Chaos Cultists – Squad 1

Here’s the first squad of cultists.  The close up shots are of five, because that’s how many the Painting Deathmatch ended up being for.  The last is because I couldn’t resist adding the squad.

Not as happy with these guys – The challenge was for 15, so I was painting all 20, and the quality dropped to reflect.

Back

All ten together

Chaos Obliterators Conversion Part 1

Might seem like a bit of a random change to go to Obliterators in the middle of a terminator conversion, but there is madness to my logic!

I’ve never done any significant greenstuff work before, and the next phases of my terminators conversion needs some greenstuff to achieve what I want.  So, therefore I need to learn to do greenstuff.  I’ve been surfing the net, reading and watching tutorials, and I’ve got an idea about what I want to achieve now.  So, I also have some Assault on Black Reach Terminators, and the intent is to make them Obliterators, since the Space Hulk and Dark Vengeance boxes have given me an oversupply of terminator models.  Since the conversion seems to be relatively straightforward, and ‘fleshmetal’ type organic looks seem to be a decent way to learn/practice to greenstuff, it’s over to these guys for a while.  It also gives me space to get things wrong and then bulk up the model with another layer, which my terminators probably wouldn’t accept as easily.

I’ve been keeping some stuff in my bathroom for a while because I like the interesting shapes.  For anyone who hasn’t seen these before, they are inter-dental brushes used as a substitute for floss.  They last a week or so, come in packs of ten in the supermarket.  I’ve been using a couple of different brands, and cleaning off and keeping the used brushes in a corner of the bathroom.  They also come with caps which have a series of different sizes.

The second set of materiels is a cotton bud (again from the bathroom, this time unused) and the terminator arm itself.

First off, I cut off the magazine and stored for later.  Then I cut the end off one of the caps from the interdental brushes and added it below.

Next the cotton bud got cut into four sections, the edges straightened up a bit and them backed in to look like an automatic weapon barrel.  This was then added to the side of the arm.

Next came the greenstuff, into which was also pushed a part of a chainsword that I cut out for the Terminator conversion in an aborted attempted to make a chainfist out of one of the powerfist guys.  Turned out to be almost perfect for this though!  I’ve tried to make the greenstuff look like fleshy, ropy muscle bits on the outside parts, and I decided to keep the shoulder pad intact as well as the feed tube type part from the terminator model.

On the inside, I’ve then had a first attempt at sculpting eyes to match the Dark Vengeance eye theme.  This took a bit of playing around, but thanks to some great you-tube videos around I think I managed something at least passable.  Better yet, I learnt a lot.

Here is the arm back on the body.  The body will get a fair bit of work yet, and a whole scratch built left arm to boot.

There is still a little bit to fix between the weapons/on top of the arm area, some bits to smooth out and some muscles to add.  I decided to wait to let the first bit set before tackling the next phase, since that seems to be most of the advice online – don’t bite off too much in one sitting!

I learnt a lot from this.

1.  Greenstuff goes further than I thought it would.  I mixed what I expected to be a first part only, and then got everything I wanted out of it.

2. Be careful what you hold.  I lost one of the eyes and had to reform after a careless thumb indentation…

3. The general smoothing and making the eye shape was roughly what I expected, which was good!

 

Chaos Terminators Dark Vengeance Conversion Part 2

The work continues.  On a roll!

On to the Assault Cannon Terminator. I’m going to leave the weapon relatively untouched and play as a Reaper Autocannon.  Anyway, the insignia went on this one as well.  After this picture the swords hanging from the waist were removed as well.  I smoothed out the winged insignia.  Not sure exactly what it will end up being, maybe just painted.

Then onto the assembly.  I’m not going to fiddle with the pose too much for this guy:

Next was Chainfist guy – again, scrapping off the insignia.

The Sergeant -> Aspiring Champion was next, with the obligatory insignia scrape.  I then tried to convert the headdress into a more Chaos feel – my main theme is Tzeencth, so I thought I’d see if I could get it to look a bit like the sorcerer’s helmet:

After that, I dove back into the bits box and did the initial assembly.

Here’s the whole squad at the moment:

And each of the individual guys:

Powerfist 1:  Not much change yet.  This guy has the Chainfist models bolter arm to change the pose up a bit.

Powerfist 2: This guy had his arm significantly repositioned as per the last post, and then got the sorcerer Terminator front and one of the spare heads.

Chainfist: Spare bolter arm and the space shoulder pad from the Lord pack.  His chest wing thing has been shaped into more of a demonic spike with the feather shaved off.

Cannon: Just shorn of insignia at this stage.

Champion: Insignia cleaned up, the headdress changed and a top knot from a spare aspiring champion head from the Chaos Marines kit.

Chaos Terminators Dark Vengeance Conversion Part 1

Well, after much internet browsing and musing, I’ve decided to even up the two armies that are out at the moment.  I had a second box set of Dark Vengeance hanging around from when it came out, but using all of models again in their original configuration is going to be way too unbalanced, both in points for the game and in general play.

The current plan is:

Angels of Wrath (Dark Angels):

Get another squad of Tactical Marines.

Expand the bike squad to six, converting the sergeant into a veteran sergeant.

For the Chaos Side (The Inner Order):

Get twenty more cultists.

Convert the Deathwing into Chaos Terminators.

Convert one of the characters into a Chaos Sorcerer.

Expand the Chosen Squad.

 

Not entirely sure what I’m going to do with the other characters and the Helbrute.  I was thinking of turning the Helbrute into an Obliterator, but I might make some Obliterators out of my old Assault on Black Reach Terminators that don’t really have a current home.  Since I’ve got the Space Hulk models for my Blood Angels I really don’t need the other five terminators as well.

Anyway, the definite parts first.  Converting the Terminators seems like it is going to be a bit of a challenge, but my research is done and I have the spare bitz from my Chaos Terminator Lord kit and from the two Chaos Marine boxes as well.

First off are the two identical models.  Here’s the starting pieces:

I’ve carefully scrapped off the insignia:

The next part was to trim off the angle of the bolter arm.  There’s a piece of the shoulder that I cut off.  The picture below is just before the trimming – the small ‘triangle’ shape section on the arm went, along with the ‘stub’ that it was supposed to fit onto on the model which kept it posed at the ‘correct’ angle.

For the second one of these, I have used the spare chest piece from the Chaos Lord kit, along with one of the bare heads – the others don’t fit well.

The Games Continue

Game four successfully played today. Discovered the kids do much better if they have a break at the end of each turn. 

My daughter was willing to play Chaos today, so I just referred and made suggestions.

Anyway, Chaos lost. Not too surprising. I compiled the lists for the two armies during one AF the breaks and realised that the Dark Angels have 694 points of models versus the Chaos sides 516.

The board is looking a bit more painted though.

   
     My daughter had a blood nose part way through, adding her own artistic touch to the models.