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Actually, I was suggesting replacing the RIGHT axe with a gun - not the chainaxe. Still looks cool, though!

Kraut, I'm liking the build so far, has that great gladiatorial feel to it, but I was wondering if you had any play in how the head was angled. If you could twist it ever so slightly to the model's right, I think it might bring it together a little more. It'll give the model more movement, like he saw an enemy to his right and it's just angling himself towards it.

The Dark Vengeance models have a wonderful sense of weight and menace to them, and I think you could use that to your advantage a bit. I'm liking the plasma pistol hand a lot more than the alternatives, the two axes was cool, but I think having them both diminishes the effect and makes him look a little overbalanced.

Either way looking forward to the results. Your creativity is a big inspiration.

I say the 'plain' axe instead of the plasma pistol. Plasma wounds don't give any blood, after all! Plus, the slight difference in style between the two axes, as well as the different holding position, would add a good sort of asymmetric balance that would fit well with a head turn.

I would say chainaxe in one hand and the wooden axe with the wrapped handle in the other.

I like the configuration with plain axe and plasma pistol as it is. The futuristic firearm emphasises the brutality of that anachronistic tech-less axe even more. And I like how he grabs the haft beneath the head. That's a man carrying the tool of his profession to the next work site.

I really liked the first axe. the difference between to two weapons was cool

See I also liked the first two axes, the problem I think was in what he was holding it was how he was holding it. Since they are both axes its more obvious of the difference in where on the axe he's holding. I think 2 axes is the best but choose whether you want both axes held by the handle ( Like the chain axe in the first pic ) or just chop the chain axe a little bit, fiddle with it and make him choking up on it holding it under the blade like the axe he is holding now.

Thanks for the well-considered feedback, guys! This really helps, even in those cases where I just elect to ignore any kind of useful criticism and stick to my own plans out of spite

Seriously, though: I think I am going to keep the plasma pistol -- it just seems like the cleanest, most sensible option to me -- and I am usually the first guy to put two (or more) CC weapons on my models. Maybe it's also the fact that I always love painting blue plasma coils? I don't know...
As for the right hand axe, I'll say that this is really one of the key elements of this conversion to me. I think Hruotland has perfectly summed it up:

 Hruotland wrote:
And I like how he grabs the haft beneath the head. That's a man carrying the tool of his profession to the next work site.

That's exactly the impression I wanted to convey! And just try to imagine how dangerous this guy has to be if he goes to war with such a relatively unsophisticated axe...

Anyway, this is the finished conversion:



As you can see, I have replaced the strange, unconnected cables at the top of the chestplate with a gorget piece. It's not easy to make out in the picture, but it looks like it's decorated with a row of stylised teeth, which I think is a rather nice fit for a World Eater.

As always, let me know what you think!

Grim and Malevolent

You know what you should make? A Plasma Axe.

Anvildude wrote:
You know what you should make? A Plasma Axe.

AMEN
*schwooooom*

- Salvage

Cheers guys! A plasma axe, though -- how would that differ from a regular power axe? Anyway, maybe when I next need a badass axe for one of my chaos lords? We'll see.

In the meantime, I've converted yet another Dark Vengeance model, and everything started with half a head:

My recent Chosen conversion left me with half a chopped-off Chosen head, and since I am always careful not to throw away anything the might yet prove useful, I tried my best to repair that helmet for future use. The solution was to splice it together with the jaws of a Cairn Wraith skull. Take a look:



I was pretty happy with this, and so I continued working on it. The combination of a) Biohazard's feedback above B) browsing through Wade Pryce's excellent World Eaters again c) the first leaked pictures from the upcoming, Khornate End Times release and d) the memory of a certain piece of Adrian Smith artwork from the 3.5 codex made me realise that there was just one way to go for this helmet:



While I was super-happy with the helmet, the usual routine of dry-fitting it to a couple of possible bodies I had lying around didn't really work out all that well: The head just looked too "special", for lack of a better word, to be squandered on yet another Chaos Space Marine. But then, fate intervened:

You see, some time ago I picked up an extra set of Dark Vengeance Chosen for a song from a fellow hobbyist. Those have served me very well for conversions (the bare-armed guy posted fairly recently in this thread is a good example of that). And having them around also means that I can keep a completely (or at least mostly) unchanged set of Chosen around, because I actually like the stock models very much. Another Kranon the Relentless model had been part of the deal as well, but the problem was that the previous owner seems to have been very fond of the old superglue, and while the regular Chosen are easy enough to cut apart, the way Kranon is designed has really prevented me from working with the model so far -- all that superglue really made it impossible to take the model apart. So it basically went to the bottom of the pile, with very little chance of ever seeing the light of day again.

But lo and behold, it turned out to be the perfect base for a conversion using the newly converted head. Sorting out the particulars took some doing, but after a bit of tweaking, I ended up with this model. Let's call him "Huntmaster Korann" or "Kornan" or whatever anagram of Kranon we can think of, for now:









The next thing to address will be his backpack. For now, it's mainly a placeholder:



It's basically a standard CSM backpack with a piece of horse spine stuck on top -- a leftover from an earlier, ultimately discarded, build of my World Eaters Apothecary. I just stuck it on this guy out of the blue, but I kinda like the effect with the spine. I have to say I am not a huge fan of Kranon's original backpack -- it looks slightly too organic and Gigeresque to really fit the style of my army. And I like how the standard backpacks bulk out the model's silhouette -- but I am still very open to suggestions at this point, so shoot!

All in all, this is turning to be quite a squad of Chosen, don't you think?



Which is funny, because I happen to have a lot of converted Chosen from the time before Dark Vengeance. Oh well...

As always, let me know what you think!

This guy has a certain -Idon't know, cannibalistic vibe to me? The theme of the gaping jaws is repeated down on his loincloth, and then the chopped head, like he is living up to the name of World Eater... I like him!

Love the helmet!

The pose looks a little static. But the cumulative effect, with the helmet and all of that Chosen ornamentation, is fantastic.

Chaos lord is really damn intimidating!

Liking your chosen too..I'm procrastinating on converting mine so i must say i'm inspired to get off my butt :p

Looks brutal. If you twisted the sword arm out a bit it might make it a little less static. Like he's going in for another swing with the sword.

He might benefit from a 32mm or 40mm base

A skull would look good on top of that spinal cord.

Man that squad looks great!! I do believe that he is a little static though.. Perhaps twisting the sword arm as suggested by Medium of Death will give him more dynamism. And if you go that direction, try raising the right foot a bit abioe the ground and twist his head a little bit too...
Anyway good work!!

Or you could put a pelvis and some dangly legs on the spine. Change it up a bit, subvert expectations. After all, it's Skulls for the Skull Throne- Khorne gets the skulls, the Berserkers get what's left!

Not bad, actually they're rather menacing. A extra skull may be the finishing touch on the lord.

Is noone writing here any more?

Why is noone writing here anymore?

@ Iliu: Haha, easy there, mate! I was just ...conserving my strength, so to speak. For something big

In other words: There goes my impulse control again:



The level of detail in that kit is amazing -- so is the amount of extra bitz you get! It should certainly be possible to get my money's worth out of this guy! Here's my (very early) battle plan:

Most of the kit will - obviously - be used to built a Bloodthirster that may or may not end up having some resemblance with Angron. It seems easy enough to create a bit of a resemblance via some cable-dreadlocks, but we will see about that. Right now, the lowly Bloodletter of Unfettered Fury is my favourite, because there's something iconic about the classic weapon combo of whip and axe that I love. Plus that face is amazing (it's also the one that resembles the artwork of Daemon Primarch Angron the most, incidentally).

I probably won't be using the two-handed axe on this main model, but let me just take a moment to say the thing is MASSIVE! Like, Imperial Knight massive -- it could conceivably be used to give an Imperial Knight an axe -- not an especially big axe for a Knight, but a serviceable one, certainly.

The rest of the kit will then be used to spice up some Daemon models I've built earlier, namely my two Khornate Daemon Princes appearing earlier on this thread (the bestial one and the gladiatorial one). There are some additional doodads in the kit that both models will certainly profit from.

If anything's still left after that, expect to see it on some of my World Eaters -- every single plastic bit from this kit will be used in one way or another -- at least, that's the plan


Let me just share some additional, Bloodthirster-related observations -- maybe it'll be helpful for those of you who are still on the fence about whether or not the kit is worth it for them.

Here's what my own model looks like right now:



Now I did take it fairly slow, even though it may not look like it: The head, left arm and armour plates are just tacked on for now. However, since the first seven or so construction steps are the same for all three variants of the model, there was little harm in assembling him so far. It's a wonderfully engineered kit, and the only part that has been giving me any trouble whatsoever is the tongue, of all things.

Anyway, I am pretty sure you all want to hear about the size of the model, so here he is, next to a standard Space Marine:



He could always have been bigger, of course, but I am rather happy with the model's size and bulk. There's also a very handy scale conversion pic here, for those of you who want to know how the model measures up next to the other Bloodthirster models so far.

One interesting thing is that nobody forces you to build your Bloodthirster all armoured up: Here's what he looks like with all the armour plates removed:



The only armour you will positively need is that belly plate, since he'll have a pretty big hole in his torso, otherwise.

Oh, and I know you all want to know about the size of that axe, so here's another scale comparison for you:



Pretty big, huh?

So, what's in the kit beyond that? First and foremost, you'll get the option to build either of the three advertised variants, of course. You also get to mix and match between them to a certain degree. I suppose it should even be possible to create new weapons setups (twin axes, for example) with a bit of cutting and gluing. Now when it comes to extra bitz, here's a a quick overwiev of my observations so far:

You get an additional set of arms (for the two handed axe) plus an additional left arm, depending on whether you go with the whip or that - very stupid, in my opinion - meteor hammer
there's an alternate breastplate, loincloth and belly plate. You can mix and match between different setups with these.
You get three complete heads (except for a tongue bit that is shared between two of the designs). The leftover heads are only ever so slightly larger than those of the plastic Daemon Prince kit, so they should be usable on your DP conversions.
there's a bunch of chains and talismans of Khorne that you can use on the wings or be used on different models
you get two axe heads for the one-handed axe.

Let's take a closer look at some of the bitz:



I. The optional skull shoulder pad is interesting in that it would possibly work as a facemask on a daemon engine or *gasp* even an Imperial Knight conversion

II. If - like me - you think that flame pillar is a stupid way to elevate the model on the base, you'll get it as a leftover bit that might make a cool objective marker or something similar...

III. Here's the alternate armour set you get: Those belly plates work pretty well as bespoke pauldrons for Chaos Terminators, you know...

IV. The chains and talismans for the wings -- I think I'll rather be using these on a couple of different models, as the Bloodthirster seems cluttered enough for my taste

In closing, let me point out two more interesting bitz:

First up, the chaos icon used on the Bloodthirster's whip:



I think this would make for an excellent squad standard or a back-banner for a Dark Apostle. I am also considering leaving it off, because I would rather have a whip without a bulky object like this on its end, but the part is still very cool on its own.

There's also the RT-era styled bone crown for the Bloodthirster head:



As you can see, it comes as a separate bit, so you could also use it on your DPs, juggernauts or even on a Terminator lord (it almost looks like the top of a Terminator torso front anway...).

So yeah, so far for my observations! Hope this helps!

Very handy thanks, only other thing I'm wondering about is the 40k rules, I assume they're just the same between all three variants?

This thing is seriously stretching my 'don't buy things paint them' plan.

Nice. I plan One getting one myself. It's a plus to know the spur has some extra useful bits.

Wow. That looks so good.

Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go beat my wallet until it coughs up more dough.

Cheers, guys!

@ Ignatius-Grulgor: The 40k rules are probably a bit of a disappointment, as far as rules go: Just a single page of the instruction booklet deals with 40k, and even then, all it provides is one statline for all three variants of the model. Definitely don't buy this kit for the 40k rules alone!


In the meantime, while plotting out the course for my Bloodthirster model, I've already been using some of the bitz from the kit in different projects: Since I knew I wasn't going to use the meteor hammer weapon, no matter what, I used the chain from it to add a final, gladiatorial dash to one of my Daemon Princes. Take a look:











His two weapons are now connected by a length of daemonic chain -- I think this pushes the gladiatorial look even further, which I really like! I also used two of the small wing doodads from the Bloodthirster kit to make the armour look more Khornate -- the extra bitz from the Bloodthirster are actually a godsend when it comes to spicing up that rather bland and cartoony DP kit, if you ask me!

As always, let me know what you think!

Looking good so far !

Whew...

Great review of the new BT kit, thanks for all of that

Will be looking forward to more Khorne mayhem, as ever!

- Salvage