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