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UPDATE: Painting tutorial in my B&C thread hereabouts and candle-sculpting tutorial halfway down this post.

Hellllooooo Dakka. I've lurked here for several years now. I've been working on a Word Bearers army for well over 4 years, and I've had a painting thread devoted to them over at Bolter and Chainsword for quite some time. However, I've been looking at getting into painting things from other miniature lines, so I've decided to branch out and open up a thread here (also because every time I see Darth Bob at the FLGS he tells me to post here). For now, though, I don't have much to show that isn't spiky, dark red and evil, so this thread will mostly be full of the sons of Lorgar for a little while.

To give a quick introduction to this army, I fell in love with the Word Bearers the moment I opened the 3.5 codex and saw the image on their page (now in glorious full color on pg.13 of the 6e CSM dex). However, at the time I was doing a Blood Ravens army. I started off with the simple goal of using Doghouse's Gothic-Pattern tutorial to create a few Chaos Marines as a "do-something-slightly-different" project between Blood Ravens squads. At some point I just abandoned the Blood Ravens altogether and "a few Chaos Marines" blew up into a whole company, or "Cohort" in Word Bearer terms. I'm not quite there yet but I'm well on my way to having the infantry finished by the end of the year. All of my squads are 12-man going by Index Astartes fluff. Fairly early on in the project I started doing little "dioramas" of Chaos Marines butchering Imperial Guardsmen in various ways and it sort of grew into a theme throughout the army.

Naturally over the course of five years techniques change, and some of my older work I'm not necessarily proud of. However, I've recently done a complete revamp where I retouched every single model, adding candles and various other details throughout. In the near future I plan to go back through and paint all the eyes, as well as ensure more consistency between older and newer models.

More images, angles and closeups of most of these models either are or will be available in my gallery. I'm basically trying to cram several years of army into the image limit, plus uploading everything to Dakka's gallery is going to take a while, so bear with me. I also apologize for some of the pics being less than spectacular, particularly some of the squad shots, my photography skills are not the best. Some of these pics are from long before I even discovered the glory of the lightbox, so those may be particularly terrible. However, most of these images are uploaded in glorious 2848x2134, so click on them for MASSIVE HIGH-RESOLUTION ZOOMAGE.

C&C is very welcome, of course. Without further ado, here's some Word Bearers.

Dark Apostle, Razakel the Unhallowed







He's sort of an experiment in truescaling, there's a size comparison in my gallery.

I Captain and Coryphaeus, Kol Marchosias



First Acolyte Naberus





II Captain, Kor Abalam



Sorcerer Orobas



Forgepriest, Kor Halphas



Champions, Icon Bearers and Musicians











XII Coterie, Phael Berith







XIII Coterie, Phael Raum







XIV Coterie, Phael Isskar



XVII Coterie, Quor Stolas



XIX Coterie, Phael Apollyon



XX Coterie, Phael Havres



II Coterie, Quor Allocer







Cultist Mob



Cultist Overseer



Discords



I appear to be very close to the image limit and I'm nowhere near done. I also have tanks and a Warhound Titan, and I wanted to post a few current WIPs. For now, I'm going to take a break, as all this copypasting is making my fingers bleed, will post all that stuff later. Again, C&C very welcome.

This has to be one of the coolest armies I've seen. I love all the dead and dying cadians! My favorite would have to be the first standard bearer. I can't wait to see the rest!

That looks amazing!

^Thanks for the kind words. Continuing from the OP with tanks. The Predators are quite samey but I'm planning on making "command tanks" so I can use them as Assassin Squadrons.

Autocannon Predators, Avnas and Valefor



Lascannon Predators, Eligos and Agares



Vindicator, Bifrons





Vindicator, Andras





Vindicator, Oriax (the crew took the whole "Bearing the Word" thing quite literally)







Hellblade Fighters "Shiela", "Sharon" and "Shirley" (I cannot remember which is which, but that's half the fun. I have bases for these made from Battle for Macragge terrain but I'm planning on moving them to the now-standard Valk bases)



Defiler



Warhound Titan, "Vanessa"

























Even more fearsome than a Warhound Titan, it's... The Word Bear! Base model is a Reaper Werebear with some GS and Daemon Prince bitz on top of it.



Ultraforge Greater Plague Demon - Not a Word Bearer, obviously, but it was probably the most fun I've ever had painting anything. Just went nuts with it. Obviously I'll be using it as a Great Unclean One.





And here's what I've been working on more recently. I've almost finished a DV Lord and Helbrute, they mostly just need to be based at this point.









Due to lack of bitz for said bases, the two of them have taken a backseat to the remainder of my Word Bearer Cohort, which is 3 squads of CSMs and one squad of Raptors. 2 of the CSM squads and the Raptors have been basecoated, washed and highlighted. Not pictured are the CSM squads' plasmagunners, champions, and one Icon Bearer - those have been painted already, I'll include shots of them when I complete these squads.



The third CSM squad consists entirely of dioramas - plenty of dead Cadians to go around. I'll be posting pics of those as I start to work on them. My current plan is to get the diorama squad up to the same point as the Raptors and the bolter mooks, then base everything. After that I'm going to start assembly-lining detail work 6 or so models at a time. I'm painting these for Bolter and Chainsword's Call of Chaos - the deadline is technically January 18th but I'm aiming for December 31st, I'd just like to have them done by the end of the year.

Sorry to cram so many pics into so few posts. Shouldn't be necessary again, will mostly be posting in small updates from now on, which will most likely be few and far between. I usually only feel like painting a few times a week, if at all. After I get those squads done I plan on painting some non-GW stuff - I have shelves full of Anima Tactics, Dark Sword and Red Box minis I've just never touched. Would be nice to paint one model at a time, too - I've basically been assembly-lining Word Bearers for the last few years. Hell, I've been assembly-lining tanks. Anyway, thanks for looking, should have an update on the diorama squad in a few days.

Looks pretty amazing and gritty. However there is very little contrast to most of the marines and they sometimes have a very washed-out feel
Good work nevetheless

The Dark Apostle is one of the best Chaos Lords I think I've seen.

Well done, this is a massive army and brilliantly realised.

OMFG!

Dude I might have to stop painting my chaos army after seeing this.

You could have won the battle for Terra.

You already know how much I love this army and seeing it arrayed like this just reinforced that. This must look insane on the tabletop. Good to see you over here as well buddy.

Hands down, the best Word Bearers army I've ever seen. Very creative use of bits and green stuff and I especially like the point blank shooting effects of the Melta/Flamer models, especially with the source lighting on those.

The Titan is plain eerie looking. I love the interiors and the remains of the Adeptus Mechanicus.

Great stuff, all around.

Well now I have to change my favorite to the word bear. That is amazing! I was thinking of doing something similar with a hordes bear I got cheap, and now I'm motivated!

Oh my god, you actually made a Dakka Thread. I never thought you'd do it!

Needless to say, you already know how I feel about your stuff, so...blah blah praise blah blah for the Dark Gods blah blah CHAOS!

Love the scrawl all over the vehicles and the banners are excellent. The banners really look like how you would imagine a several thousand year old banner in the hands of people who are more likely to get blood on it than wash it and darn the holes would look. I love how grimy they look, can never imagine Chaos marines taking the time to scrub the blood and dirt off their ancient wargear.

Fantastic.

Your character pieces ooze story and personality, love it. Very Blanchian palette choices too. My only criticism would be to push your contrasts on the red just a tiny bit more, but overall, fantastic!

Thanks for sharing and welcome to Dakka!

These are wonderful, in the most awful of ways! Or is that awful in the most wonderful of ways? Either way, holy crap those are cool.

 MajorTom11 wrote:
Fantastic.

Your character pieces ooze story and personality, love it. Very Blanchian palette choices too. My only criticism would be to push your contrasts on the red just a tiny bit more, but overall, fantastic!

Thanks for sharing and welcome to Dakka!

Agreed with the John Blanche style - very cool looking. Liking the Warhoud titan very much, probably my favourite at the moment from your collection - thanks for sharing and welcome to Dakka, may the Chaos Gods bestow you with their favours

Of all my many years of playing, this army has got to be one of my favourites. Top 3 for sure. You have captured the essence of the Word Bearers completely, in my opinion. I am so very impressed and my mind is boggled. Outstanding work! Can't wait to see more!

Absolutely beautiful, very subtle. A nice contrast to some of the more cartoony SM I've seen. Keep up the great work!!

this army is amazing!!!! all the models look so good and individual!!! you arean amazing painter!!!

I absolutely love your painting style, so much texture and variance I keep looking over your pieces and finding extra little details, wonderful stuff. The tanks are some of my favourite I have ever seen, and the candles really add to the feel. Incredible stuff.

Wow, thanks for the reception, Dakkanauts! Got some GS work done on the Raptors and Bolter mooks from the end of my last post, and got the CC squad I mentioned up to the same point. I'll have closeups of the diorama guys up once they're finished. Again, apologies for the photography, I'm painting these for B&C's Call of Chaos, so at the moment I'm mostly just trying to show that there's been progress.



I may wash some of the metals a little, I'm aware of the contrast issue with most of my older models and that is something I'd like to address, but Leadbelcher is just a bit too bright by itself for my taste.

Also thought I'd share the Fellblade I've been working on. I used Machinator's fantastic Blood and Skulls Industry bitz on this, put a Zombie Dragon skull on the barrel, replaced the Heavy Bolters with Reaper Autocannons (because CHAOS), and sculpted on candles and impurity seals. Not sure I'm done with the GS bits, I may add more as I paint it depending on whether or not what's already there is "too much." The treads are actually as sharp as they look, by the way, I've played an Apoc game with it and it took a while trying to pick all the little bits of green felt out of there.

HOLY CRAP.

This is amazing work, I love the melta gun marine

-Subbed

These are simply astounding!

Your army is in some suptile way very unkind against guardsmen
loving it, keep it up.

Really not keen on the dioramas, but thats with any models not just yours.

Good use of colour, excellent choices. I didnt think much of your attempted free hand to start with (banners etc) but its much improved on the tanks.

Cool work!

Well done! Very nice looking army

Finished the plasmagun squads today. The plasmagunners, champions and one of the icon bearers were painted quite some time ago, but I've done some slight tweaking to bring them in line with the new paints, mainly bumping up the highlights and script a little to improve the contrast.

XV Coterie, Phael Mathim (including a "Plasma: Totally Worth It" marine)



XVI Coterie, Phael Ayporos



Some closeups -

Champions



XV Coterie Plasmagunners



XVI Coterie Plasmagunners



Musicians (the teeth on the fellow on the left are quite nasty, didn't notice until after pics were uploaded, will have to fix that)



Icon Bearers (Left one was the one I'd painted previously, think I washed the right one a bit too heavily, may try to fix it at some point)



And some of my favorites out of the bolter marines.





Should have the Raptors done in a few days, possibly tomorrow.

As always, they look awesome! I like the exploding plasma weapon!

Aaaand the Raptors are finished.

XVIII Coterie, Quor Focalor



Closeups:









Planning on having the CC diorama squad finished some time next week.

Woah.

This has to be one of my favourite Chaos armies. It's very dark, gritty, and plain brutal all around. Fantastic work!

(I'm a big fan of the Word Bear)

Very nice stuff there, very nice indeed.