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I think he looks really good.

Can't say if the shoulder pads are too big or not, they stand out because they are metal. I think we would need to see a painted or primed model to be able to fully tell.

DECISIONS, DECISIONS, DECISIONS?
Well as with all my projects I need to consider the army’s appearance and how the units will look next to each other and as always I’ll be grateful to hear your thoughts on each of them…

No 1; Terminators Or True Scale Marines?
As Perkustin pointed out the new Scarab Occult warrior looks nothing like a pre-heresy terminator, but to be honest I’m not much a fan of hunchbacked terminator armour. Also when I finished creating this guy my first thoughts were ‘damn I’ve made a true scale marine’.

I had plan to include the FW Iron Armour conversions as interceptors to add some variety (& agility) to the army, the downside is they’re only a bit bigger than the standard marine on the right so they would destroy all illusion of this being a true-scale marine army and could even look odd.



So should I have these terminators be true scale marines in artificer armour (like I had planned originally but these guys are big enough to do it). Or just say it’s specially designed terminator armour for the thousand sons’ Scarab Occult and field interceptors and other power armoured units?

No 2; Ghosts Of Prospero?
When running a deep striking terminator force you need a psychic beacon on the board asap to get the +1 to reserve rolls, this means either a 55pt Inquisitor that hides in terrain or Mordrak.
Mordrak is cool but I’m having trouble deciding on what to represent the ghost knights with. I’ve considered a group of powerful tutelaries that have materialised to fight for their master, problem is this sounds a bit weird as tutelaries weren’t at all like that in the book. Or go with the basic look and create some ghostly looking versions of the standard scarab occult warriors perhaps adding skull heads and lots of battle damage, it could even be like the Mordrak fluff only instead of Huron Blackheart they want revenge on the space wolves.

No 3; Back Up Weapons?
One last small thing; Even thou the thousand sons can yield powerful projectiles they always carry a their weapons which I’ve done for the first 3 with holstered bolt pistols, problem is how can I model holstered storm bolters? I guess if I go with the true scale marines I can use holstered ork sluggas for bolt pistols but I like to know if anyone has ideas for modelling the unused storm bolters?

As always I'll be grateful for any feedback on these issues.

From the moment I read the codex, I envisioned Mordrak's ghost Knights as the noble souls of the dead marines. So how they looked in their prime. I figured the easiest way to represent them would be by creating normal terminators, and then painting them white undercoat and green wash (though any other wash will get the same ethereal look). So the spirits of the terminators in their armour, rather than the dead skeletal warriors.

Looks great. I like the appearance of those shoulder pads.

Foxtale wrote:From the moment I read the codex, I envisioned Mordrak's ghost Knights as the noble souls of the dead marines. So how they looked in their prime. I figured the easiest way to represent them would be by creating normal terminators, and then painting them white undercoat and green wash (though any other wash will get the same ethereal look). So the spirits of the terminators in their armour, rather than the dead skeletal warriors.

Too boring for my liking, to be honest I think I'll take Mordrak but only as an independent character for his first turn strike and +1 to reserve rolls. I'll might create two tularies/warp entities for the ghost knights he might summon when he takes a wound thou.

ARM YOURSELVES!
Originally I had planned to focus this army purely on the magic, magical bolts for storm bolters, powerful spells for special weapons and huge spirits for Dreadknights. I’ve decided to drop this concept and return to basics as ironically enough Ahriman states in the book...

“We are Astartes first, psykers second”

So with that in mind I’ve decided to make a few changes…

Special Weapons will be represented by Reaper Autocannons for Psycannons and Heavy Flamers for Incinerators, instead of powerful spells being cast with the aid of tutelaries. However I still plan to feature them in the army as each independent character will have personalised one, plus I’ll make some for objective markers or servo skulls.

1 or 2 warriors in each squad will be equipped with a storm bolter (hand held not wrist mounted).

Dreadknights are out of the question now, it feels more like I’m trying to come up with a way to field a powerful and competitive unit instead of trying to be accurate with the fluff so I’ll be fielding venerable dreads instead. I do look forward to picking the brains of the forgeworld team to see what other upgrades are in store for the new pre-heresy dread kit at Gamesday next month.

Also I’ve decided not to come empty handed this time and thought I’d upload a picture of the painted upper body of the terminator I’ve been working on all week. I decided to vanish the scarabs instead of continue struggling to add reflection lines, however I feel I need to highlight them more before vanishing them like the one on the front plate which is a bit too dark.

What do you think?

Also I’m slowly getting the hang of painting white robes, but I’m probably going to still have to repaint a few of them.

It's looking fantastic!

Thanks

Foxtale wrote:It's looking fantastic!

Motion seconded, that looks incredible dude!! i hope you do get to finish this project. im in awe!

PROJECT UPDATE!
Just a quick project update, just to let you know this project is still going. I’m finally getting the hang of painting white and how thin I need the paint to be so with luck I’ll have that first model up soon, but not till I’m happy with it thou.

Here’s a list of a few changes and concepts I’m considering at the moment as always I’m grateful for any feedback that is given…

Tutelaries
Sadly I’ve decided to drop the concept of tutelaries representing special weapons for actual weapons so Reaper Autocannons as Psycannons and Heavy Flamers as Incinerators. However I still plan to use them as objective markers as their biggest use in the novel was allowing the thousands sons to scout the battlefield unnoticed.

Interceptor Squads
I’m looking to field some interceptors as I need some mobility in the army and it will allow me to field the iron armour conversion alongside my terminators.
Problem is they’re best suited to ranged support so I’m trying to think how best to represent their Psybolt storm bolters and Psycannons since I’m no longer keen on the all of the marines using psychic bolts and spells. Some of my terminators will be armed with actual storm bolters but I’m not sure how to represent this on the power armoured warriors? So far my best idea is to arm them with the pre-heresy boltguns from FW and have they’re swords holstered in scabbards.

Quick edit; I've just come across this cool looking bolt pistol variant which I think has the potential to be a great 'counts as' storm bolter, which is better than empty hands hurling magic bolts.



Hidden Ones
I’ve been reading some detailed fluff on the 40k wiki sight and the 1k sons scouts (a.k.a the hidden ones) were often fielded as espionage agents. Often using their psychic powers to brainwash the agent into being completely unaware of his mission. So I was thinking would it be great to have a hidden one as a callidus assassin so once the thousand sons sent the psychic signal the agent would pounce.
I think it would be cool as I could model a variety of agents for different races (with the exception of daemons, necrons and Tyranids) that had been captured and then altered mentally and psychically before being released. What do you think?

HQ Choices
I’ve got two commander conversions planned nicknamed ‘the phoenix king’ a master of the pyrae and ’little magnus’ a master of the raptora (and Mordrak count as) still trying to think of a good way to convert Cortex for when I want to field Prospero thall wizard squads?

Deadline
The set deadline I aim to have this army ready for is the Caledonian Uprising tournament at ‘Maelstrom’ in January next year.



ONE MORE THING...
I was thinking of getting the heavy bolter arms with my pre-heresy dread to convert them into autocannons, but after seeing this image just now and the size of the ammo drums I'm thinking it maybe better to use the slimmer assault cannon arm as a base for converting the autocannon weapons? Then again I'm sure I could replace them, so which arm do you think would look better; The heavy bolter with small ammo drums and autocannon barrels (shortened) or the assault cannon arms with the barrel replaced with twin full length autocannon barrels?

Heavy bolter all the way!

I think the Heavy Bolter has a better base and a much bulkier look for a rifle dread. Also, it seems like it would be a LOT harder to make the Assault Cannon into an Autocannon than vice-versa. Are you still going to include Magnus the Red in your army? I was converting one myself for a while in Terminator scale, and something similar would make a good Draigo or Mordrak

I think you should make the autocannon look similar to the lascannons. It might be alot of work, but if you turn the heavy bolters 90 degrees, so the ammo drums were underneath, and set them back a bit, then add longer barrels, it would lok wicked. If you just add longer barrels to the heavy bolters it will look off balance.


Great blog!!!

Archmagos_Amadeus wrote: Are you still going to include Magnus the Red in your army? I was converting one myself for a while in Terminator scale, and something similar would make a good Draigo or Mordrak

Little Magnus
I considered him at first but let's face it no character in the 40k could represent Magnus as we are talking about a character that can kill titans!

Instead I plan to field something different: In ‘Horus Rising’ one of the captains is the splitting image of the Primarch and is nicknamed ‘little Horus’ and is rarely called by his real name. So I plan to make a little Magnus, using a space wolf head, and giving him a suit of armour with horns. I’m also thinking of making his weapon exchangeable between a curved sword and a crystal hammer (for when I want to use Mordrak)



Omen Pattern Bolters
As I mentioned in my previous post I was struggling to think of a way to represent storm bolters on my interceptors without using actual storm bolters or ‘invisible magical bolts’. Luckily I came across the ‘Omen pattern boltgun’ converted by Wolfs16 but while he used scout pistols I plan to use the forge world Umbra Ferrox bolter and replace the barrel.

Problem is the scout binoculars from the land speeder storm kit which is the critical part is proving hard to find, so far I’ve only found it on eBay but need to buy the scout passenger with it.
.

A very cool conversion! I just used the bitz that I had lying around and since I have 3 Landspeeder Storms in my army, I had quite a few of those! Not sure how many you were planning on making, but you can find the Scout Accessories on eBay pretty easily.

I'll have to look through this thread later, but from what I can see, it looks really good!

Every time I see that picture of Magnus, I can't help but think of using an OK bull as the base, cut and sculpted to make him not look like a fatty. I believe that there is an OK bit that is a large stone hammer to fit your crystal hammer idea.

Damn am i jealous, i wanted to do this but never actually did anything . I look forward to seeing more though, as for dreadknights...well, Magnus encountered the cultures of other planets and didn't want to destroy them or their libraries so maybe he was able to save some scrap of tech and used it to make large dreadnoughts?

PROGRESS!
The first squad is nearing completion just need the small shields to arrive which should be tomorrow, after which I’ll upload the 4 newest warriors. I’ll also be placing a order to forgeworld as well for the dreads, iron armour and boltguns to collect at Gamesday.
I’ve also finally settled on a list that consists of…

A Grand Master,
20 Terminators,
10 Interceptors,
& 2 Dreads

This all needs to be completed in time for the Caledonian Uprising tournament in the 3rd week of January, it’s a bit of a risky deadline but if I should fail to meet the 20 terminator mark I’ll settle for 15 with an ‘Hidden One’ assassin & upgrade to venerable dreads.
So hopefully production will pick up by the end of the month, till then behold my first reaper Autocannon warrior!

Also special thanks to everyone who helped donate scout bitz for the omen class bolters.

That's looking very noble. Normally true-scale looks a bit odd, but yours are looking very nice. The shoulderpads fit in well to the scale.

I yearn to see this painted.

AN ARMY OF GIANTS!!!
Today the final parts arrived for my Scarab Occult terminators so I glued & bluetaced the rest of the squad together.



I decided early on to scrap the invisible magic bolts for actual weapons so I’ve brought several of the SM commander’s storm bolter which was the easiest to convert. However rather than trying to remove the awkward mould line on the top detail I got rid of it and was going to replace it with a bolter sight from the tactical box set, but instead I made my own sights using the parts of the interceptor teleporter packs instead.
The Justicar is a simple variant using a thousand son helmet, I was going to add a banner but you would hardly see it behind the large head crest.
My favourite thou is the hammer, I love seeing thunder hammers in Dawn Of War and Space Marine as you really feel the impacts. So I decided to copy the animation when the force commander raises it in the air then brings it down on an enemy from DOW.
Finally there’s the reaper Autocannon which will represent my Psycannons, I got rid of the skull and added a eagles wing to the side to make it less chaos themed, I also swapped a halberd to the left hand.

I’m looking forward to seeing one of my squads charge for the first time as they completely dwarf standard models, just look at their size compared to the black reach marine. The dreadnoughts will be quite big as well so this will be an army of giants!

I'd like to hope it's just the blu-tak, but the ones on the outside look really tall with really thin waists. Perhaps it's because the shoulderpads are so wide. Still, I'd lower them down a little.

The thunder hammer looks FANTASTIC! Really dynamic.

Your justicar variant works really well to distinguish him. A crest was all it needed. And his pose looks really nice too.

The one on the left looks a little static by comparison.

It's amazing looking back on the start of this project and seeing how far it's come.

Amazing man...They look soooooo good!

I LOVE THOSE TERMIES.

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Hope you don't mind, but I am going to borrow the idea of using those legs if that's alright haha.

Beautiful work man, spot on excellent for what you're going for.

AMAZING!! Very awesome terminators! love the shoulderpads and the legs make them look nice and big... like they should be!

The Scarab Terminator looks really good. I have an entire army based of of Regular Thousand Sons marines.

Them true scale termies look amazing. Where did you get the legs from? I'm rubbish with making robes from green stuff and i want some true scale marines.

LITTLE MAGNUS?
The project goes well, sadly because I'm spending a week painting each pair of models and the white robes are taking a lot of time to master it maybe a while before you see a full squad painted.

But if I keep up this pace the army will be complete in time for the tournament in January. Meanwhile I've been taking breaks to do a bit of conversion work for other units, one of which is my alternative commander 'little Magnus'.

I think it's daft to try and represent a Primarch stat wise, Magnus would be able to unleash firepower similar to a titan. So I decided to create a captain nicknamed 'little Magnus' due to his resemblance to the Primarch. I had hoped to convert him from the grey knights like my first commander but while messing around with the bitz yesterday I discovered the arms, shoulder pads and head looked out of proportion so I decided to look elsewhere and found this model.

True I won’t be able to use it in GW stores but I think he’d make a great Draigo counts as with storm shield in one hand?

is that a new scibor ive never seen it before

The work your doing is awesome, it sad that GW started 40k with you make the model you can play it ie the grav tank out of a underarm roll-on, and now is oh dear the chap in workshop cant make gak that why you got 15+ years model for ork buggy and wartrak / srochas. or any other codex their working on 1/2 done.

amazing job i want to use that same conversion on my crusaders!