Plastic for the Plastic Throne! Pt. 3

Yet more conversion and kitbashing hijinks for today’s update — I know, I know: I will eventually have to get back to painting! Bear with me, though, I have some pretty cool things lined up for today’s post.

Let’s begin with a bit of an “appetiser”, if you will: You’ll probably still remember this conversion from my previous post:

I have finally committed to the conversion for good, gluing the Blood Warrior mid-section to the Skullreaper/Wrathmonger legs (the actual torso remains only tacked-on for now, but mostly to make the painting process easier). I have also thrown together a belt buckle/belly plate with a leftover bit from an AoS Slaughterpriest and the dangling skull from Abaddon’s loincloth (the thing just snapped off, so I thought I might as well use it here):

Some cleanup remains, but I am fairly happy with this conversion! From a background perspective, I want this guy to represent Syrax, a shampion of the Harriers – the fourth assault company’s own brand of Raptors – and right-hand-man to a certain character named “Charun, Lord of the Harriers”, if anyone should still remember him from the earlier days of this blog…

As for today’s “main course”: You all should know by now that I have never learned to resist the utterly dreadful “Ohh! Shiny!” syndrome, so working on this model…

…really gave me an appetite for working on some more updated Terminators. Ultimately, I decided this with an impeccable sense of timing, buying a box of the “new” Chaos Space Marine Terminators just a week or so before the re-scaled loyalist Terminators were announced. Oh well…

But anyway, I was still looking forward to my first experiences working with the new 2019/2020 (?!) Chaos Terminators. They are a great update on the older kit (which, let’s face it, does seem slightly dodgy from a modern perspective). The updated kit is not without its quirks, but its more organic shapes and bulkier armour really do a great job when it comes to making Chaos Space Marine Terminators like lumbering, threatening behemoths (even if, as seems to be the standard with GW’s modern kits, each of the bodies only goes together in one specific way).

At the same time, the conversion standard for these models has become rather crazy while I wasn’t looking, with many hobbyists coming up with brilliant World Eaters Terminators! One source that I found particularly inspiring, if not downright intimidating, were fellow hobbyist RocPSU’s fantastic Terminator conversions — so I knew I would have to up my game for this project 😉

My objective with the new Terminators was threefold:

• turn every one into an individual, because these are ancient veterans of the Long War and deserve to look the part
• believably turn each of them into a World Eater
• have them still read as Terminators: Now this sounds like it wouldn’t be a big deal, but you can really end up converting Terminators so much that you lose a huge chunk of the classic look that actually clearly makes them come across as Terminators, so I needed to keep a balance between creating cool conversions while maintaining the iconic look.

So here’s what I have so far:

You have already seen the gentleman with the twin lightning claws, of course. For my first “test model”, I tried to hammer out the general look I wanted to achieve, in some shape or form, for the whole squad:

Nothing too crazy here, just an attempt at making the model clearly read as a World Eater: The addition of a rebreather head from the new berzerker kit already did most of the work, and adding a Caedere Remissum crest to the top of the armour (courtesy of the blades from a weird Skullreaper/Wrathmonger weapon) was obviously the first oder of the day. Apart from this, I exhanged the head of the stock power maul with an axe blade from another Skullreaper/Wrathmonger weapon. And I added a small World Eaters legion symbol-like medal as well as a Khorne rune to the breastplate. Oh, and a heraldic tilting plate is a bit of an experiment for now — although I really like the idea that some squad members would be holding on to some remnants of their personal heraldry and/or squad markings from the Heresy…

Next up, the heavy weapons guy. For me, the silhouette of the massive autocannon is so very iconic of Chaos Terminators that I knew I had to use that gun. Beyond that, it was, once again, mostly a matter of adding some visual flourishes to make this guy look like a World Eater:

The (Forgeworld) World Eaters shoulder pad is the most obvious addition here. The helmet crest came from the Skullcrushers this time around, and was added on top of the armour, rather than being stuck directly to the neck seal. The shield is, once again, a bit of an experiment, but it’s an element that keeps appearing throughout my army to represent the World Eaters’ gladiatorial leanings, so I think it might be a cool little detail here. Oh, and I also did some work on the model’s breastplate:

And the final model so far: What is probably my least favourite body pose from the kit ended up turning into my favourite conversion:

Another helmet crest, this time from the Blood Warriors (arguably the best and most consistent source for this kind of bit at the moment). The small, Khornate tilting plate is another touch of personal heraldry (and came from the Skullcrushers). The power axe was spiced up a bit by swapping in the blade of a two-handed Necromunda Goliath chainweapon — to be perfectly honest, I’ve been looking forward to using that weapon ever since the new Necromunda came out 😉

Oh, and I carefully shaved off the little air intake/exhaust from the centre of the breastplate and replaced it with a legion symbol.

All of these changes were not my favourite part of the model, however: What is perhaps most noticeable is the helmet:

I had this weird desire to find out whether I might be able to re-create a plastic version of the vicious-looking, slightly Predator-like, mawed Terminator faceplate that can be seen on Forge World’s Lord Zhufor model:

Image source: Forge World

I used a skull from the box of plastic skulls for this, carefully shaving and gluing until I had what I would say is a pretty promising prototype:

That was not the end of it, however: Fellow Reddit user Money_Cost6121 suggested maybe using an ork skull for that grafted-on faceplate conversion, and while I originally discarded the idea as possibly ending up looking …too orky, I was still intrigued. So down the rabbit hole I went and created two more options. Here’s a comparison shot with all three versions I made:

Not going to lie: In hindsight, I feel a bit foolish for only trying the most obvious option (using a Bloodletter face) last… 😉

They all have their merits: Personally speaking, the Ork-version seems almost too monstrous, ogre-like to me. The Bloodletter probably looks like the most natural and refined option, although I have to admit that it ended up being just as finicky as the other two, and really mostly came together through sheer, dumb luck.

That being said, the conversion process is really not that complicated: For all three versions, you bascially just cut away the “face” from any given skull at a slight angle, starting at the bridge of the nose and cutting down. Then you carefully cut and shave away the lowest part of the faceplate from the Terminator helmet, trying to create a soft, concave curve. And then it’s a matter of careful test fitting, shaving and gluing — I might have to write up a mini-tutorial for this in an upcoming post… 😉

In any case, I think the results so far a pretty promising!

Oh, and because this question came up regarding the twin LC Terminator Lord in a comment to my previous post, here’s a scale comparison with one of the new Terminators:

As you can see, they work fairly well together: The older Terminator body seems a bit lankier (with a weirdly narrow torso piece), while the new Terminators are much bulkier and seem more ponderous. Even so, the models should look quite alright together, once everything has been painted, in 2034 or so 😉

And that’s another update in the bag! 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. 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…

Khorne’s Eternal Hunt – revisiting an old friend…

Not only has it been ages since my last update, for which I apologise, but it’s also THAT time of the year again — how did this happen…?

Seriously, though: Given the slew of current events (and the fact that the RL version of Nurgle’s Rot is, unfortunately, still very much on the prowl), it probably shouldn’t be a surprise that Christmas has once again managed to sneak up on me. But oh dear: Now I don’t have anything prepared for the occasion — what to do, what to do…?

Wait a second, though: Christmas is all about men in red with bags full of…er, shall we say “offerings”, right? Excellent, I can do that! The emotional side of Christmas is also about the fuzzy feeling of nostalgia, of remembering a time when everything was still much easier — so let’s check two boxes at the same time here:

For today’s update, allow me to share a recent project of mine that definitely deals with a man in red, and is also slightly nostalgic, if only because it revisits one of the very first characters I built and painted for my then-new incarnation of Khorne’s Eternal Hunt: One Huntmaster Bardolf:

Bardolf was originally created back in 2010, or thereabouts, fairly shortly after I got back into the hobby. From a modern standpoint, the model is a really dodgy conversion, but back then, it felt like a very important step: Bardolf was one of the first models where I really stepped beyond my comfort zone and seriously cut up a model (a plastic warrior of chaos, for the record) and put it back together in a way that seemed new and exciting to my less discerning self from back then.  So even if the model looks all kinds of weird today, it still marks a pivotal moment in my personal hobby journey. I also have to admit that I still think that the pose works rather well to make the character seem relentless and unfazeable, like a true implacable men.

The other thing that’s interesting about Bardolf is that he has actually earned himself his own battle history, as he used to be my go-to Chaos Lord for small, 500 point-ish games. So he actually saw quite a bit of action on the table and led my World Eaters to victory a bunch of times during our short-lived campaign for the fate of Haestia Primaris, back in the day.

Which is why I have kept thinking about giving the character a re-imagined model at some point every once in a while — even moreso since I have begun to build some new, updated World Eaters since the end of 2019.

Now whenever I thought about a new model for Bardolf, Obsidius Mallex came up as a possible starting point:

I think you can already see a certain resemblance.

But alas, I kept putting this off, and I didn’t really go for it until I saw fellow hobbyist Master Umbra really taking the Obsidius Mallex model through its paces over at The Bolter & Chainsword. This gave me quite an appetite to finally tackle my own conversion, so I quickly made a mockup and began to turn Mallex into Bardolf:

A fairly straightforward approach, as you can see: The most important part was to carefully dig out the head and breastplate with a hobby knife, then replace them with a suitably Khornate piece from the AoS Blood Warriors and an old bare berzerker head, respectively — I am aware of the fact that the latter, with its somewhat tacky fangs, is a bit of an acquired taste, but I still like the sculpt, with its grizzled features and the gruesome looking plugs and implants, plus I’ve come to think of it pretty much as Bardolf’s face, for better or worse. The head also comes from the now-ancient plastic berzerker kit that started this whole army to begin with, so it seemed like a nice tribute to the days of yore in that respect 😉

The next step was to tidy up the conversion work and change the pose a bit, in order to get a bit closer to the original model:

Regarding the pose, the problem was that you can only do so much with Obsidius’s arms: I could not rotate the hands or forearms any further, both because it would have “broken” the model’s anatomy (if you take a closer look at the arms and the elbow armour, that severely limits how much I could tweak the pose). And you get even less leeway than usual, due to all of those tubes and cables sculpted onto the limbs, one of the main design elements about the stock Obsidius Mallex model.  That being said, I don’t think the pose is all that bad, to be honest — he still looks like he’s relentlessy advancing, maybe even singling out his next opponent?

I also decided to keep most of the cabling, especially on the left leg, because I like how it makes the armour look ancient: Like it has been field-repaired a million times. This seems very fitting for a true veteran of the Long War!

After getting most of the basic elements in place, it was mostly a matter of tweaking the details: I had to re-sculpt some of the fur on one side of the breastplate, and I also wanted to change the design of Mallex’s stock shoulder pads:

As you can see, the left shoulder pad was converted to replace the Black Legion’s Eye of Horus design with what’s supposed to be a representation of the World Eaters’ legion badge. It may still look a little hokey right now, bit I am pretty confident that it should work rather well once it has been painted. I also decided to tweak the weird, lumpy shoulder pad design on the right side, and we’ll be taking a look at that in a second.

Before that, let my just point out that there wasn’t just a previous 40k version of the character to take into account when building this new version — because I also built a 30k version of Bardolf a while ago:

With traitor legionaries, I actually think it’s great fun to imagine them both before and after their fall, especially if they are important players in your armies and warbands. At the same time, as with my re-design of Lord Captain Lorimar, this also added the challenge of making sure the re-imagined model worked as a shout out both to the original 40k version as well as to the 30k interpretation.

Here’s a comparison picture with all three models:

While the 30k version has a slightly closer resemblance to the first 40k version, I think they do all read as basically the same guy: The new conversion makes him look like this ancient monster, swollen with the powers of chaos over ten millennia — at least that’s what it looks like to me.

Anyway, I think I am fast approaching the point where my new Bardolf conversion should be finished and ready for painting:

So yeah, about ten years later, I have re-imagined one of the first characters from “Khorne’s Eternal Hunt”, my World Eaters army — how’s that for a warm an fuzzy feeling of nostalgia! 😉

Seriously, though, I hope you like the conversion, because that’s basically all I have for you today: In recent weeks, I’ve only really managed to squeeze in a couple of World Eaters kitbashes here and there:

But I think I’ll be addressing these gents in a future post. Don’t fret, though: In a few days, I’ll be returning with this year’s “Eternal Hunt Awards”, both in order to take a look at a few hobby projects that really stood out to me this year, and to give an account of my – pretty meagre – 2020 hobby achievements.

For now, however, all that remains is to wish you a very Merry Christmas – inasmuch as that is currently possible, that is. Please make yourselves comfortable at home, stay healthy (above all else!), and we’ll hopefully be seeing each other for some new content sooner rather than later!

Until then, 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!