.

And seeing how one side objective of this particular project has been to give shout outs to classic models or artwork, I couldn’t resist the temptation to just rebuild that particular model for the new millennium. Take a look:

I’ve had to flip the model horizontally for logistical reasons, but apart from that, the new guy is a fairly involved attempt at a proper re-interpretation of the classic sculpt. I didn’t have one of those old banner tops, unfortunately, so I used what felt like the next-best thing: a Wrathmonger/Skullreaper standard that seems like it could be used as a weapon in its own right with its many vicious barbs and bladed edges.

Here’s a comparison with the classic model and my new interpretation of the sculpt, side by side:

So as you can see, in spite of everything, I am at least reasonably successful at coming up with new members of the 4th assault company. And I would, of course, like to hear your thoughts on my progress, so please leave a comment!

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

State of the Hunt, week 04/2020: Taking skulls and spitting blood…

Hey everyone, I am currently suffering from a bit of Writer’s Block when it comes to completing the second part of my Eternal Hunt Awards, so in order to try and break through that – or, if nothing else, at least finally post some new content over here – I would like to show you what I am currently working on:

As some of you will still remember, the last model I painted in 2019 was…a World Eater:

And it didn’t take long for me to return to the XII legion in the new year (wile I have also been on fire regarding a few INQ28 characters, that’s a story for another time…). So, what do I have to show for myself?

First up, I have been messing around with some of the conversions for my “Hateful Eight” World Eaters Killteam project, making some additional tweaks to the models and giving them that extra bit of quality control.

Take, for instance, this World Eaters Havoc I built last fall:

While taking a closer look at the model, I realised that the missile launcher arm came with an Eye of Horus design on the pauldron, and while that certainly isn’t a big deal, it did bother me a bit — it felt slightly too “Black Legion” for a member of the World Eaters. But I had an idea: why not turn it into a World Eaters legion badge? Thanks to the GW plastic skull kit, it was easy enough to carefully shave off some jaws and use them to transform the emblem on the pauldron into a World Eaters symbol:

I’ll admit it’s not easy to make out, but it should look suitably different to the original design once painted. It’s also a very easy recipe to create World Eaters symbols that I wish I had thought of earlier…

On the same model, I am also currently experimenting with adding a chaos knight pauldron as some kind of armoured cowl, and I do like the way it looks:

I am still messing around with different variants of doing this, but I do think the addition of some kind of cowl actually makes the model resemble the artwork it was based on even more closely:

There was also thus guy here, built at the same time as the Havoc:

I still think this is a rather intriguing conversion: I wanted a model looking massive and archaic, its armour looking like an ancient, heavily customised set of Mk. III armour — hence the legs and helmet. A few things kept bothering me about the model, however — it always looked ever so slightly dodgy from up close. So I tweaked the model a bit:

Now this one is a tough case because people on the forums keep telling me the older version actually seems more balanced to them, but I am simply much happier with the new version: In my opinion, the bladed crest on the Marine’s left pauldron was so massive as to unbalance the model’s silhouette a bit, so it was replaced with smaller spikes (I did keep the part for later use, though). The backpack also didn’t result in the silhouette I wanted, so I went back to a classic CSM backpack. The biggest change, however, is that the axe was replaced with a meteor hammer, one of the World Eaters’ more gladiatorial weapon choices. I have been looking for a way to include one of these in the project for a while, and here it is.

It wasn’t all kitbashing, though, I also managed to get something painted: My first painted model of 2020, and also a World Eater. This gentleman here:

Yet another alumnus of the same kitbashing session as the other two, this model was originally built to resemble a clasic piece of artwork courtesy of Mark Gibbons:

The illustration was originally featured in the second edition Codex Imperialis and accompanied by a quote of one Kargos Bloodspitter (of Horus Heresy fame). Anyway, I didn’t want my model to actually represent Kargos as a character, but I did want to channel the artwork as much as possible (incidentally, fellow hobbyist Mr. Poom actually created a brilliant 30k version of Kargos Bloodspitter, based on the very same piece of artwork, a couple of years ago).

Anyway, seeing how the conversion was already in my case, all that remained was to get some paint on the model:

I unfortunately painted the model before Mark Butcher asked for a tutorial in a recent comment, so that will have to wait until a future post. For now, suffice it to say that I employed my updated World Eaters recipe again.

The model’s base provided an interesting challenge, because, while I did not want to perfectly replicate the “standing on a field of skulls” look from the artwork (as that seems a bit too 1995, even for my tastes, plus it wouldn’t match the basing on the rest of the group), I did want to give it a bit of a shout out, so I came up with a bit of a compromise:

A veritable pile of skulls, but still “fenced in” by some rocky parts.

And here’s the base, mostly painted:

And with that, the model was finished:

“Though the gates that stand between the mortal world and the immortal Realm of Chaos are now closed to me, still I would rather die having glimpsed eternity than never to have stirred from the cold furrow of mortal life. I embrace death without regret as I have embraced life without fear.”

 

Once again, here’s the artwork that inspired it all:

Moody glamour shots aside, here’s a proper look at the finished model in more detail:

I am actually really happy with the finished model, both because I think it has come out fairly well, but also because this has been a great occasion to include another tribute to a classic piece of Warhammer 40k art in my collection!

Oh, and before I forget: Thanks must also go to my fellow hobbyist ElDuderino: The converted Blood Warrior helmet he sent me as part of a pretty sweet bitz drop last year is what really sells the conversion, if you ask me. I shall be naming the model “Brother Orska” in his honour! 🙂

And here, just to round things out, are all the little rascals I have so far:

So that’s it for today — seems like a pretty good hobby start into the new year, though, if I do say so myself! It goes without saying that I would of course love to hear your thoughts on the model, so please feel free to leave me a comment!

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