Damage Control

Last time in the blog i posted unpainted pictures of my Chaos lord. I've spent the last couple of days doing very little besides playing Halo 4 and painting him, along the way however I came to a realisation. I did not like his converted shoulder pad. It looked amatuerish and out of place.

It's like the skull has a weird hair cut

I spent a little bit of time agonising over how i would repair the damage done, most of my options involving having to physically saw the shoulder off. Fortunately however i was able to pry most of the green stuff and the skull off the shoulder leaving a relatively undamaged shoulder pad underneath. a little bit of knife work and i was able to clear off the unwanted iconography as well.

Looks better already. Sometimes you've got to know when things aren't going well and take action. This was done mostly with a hobby knife, I think my thumb lost some skin at some point along the way.

this photo also shows the additional spikes from the chaos tank sprue that i used for his trophy rack. I felt the Tyranid Warrior's head was somewhat out of place so made suitable replacements. keeping the spikes angled correctly while the glue dried was probably the hardest part of the whole conversion.

Almost there. I need to buy some Hawk Turquise or what ever it is called now to tarnish the gold parts of the model. I tried washing them with warplock bronze (tin bits) but it didn't give the desirable patina effect i was hoping for. I'm not entirely sure about the Eyes either. I was hoping for something angrier and more menacing. perhaps a brighter colour would help?

A Warsmith Rises

Every Chaos Warband needs a leader. Some charismatic Individual who rose up and took power, through treachery, cunning, and sheer force of will. Looking at the chaos codex we have more choices then ever before.

The Daemon Prince is a pretty powerful contender but has a pretty massive price point before you start adding the near obligatory upgrades.

A Sorcerer is a good choice, but doesn't feel especially Iron Warriors-ish.

The Dark Apostle is good value, but would suit a Word Bearers army better i believe.

The Warpsmith is another new addition to the codex and is the traitor counterpart to the loyalist master of the forge. The new resin model has polarised some people, but personally i like the doctor octopus claws. what I'm not a fan of is using a stock HQ in an army of such heavily converted troops.

and finally the Chaos Lord. 65 pts buys you 3 fearless wounds with stats that matter in close combat. throw on a suit of terminator armour for 40 points and you gain an invulnerable save, a power weapon, and a combi bolter. this is a great deal in my opinion an the direction i've decided to go in. for an additional five points you can replace the power weapon for a lightning claw. this removes the drawback of not having a pistol on your terminator lord. And besides, claws are cool. 

Warsmith Brutallus. after a whole day of sawing, scraping and scrounging through my bits box, this is the finished product. The vast majority of this model comes from the chaos terminator lord plastic kit, the rest of it came from the chaos vehicle sprue (which is actually pretty amazing) and a storm bolter kindly donated from the venerable dreadnought kit. Finally i managed to sneak a terminator assault cannon into the mix.

Obviously the mace isn't finished since the chaos dozer blade only has five spikes.

The great thing about this model is the versatility it offers me. That ornamental mace could actually be The Black Mace if i so choose. He could even be a counts as Abaddon the Despoiler.

I'm incredibly happy with the look of the mace (especially once it's finished) I took inspiration in its design from "Storm Herald" a crafted mace from World of Warcraft, which was all kinds of fun when i played my warrior during the Burning Crusade, And the mace used in the 3rd LOTR movie by the Witch King of Angmar.

I'm not thrilled with the skull and horns on this side of the model. my green stuff foo is still developing unfortunately. also notice the skulls on the armour plate on his wrist.

Finally, the base was thrown together quite quickly, but i think it has a bit of character to it. between the ultramarine banner and the first company helmet there's a little bit of story going on, without making the base feel crowded

Fire Team Alpha

In the grim darkness of the future, there is only war. But you're not going to last long on the open field. The smart Chaos Warband knows that covert ops is how you stay alive for ten thousand years, and for ten thousand more. As such i've modelled my space marines as fire teams. Each ten man squad consists of two teams of 5 mans.

Team Leader

the bolter has a drum barrel carved from an imperial guard grenade launcher plus a front grip fashioned from a knife handle.

Demolitions expert

Supression Fire

Designated Marksman

Demolitions has a greater variety of grenades on him. not pictured is a melta bomb which im still trying to figure out a good place to attatch.












It's a heavy bolter, but it counts as a regular bolter. Deal with it. I scoured the internet and did many test models myself trying to figure out a good alternative. all my attepts were either just boltguns with drum ammo boxes, or had awkward bits from other kits. possibly the most successful attempt was a bolter extended by half a grip section. at the end of the day however, i feel that this model captures the feel better then any conversion could have.




Stalker pattern bolter, or is that daemon eye bolter? A masterclass in small scale kit-bash if I do say so. The barrel is from the spare space marine scout rifle, the scope is from a tactical squad box and the ammo clip and butt are from a las gun.

Pointman

Lastly pointman, wearing more MkIII armour then the rest of the squad in addition to a Forgeworld Siege shield, he's equiped to be the first man into any dangerzone.









This is easily the most heavily converted unit I've ever made for warhammer. in addition, it was my first attempt at executing the concept i'd generated in my mind.

I entered them into my FLGS conversion competition where they took out first place in the squad category. Needless to say I'm pretty happy about that.

The Birth of a Warband

Hi, and welcome to the blog.

With the birth of 6th edition I felt that this was the perfect time to start a chaos army, but which? for me, it was always going to be the Iron Warriors. Bitter veterans who turned their backs on the Imperium ten thousand years ago after the constant abuse of an emperor who used them in his quest for daemonhood, or so their side of the story goes. No young upstarts, these are men whose hatred has been harboured from an era barely remembered.

I set about researching as much as i could about the Iron Warriors to build an army that was true to the fluff, worked on the tabletop (hopefully) and represented something a little unique in terms of modelling compared to normal. no doubt you'll see ideas that have been inspired (read: shamelessly stolen) from elsewhere, so please keep in mind that I never began this project with the intention of reinventing the wheel.

With that in mind I'll just preface this entire blog with a few acknowledgements.

http://fromthewarp.blogspot.com.au/

for being a cornerstone of the 40k hobby community, Ron needs no introduction.

http://www.underthecouch.net/

You'd have needed to be hiding under a couch for the past 5 years to have not seen a picture of the beautiful spec ops converted space marine army here.