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Was building up a list for my next army and realized that the models that I'd need to be using are either 'resin-only' or don't have dedicated kits for them.

Now I'm not the brightest in terms of converting so I was wondering if more experience Chaos players could give me some tips?

1. Noise Marines: Are Forgeworld Emperor's Children Kakophoni models a nice way to represent them? Or the Noise Marine upgrade set? The Noise Marine upgrade set seems like it only gives you 2 weapons (which also happen to look different to each other...)

2. Regular Chaos Space Marine troops: Just straight out the box? Or does any one use the MK III power armor version?

3. Obliterators: Man the GW models look terrible... are you guys just using the GW resin models?

4. Chosen: Any suggestions to make them look distinct from regular marines?

Any help would be appreciated!

Also I thought just hit me- I personally love staying in-fluff for my armies.
Would it be considered 'out of fluff' if I build my Chaos marines MK III or MK IV Space Marine models?
Which legion would fit the idea best? (like Chaos Marine minus all the spikes etc. ) Maybe the Chosen ones can have the spikes and claws etc...?

For all my marines I was using a kitbash of Chaos marines, new raptors, possessed and dark vengeance chosen. Just mash them all together to create unique marines.

Obliterators I kit bashed 3 hellbrutes together with a box of space marine centurions.

Noise marines I would probably just do the same thing but add some interesting guns.

Chosen I just added fantasy chaos warrior cloaks

For conversion or modification there are non-Citadel miniature companies out there who make things from entire Chaos Space Marine analogues, to just things like shoulder pads.
Kromlech do a "Morbid Legionary" range, which is similar to Nurgle, and "Bedlam Fraternity" which is similar to Slaanesh. They also have a range for Tzeentch equivalents too, but the name evades me.
Shapeway Games is also a market place where people design things and 3d print or cast them. They're often good for modifications and are mostly reasonable price.

I've found that buying the Dark Imperium box set turned out to be good value. It has a Death Guard battalion (2xHQ, 3xTroops + Others) so can get you started straight away, but nearly all of these models are monopose. So even if you choose to have a main force of some other warband or legion, you can have an additional Battalion. The start collecting sets usually only have enough for a patrol detachment, for a similar price. You could go halves with a friend and they could get the Primaris Marines, or even just set the BRB and Primaris and probably make most of the money back.

I'm a returning player, so have had plenty of older 2nd chaos, but I lacked enough troops to field anything other than a patrol detachment, but had more elites and fast attacks. I decided I wanted some cannon-fodder so ended up buying some Dark Vengeance cultists from e-bay (DV cultists have champion and special weapons models), and I'll buy the Cultist Assault box as that has more cultists and an exalted champion, but less than the price I'd pay for 4x boxes of cultists and an exalted champion separately. The cultists are hard to kit bash without taking a knife to them, but things like imperial guard are cheap alternatives.

1. No comment.

2. Straight out of the box is pretty much the easiest way to go. They don't look that bad, despite what some people might tell you. However, i'd actually avoid even playing Chaos Space Marines outright. They're just chaos Tac Marines, and ask any Space Marines player how they think about their tac marines.

3. I don't own oblits, but this can work the same for you. Buy a box of Stormfiends (the age of sigmar big rats) and cut off the tail. Slap on some Daemon heads from the DP box or Spawn box, and you got yourself some actually decent big guys! For roughly the same price too.

4. I persoanlly just own dark vengence Chosen, but if you want a very disctinct elite marine unit, just convert some Primaris marines into Chaos. They're just a bit larger than normal marines, making them pretty easy to pick out of a crowd.


Also, the most fluffy/aesthetically sound legion you would go for for that marine style is probably Iron Warriors.

My Plague Marines are all MkIII (BoC), with a few forgeworld shoulder pads and some plastic nurgle heads, and a little green stuff here and there.

My friend made superb obliterators using plastic chaos terminators, mash a few weapons together and add green stuff.


Chaos is great for conversions...

My plague marines are a mix of actual plague marines, heavily converted CSM, Forgeworld plague marines, spellcrow and kromlech miniatures.

For Obliterators I used the nurglified ones from Wargames Exclusive (great quality!), spellcrow, Hitech morbid angels and Scibor. All of them look much better than the terrible GW models (that is, if you want them to be nurgle... for other gods hitech probably is a good way too.)

Regular marines: I actually like the classic box, but it lacks special weapons and many consider the design to be rather outdated. MK III/IV are perfect for Chaos (even GW sees that and gave the new plague Marines MK III).

Chosen: cloaks, mutations, special helmets/ no helmets the list is long. Take a look at Anvil industry, Kromlech, Spellcrow, puppets war and let them inspire you.

MkIII for most, and MkIV/MkVI for the Raptors. Basic Space Marine kits for most things, and I've got some easy-to-build Aggressors I'll be turning into Obliterators.

Vehicles are custom Rhino-Russes w/ Deimos style resin turrets.

Terminators are from BoP (Tartaros).

Also very interested in what people say as I'll be needing to convert some Chaos models.

Some pictures would be great!
(Especially obliterator and noise marine conversions...)

Personally I'd use the MKIII / IV marines and get FW shoulder pads for my legion

Noise Marines:

Be sure to look at the Noise Marines Sonic Weapons kit and not the Noise Marines Upgrade Pack.

The Sonic Weapons kit comes with 6 weapons (5 sonic blasters and 1 blastmaster). Multiple of these kits will be enough to kit out a unit.
If you want a doom siren, pick up one of the Noise Marine Upgrade Packs, they have 1 doom siren, 1 sonic blaster, 1 blastmaster, and a few upgrade bits for the champion.

The Horus Heresy Kakaphoni certainly can be used, but they only use one weapon type (looks like a big sonic blaster). So if you want blastmasters or doom sirens in the unit you'll have to convert them.

www.spellcrow.com sells sets of "sonic guns" and "heavy sonic guns" that work well.

I have used all of these bits with the GW Mark IV plastic armor sets from Horus Heresy and they look great.

Good Luck!

have Iron Warriors, using Mk III marines I got cheap from Calth boxsets. I'm using the same heads on some Aggressors plus weapon conversions for my Oblits. Pretty easy so far.

 bullyboy wrote:
have Iron Warriors, using Mk III marines I got cheap from Calth boxsets. I'm using the same heads on some Aggressors plus weapon conversions for my Oblits. Pretty easy so far.

Prospero is the one with MK III. Calth has the MKIV armour.

In the case of my Chaos Marines, I collect Iron Warriors so I've decided to primarily make them up for Mk3 Power Armour from plastic HH boxes. I've also added in various Forgeworld components as some of the items produced are compatible with the plastic kits, this is how I built my Havocs.

As far as Obliterators go I just have the "finecast" GW offering, despite loathing the quality of "finecast" products. This is largely because I play at GW stores, as well as independents, hence requiring compliance with model usage set out by the shop. There are undoubtedly better offerings available from third parties as, like many models in the range, Oblit's are in need of a bit of make over.

Unfortunately I can't help you much with Noise Marines beyond suggesting the weapon kits available through GW's own website. Regarding the Chosen, these warriors tend to be veterans which have been separated for recognition by the Chaos Gods. If you look up images based off what GW have previously produced, and read up on the surrounding lore, these warriors typically possess mutations and/or their armour tends to be more ornate with trophies and decor. You could accomplish this with parts from other kits or potentially using green stuff depending on what you're aiming for.

With the Chaos legions/warbands they have developed a heavy reliance over the years on scavenging what they need from the field or through raiding supply depots and similar facilities. Given that time flows differently in the warp it's not outside of the realms of possibility that your warriors would be in early power armour patterns, as with most of 40k the cosmetics are largely at your discretion.

I would suggest checking out the Lexicanum website for some reading, there is a lot of information available regarding the legions, renegade chapters and various warbands. It may be that you find a backstory which appeals greatly. Another factor to consider, depending on your priorities, would be to have a look at the Chaos Codex to try and get an idea of unit availability, stratagems, relics and other special rules.

Hopefully the above is of some help.

Also, if you're not much into the GW aesthetic there are loads of resin aftermarket companies for some more..."sane" options to build Chaos marines. I use a lot of Maxmini.eu parts on my models. They have some excellent plaguemarine heads/backpacks, etc. They have a good head set for Noise Marines. I know Kromlech (I believe) and some other companies produce sonic-weaponry, etc.

For the toned down Chaos look, I find the backpacks to be a simple way to very quickly make anything look like a Chaos marine, without going overboard.

The only one I can help with is chosen. I took a chaos marine troop box, added mk 3 backpacks, bought a range of fantasy chaos helmets, as well as some 3rd party shoulderpads/plasmaguns from http://evilcraft.eu/products/ (NOT the spiky veteran ones - they are HUGE) and threw it all together to get some more ornate and spiky marines. Turned out to be expensive though.

I have more conversion plans for the future. No idea if they will work though I think first up will be skaven stormfiend obliterators - if all goes well, they should look like the results of fabius biles' horrific science experiments gone right

1. Noise Marines: Don't use them, sorry

2. Regular Chaos Space Marine troops: Regular dudes.

3. Obliterators: Easy to build Aggressors with weapon barrel and head swap. Shave the aquila off.

4. Chosen: convert some Primaris marines. Shave the aquila and kitbash with CSM loot.


Potential backfire if gw gives csm primaris in the distant future, but I think it will be a long time before that.

1. For Noise Marines I use normal CSM, grabbed some sonic weapons from Spellcrow, and then painted them pink. I like them.

2. I'm perfectly happy with the normal CSM kit, lack of some options notwithstanding, so that's all I use.

3. For Obliterators I grabbed a box of Chaos Terminators, gave them all reaper autocannons for one arm, and used spawn bits for the head and other arm. They're currently my favourite models in my army.

4. I don't use chosen, and unless they release an amazing kit with a huge amount of options I wouldn't bother. I'd just tell my opponent that a certain squad of CSM models are chosen.

I was using converted Chaos Terminators as Obliterators until I found these bad boys from warex_store on ebay and ordered 3 squads hah



At the moment I am building a Khorne army using all the Sigmar models, Bloodreavers as Berserkers, Wrathmongers as Terminators etc

I still have meal oblits, and the wargame exclusive ones above. Also, some extra Dark Vengeance terminators and sponsons heavy weapons for a conversion project of I ever get to making a third batch.

I only use GW and FW models, but mostly mix and match parts from the various power armor kits, fantasyAoS kits, and green stuff sculpt my own details. I got rid of just about all of the metal models I owned, except the inter daemon prince.

These are great models for Chosen:

http://evilcraft.eu/category/products/complete-models/

For most of my models they come from e-bay and I've had some pretty reasonable deals.

For noise marines I've just been looking at the old models (plastic and metal) and at the forge world ones on e-bay and I'll probably mix the models together for a couple of squads. I do like that randomness for chaos marines as they are supposed to be around from the heresy so different Mk's of armour suit the fluff well for me, well my emperors children army are supposed to be.

For CSM again I've just used models I've found on e-bay mostly the old multi pose kits.

I only have 1 3 man Oblits and they are just straight off e-bay.

Chosen I have a single squad from the 6th edition box set but I would like to have more as I want to field them all with power fists, I'll probably look on e-bay for more and just convert them.

basically e-bay e-bay e-bay !! not sure if I can fit e-bay into my post any more.

 corpuschain wrote:
These are great models for Chosen:

http://evilcraft.eu/category/products/complete-models/

Some beautiful models for lascannon / autocannon Havocs too. One day...