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Inspired by the blogs of Migsula, Apologist and Synapse (over at Warseer) I've decided to give true scale Space Marines a shot. I've always been fond of the Word Bearers and with the Horus Heresy novels they seem to have truly become the villains of the 40k universe.

With the pre-Heresy stuff out there I felt that that would be interesting to do as well, but the thing is that I wanted a bit more than "normal" looking Marines, I would like to see some skulls, chains, scrolls and lets face it, the daemonic head icon looks way cooler than a book with a flame in it! So why not combine both ideas, hence the Heresy era Word Bearers were born. As a sort of tribute to Apologist's Ultramarines, these Word Bearers are going to be part of the force that invaded Calth. I have been pondering about including Marduk and Burias from Dark Apostle/Disciple in it, but I'm not 100% sure about that one yet.

I will simply create with what I have, and will not really look at rules or game play, this is supposed to be a fully modelling project (fluff coming later).

I currently will start with the following:

Word Bearers Veteran Coterie:
-Sergeant Charon: bolter and lightening claw
-Battle Brother: bolter
-Battle Brother: bolter and chainsword
-Battle Brother: missile launcher and auspex
-Battle Brother: bolter

Dark Mechanicus allies:
-Hysminai: heavy bolter and chainsword
-Cycnus: multi-melta

I still need to add names and stories to all those things. Might add a few more Dark Mechanicus stuff later on. I also want to include a unit of 10-20 Traitor Guardsmen, these will be converted from Icesword's Red Guard models by Troll Forged Miniatures. I will need to look through my bitboxes I have somewhere at my parents' house to see what I've got left, might include a Dreadnought or a tank if I still got them! Cultists will also come, but so far I haven't found anything worthy. I want them to look like...well skinny, practically naked (loincloths only) and kind of running scared or praying...true cannon fodder!

But yeah, here are the first...veeeeeeeery WIP pictures, they still need well...everything basically. Need to lengthen the legs with 1mm or 2mm, greenstuff needs to be added to fill the gaps, create the torsos and so on, paint needs to be removed, details added, etc etc etc. They are currently to sort of get an idea for their poses/looks/etc.













Sergeants' new head:



Bolters:


Next to a human sized model:


Hysminai:


Cycnus:





Groupshot:

The conversions are nice, but I'll save my real judgement on these when theysee painting.

Small update:

Started working on the fourth Word Bearer, I wanted him to have a different look, hence I constructed different shoulderpads.




I also reworked some of the bolters and made a new one as well:

Awesome.

I love the "Beakie" marine thats just amusing and appeals to me on several levels. For the scared wretches your looking for how about Wargames Factories Celts they're proper 28mm and would therefore accentuiate the size of the Marines more and their smaller size would make them look more emanciated and woebegone. Alternatively the GW flagellants are another good place to start a mate of mine uses them to good effect as "Hobgoblin" slaves in his Chaos Dwarf army.

I'm trying to get that 17th century painting vibe when it comes to the cultists, so naked guys in loincloths (PG13 friendly) running around is kind of what I'm after.