Plastic for the Plastic Throne! Pt. 4

The kitbashing train has no brakes! In all fairness, though: I still had that World Eaters Terminator squad to complete, so…

While the first three Terminators, along with the “salvaged” model wielding twin lightning claws, appeared in the previous post, there were still two more models left to go. So here’s what I came up with:

First of all, let’s take a look at the squad champion (although I really want them all to look equally impressive, so he doesn’t stick out quite as much as he possibly would in a less customised squad):

The most obvious addition here is the left arm from the Lord Zhufor model — I thought this would be a really cool alternative to the model’s standard bolter arm. The – slightly dodgy looking – standard sword was replaced with a weapon from the AoS Varanguard kit. I rather like its blunt, brutal and slightly daemonic look. And I added a helmet crest (from the Skullcrushers) and a World Eaters rebreather head, to round out the WE look.

And of course I couldn’t resist the temptation of turning the last model into an icon bearer:

Now this guy uses the actual Lord Zhufor helmet (although I have had to replace the tusks, due to a small accident). The banner pole and the hand holding it came from the AoS Blood Warriors — the bit was carefully grafted onto the existing Terminator arm. The Caedere Remissum crest once again came from the Skullcrushers.

Now this guy actually made for an interesting challenge, because I had to find the right banner for him: I wanted him to be carrying the IVth assault company’s battle standard, and none of the options I found in my bitzbox completely managed to win me over:

The first option was a Skullcrusher banner — a lovely piece in and of itself, make no mistake. But it’s also very monothematic, with that Khorne symbol on top AND that massive Khornate rune dead centre. What I was looking for, however, was more of an old company standard, complete with a legion symbol, and maybe some of the IVth’s battle honours, and the only way to create that from this bit would have been to to painstakingly shave off the rune, with a very high probability of ruining the piece altogether.

The second option was an actual, blank Space Marine standard — a real rarity these days 😉
What I really liked about this was how it would have allowed me to actually make the standard look like an age-old relic. But the main downside was how very, very clean it looks — and I wasn’t quite sure whether I would be able to make it look suitably distressed and brutal for a World Eaters standard.

The third option – a Bloodletter banner – had quite a few things going on in its favour: It’s suitably Khornate and chaotic. It’s also suitably tattered, while still leaving enough of a “blank canvas” for me to get creative. What wasn not really sold on, however, was the somewhat organic look of the crosspost. It also seemed like a very safe choice — and I guess that’s what I ultimately found the most off-putting about it.

And then there was this final option:

A WFB plastic Minotaur banner, if I remember correctly. I had actually wanted to use this as the IVth’s standard before: The way it seems like a mix of banner and trophy display really ties into the theme of the Eternal Hunt. But also maybe seemed a bit too big, a bit too much: I was afraid that it might overpower the model and cover up too much of it.

Ultimately, the feedback I received over at The Bolter & Chainsword supported my assumption that the minotaur standard really deserved another chance. So the next step was to turn it into something that would make for both a suitably grisly, Khornate banner for AND would still read as something that had, at one point, been an Astartes battle standard. So I carefully chose some elements to add to the banner:

I really wanted some kind of shout out to (Pre-)Heresy times, and in the end I realised that actually using a (shaved down) 30k Vexilla piece might just do the trick. It even has a little space for an obvious Heresy callback, such as a red WE symbol (or XII numeral) on white — or maybe even a War Hounds icon? Beyond that, I added some skulls and talismans. Not everything had been glued in place at this moment, and in fact I would end up making a few smaller tweaks down the road — as you’ll be seeing in a minute.

In the meantime, the entire Terminator squad also went through another round of detailing: While I like the sense of bulk and menace about the “new” Chaos Terminator kit, it is also incredibly vanilla-flavoured, so my main challenge was to really, really make these guys read as World Eaters. Good thing I found Wade Pryce’s notes on his own Terminators in the – fairly recent – issue of WD that had the preliminary World Eaters Index/Codex, and he talked about shaving off some symbols off leftover Blood Warrior parts and gluing them to the Terminators. Brilliant! So that’s what I did.
I also made some smaller tweaks to other areas, such as the headcrests on the champion and icon bearer, for example. Here’s a look at all the squad members as they are looking at the moment:

I’m not going to lie to you — I am pretty darn happy with the way this squad is shaping up! 🙂

And as for the icon bearer, here’s what he looks like with the finished (?!) banner provisionally tacked on:

I will still need to tweak it all a bit and make sure everything lines up correctly, but I am pretty happy with the model — in fact, one small touch that makes me almost stupidly happy, even though it is of small consequence, is the fact that the icon bearer is now actually wearing his gun mag-locked to his armour (and doubly secured with a little chain):

I carefully carved a concave shape into the inner half of the weapon casing, to make sure it conforms to the curvature of the armour underneath and doesn’t end up messing up the model’s entire silhouette.

So that’s it for this week! Before I started working on these Terminators, I actually feared I might not be able to put an original spin on them, given the crazy cool conversations floating around out there. But I am actually pretty happy with the squad so far:

And, of course, I would love to hear any thoughts and suggestions you might have. And, as always, thanks for looking and stay tuned for more!

Butcher’s Boy

A warning in advance: I realise that today’s update quickly degenerates into rambling. Bear with me, though, there’ll be new stuff to look at partway down the page 😉 So what is this about?

While I virtually lack any sort of impulse control when it comes to buying new plastic crack, the one area where I have thus far exhibited an almost shocking amount of restraint is buying from Forgeworld: Sure, I’ll purchase some heads, shoulder pads and smaller doodads every now and then, but with the exception of Lord Zhufor, still possibly the best World Eaters model ever released, I haven’t bought any complete Forgeworld kits yet.

There’s a number of reasons for this, but lack of sculpting quality certainly isn’t a part of it: I love many of FW’s models as much as the next guy — if anything, the amount of detail alone is usually intimidating enough to prevent me from purchasing any models, for fear of being unable to do them justice with my painting.

Then there’s the fact that it sometimes seems to me like Forgeworld models are the easy, albeit expensive, way out of pretty much any modeling conundrum: Want a super awesome model? Just use a stock piece from Forgeworld! Want to own Marines in Pre Heresy armour — gee, Forgeworld is releasing an entire line of models for you!

Where Forgeworld models used to be a supremely rare sight, being used to add the most sublime amount of awesome to an army, it has all become a bit of a battle of materiel  nowadays, where some people just add  Forgeworld stuff to their armies until they suddenly become awesome by sheer resin saturation. And, by a strange twist of faith, armies making heavy use of FW models actually often end up looking more samey than the “standard” GW armies of old. Does that sound bitter?

Maybe, but here’s the thing: I think that having to work around the shortcomings of kits and the gaps in GW’s catalogue can sometimes be the best catalysts for creativity. And, for instance, before Forgeworld released more Horus Heresy Space Marines than you could ever shake a stick at, coming up with kitbashes and conversions to approximate your own version of Pre Heresy armour marks was huge fun.

 

Anyway, all of this is my rather roundabout way of explaining why my various projects use fairly little Forgeworld stuff. That said, there has to be an exception to the rule, of course, and when I first saw early pictures of Forgeworld’s World Eaters Red Butchers, it was instantly clear to me that some of these might find their way into my collection at some point:

I really love the way their Cataphractii armour is encrusted with stylised depictions of the World Eaters’ legion badge, for one.  At the same time, the brutal, spiky design of their armour is a nice fit for post heresy World Eaters as well. So when I recently had the chance of picking up some of the models as part of a bitz order, I jumped at the opportunity and purchased two Red Butcher bodies for experimentation purposes.

From my hands on experience as well as a bit of research, I have to say that these models are a bit of a mixed bag, their really cool overall design notwithstanding: The Red Butchers’  bodies are  single piece, with only the arms coming as separate parts. While this obviously makes them fairly easy to put together, it also severely limits their flexibility. Plus some of the poses seem a bit wonky — just check out the guy on the right, for instance.

What’s more, when prototypes for the Red Butchers were first shown at UK Games Day 2013, the models sported a set of individual, bare heads. While some of these may have seemed a little hokey, they perfectly communicated the sheer rage of these guys and worked really well with some of the poses. Alas, the finished models ditched most of these individual head sculpts, instead opting to use the same helmet for all the models in the squad except the champion, who retains one of the bare heads from the earlier versions. Now while I like the helmeted head well enough, this decision is rather hard to understand, because it really makes the finished models less cool than the prototypes. And while getting rid of the helmeted heads should still be possible with a bit of work – as the supremely talented poom has done on some of his Red Butchers , but the operation seems needlessly complicated, with a very real risk of ruining a rather expensive models in the process.

But even in their hobbled state, I still think the models still have lots of promise, and are a great addition to the World Eaters catalogue. And since I have honestly never seen them painted in the World Eaters’ post heresy colours yet (and FW’s own paintjob is, well, atrocious), it was clear to me that these guys would be drafted into my 40k World Eaters force.

Since I had only purchased the bodies, I needed to add some bitz in order to finish the models, and my first test model turned into a bit of a lucky coincidence right off the bat: I had picked up a two-handed weapon from the Deathwing Terminator kit as part of the same bitz order, and I realised that it worked pretty well with one of the Red Butchers. Here’s my test model:

As you can see, I took some additional steps to make the additions to the model seem suitably chaotic: I added some Daemon Prince armour plates as shoulder pads, slightly converted the two handed weapon and added some Warp Talon “toenails” to the model’s gauntlets . To give credit where credit is due,exchanging the halberd’s blade happened courtesy of a pretty sweet model by AMaximus, while the clever use of  the toenails was originally an equally awesome idea of my fellow German hobbyist Lucutus.

Since chains seem to be a recurring visual motif for the Red Butchers, I also added some chainy bitz to the arms holding the halberd as well. I also glued a brass etched Khorne rune to the model’s Cataphractii armour.

The pose was also slightly inspired by this screenshot I found online:

While painting this guy, I subjected myself to the challenge of trying to finish the model in 3 hours, as part of a small, friendly challenge between several like-minded hobbyists. So I tried to be fast.

Here’s the model at shortly before the two hour mark…

…and, a while later, after precisely three hours:

Not bad, but clearly not finished either. Just to give you an idea, Jeff Vader managed to completely paint an absolutely amazing Plague Bearer in the same amount of time. Nuts!

But while I had sort of failed the three hours challenge, the work I had managed to accomplish during those hours went a long way towards getting the model painted, so it was all good. I ended up putting in another hour or two, and here is the finished model. I give you Raas the Butcher:

As you can see, some of the additional touches really sell the model, at least in my opinion: The planet at the centre of the stylised legion badge on the model’s helmet was picked up in turquoise for that additional bit of pop. And I even added some blood to the halberd’s blade, because the Butcher really seems like that kinda guy:

A similarly bloodspattered Space Marine helmet and a skull were added as decoration to the model’s base:

Painting a whole Forgeworld model for the first time certainly has certainly been an interesting experience as well, although it made me realise that not only do I dislike converting resin models, but I am also not all that fond of painting them: The Forgeworld resin provides all those tiny nooks and crannies on the model that I remember (with dread!) from my past experiences with metal models, and all that scrubbing and soaking beforehand, in order to get rid of the mold release agent covering the model head to toe, also isn’t that much fun. So while I can see myself painting the odd FW model every now and then, assembling an entire army of models made from this material seems like a bit of a nightmare to me, to be honest…

Oh, and one more thing: While I am rather pleased with the finished model, it does look slightly puny when stood next to one of my plastic models in Terminator armour. Justs sayin’…

I’m happy enough with the result, though: One down, one to go! I suppose the second Red Butcher I purchased will end up looking more or less like this:

I might just replace the right arm with an arm holding an axe or sword, though. Hmmm….

On a semi-related note, I realised that some of the Red Butchers’ design elements, especially the torso and helmet, are quite reminiscent of that old metal Terminator Lord I picked up used a while ago:

The resemblance is really quite uncanny, don’t you think? So maybe these guys will end up hanging out together in the end? In any case, it’s especially delicious to find visual consistency where you hadn’t even expected it, so yeah…
Oh, one more thing, by the way: My finished test model, Raas the Butcher, was named for fellow hobbyist Augustus B’Raass. This is a small thank you to him, both for providing lots of inspiration with his kick-ass Night Lords army (seriously, what is it whith all the amazing NL armies lately?) and for indulging me when I instigated a rather egg-headed (but nevertheless pretty fascinating, at least to me) discussion on his thread lately.

Thanks for taking it all in stride, mate! 😉

Anyway, here’s the model’s background:

Raas the Butcher

The warrior known as Raas the Butcher is one of the 4th assault company’s oldest veterans and serves in Lord Captain Lorimar’s personal guard, known as Lorimar’s Fist. Even among this band of ruthless killers, his thirst for blood excels, and his penchant for tearing his opponents limb from limb is well known and feared by those who have to stand against him: Watching Raas charging the enemy with surprising speed, a blood curdling howl on his lips, is terrifying to behold, and usually the last sight his victims are afforded before his mighty war halberd effortlessly shears through their armour and flesh. His bloodlust is so great that he spends most battles completely lost to the nails, as much of a danger to his friends as to his enemies. Chains decorate his ancient suit of modified Cataphractii armour as if to bind him, but it is clear that the Lord Captain’s abyssal growl is the only thing that will bring this wild hound to heel…

I’d love to hear any feedback you might have in the comments section! And, as always, thanks for looking and stay tuned for more!