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So I've bought myself a squad of Tartaros Terminators from the BoP boxed set after fiddling around with some HH army ideas. I settled for an Army of Dark Compliance, which is basically Traitor Imperial Guard with some Legionnaires to lead them to their grisly dea- I mean, glory and victory. Yes. For the Warmaster, and all that jazz.

Now for the Traitor IG I'm going to re-use a squad of Cadians and a squad of Vostroyans I bought years ago, painted in the following scheme:



The IG component will also consist of two converted Leman Russ's, which will be painted in a grey, urban camo-ish scheme.

But I'm a bit torn over which Legion I'll attach to them. The fact that this is a Traitor-only faction does help out a bit, but that still leaves me with 9 options. I also plan to convert the Tartaros so they look more Chaos-y, as the army is set during the later years of the Heresy. Here's an image of what I'm aiming for with the Terminators:


Also, praise the Gods that GW uses red for 90% of their Chaos range; it makes photoshopping these things a lot easier!

So they'll be pretty evil-looking, to say the least.

With that in mind, I've narrowed down the possible Legions to the following;

- Word Bearers: they definitely fit the aesthetic, but given that their armour is also red, they're going to stand out less amongst their IG buddies. Also, they're not my favourite Legion either.
- Sons of Horus: because who better than to collect the Warmaster's Due than his own sons? The Tartaros armour looks a bit too sleek for the ruthless XVIth, though.
- World Eaters: I've seen some Tartaros painted in their livery, and they look pretty damn good in it. It'd make them stand out from the IG units, too. Not sure if it'd be a good matchup from a fluff perspective, though.

Other Legions I'm also considering, but less than the above, are the Emperor's Children, the Night Lords and maybe the Alpha Legion.

So, what do you guys think?

If your going chaos-y, you realistically have 2 options: Emperor's Children and Word bearers.

With the Heresy, most legions weren't really pro-chaos excluding the two above. And in the case of the other 7, they only went full mutation and what not post-terra.

Sons of Horus, and horus himself, weren't really corrupted/mutated all to much.
The same goes for world eaters (though you could probably toss in the red paint if your going for late heresy, and a blood thirster to pretend to be ascended Angron?)
DG never willingly went chaos 'till Typhon screwed them up shortly before Terra.
Night Lords were less chaos, and more complete space pirates.
Alpha legion never really went 'chaos' much like the Night Lords
Thousand sons I hardly consider traitors (based on the 30k fluff )
Iron Warriors were also, and still are, REALLY light on actually looking like 'chaos'


if you're going strictly for that mutated scheme: Word Bearers for the CSM effect, Emperor's Children if you wanna go nuts with colours, faces, and other generally gross things.

have you thought about making you bearers a company who kept the older grey armour colours?

Perhaps 'chaos-y' wasn't really the right word to describe what I'm aiming for; I think this passage from The Path of Heaven novel describes it a bit better:

The Justaerin had always made their armour their own, marking it with heritage-tokens extending back to the gangs of Cthonia, but now the alteration of their Legion-issue plate had accelerated. Blood-brown bones clanked from chains set about their waists, and their pauldrons bore iron spikes set amid more glistening eyes. Sigils had been daubed across shell-chipped ceramite, signs of potency now taught to them by their consorts beyond the veil.

More evil-looking and customized, but not yet fully mutated/sworn to the Dark Gods. I know my Photoshop image still sports a mutated tentacle-thing, but I used that arm mostly because it was the only Chaos Terminator arm I could fit in there

Also, part of my army's fluff revolves around the IG contingent becoming more and more disillusioned and horrified by their masters' increasing corruption, culminating in them actually turning on the Legionnaires and getting killed to the man once said Legionnaires develop mutations and start summoning daemons.

... although that does lead me right back to Word Bearers again, doesn't it

The grey armour colours do sound pretty good, maybe I could use the Ashen Circle's colour scheme as a starting point? I'll have to be careful not to turn them into Carcharadons by accident, though

I fiddled with the concept some more in Photoshop; I think I've found a good look for them:



This one is based on both the WB's pre-heresy colour scheme and the Ashen Circle's armour, and it works pretty well in my opinion.

However, as this is supposed to be a late-Heresy army, I felt that I needed to add a little red to them to tie them to their Legion... which led to the following idea:



I'd also add some black glyphs/sigils to the armour panels to help reinforce the Word Bearer look. I'm worried that they're going to end up looking too much like Space Sharks, though....

Thoughts?

The grey is nice, it does look a lot like the Ashen Circle paint scheme though.

That could be a good thing, or bad thing depending on your perspective.