Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

I *REALLY* don't like the helbrute model. any of them. For thousand sons, they just dont look clinical or clean enough for them to really mesh into the army. So I'm looking to add some helbrutes to my collection of thousand sons, and was curious what you think would work best. I really don't want to use contemptors, because there are already contemptor dreadnoughts available to the army, meaning that I don't want the confusion running around of which is a relic and which isn't, or if they are all relic or whatnot.

I was thinking just basic space marine dreadnoughts, and then add some terminator sprue bits or something like that to them to dress them up a bit, but everytime i think about that, i dont know how much i like that idea, as they would just look a bit too "imperial" any suggestions?

Thanks in advance!

I thought the Thousand Sons had, at one point in time, their own version of the Box-nought.

Edit: looks like it was a forgeworld model, oop now.

Depending on the vibe you’re looking for you could consider the Ossiarch Bonereapers Gothizzar Harvester. It’s would give a more bone look rather than the flesh one.

A pricy option might be some of the 30k robots. The thousand sons have a lot of fluff associated with the weird robots .

Otherwise removing the front of the sarcophagus on a loyalist dreadnought and using the thousand sons head should work fine.

I'd second just doing something with a Dreadnaught. I'm a big fan of the 30k Thousand Sons Contemptors, if you're not into the FW price tag you could scratchbuild the headdress onto a plastic Contemptor easily enough.

I say chaosify the good old imperial box dreadnaught. If you want a hobby project, you could get Thousand Sons Demios Pattern Rhino doors and convert them to go on the front of the dreadnoughts hull.

Was thinking of kitbashing a helbrute and one of the flaming bird heads from Tzeentch's AoS endless spells.

The book of eyes is a good objective marker too.

As long as it's going to be armed with at least one fist, and you don't mind working with resin, you can credibly use a Castellax-Achea from FW and just say the two small fists add up to one normal fist, plus the shoulder-mount weapon. I don't think anybody's going to mind that. It's only $15 more than a normal helbrute ($20 I guess when you consider you can't get the 15% off).

https://www.forgeworld.co.uk/en-US/Castellax-Achea-Battle-automata-with-Aether-flame-Cannon-2017

Or you can magnetize the fists to be switchable with mountings from a contemptor, though the scale is a little bit off.

It's a very cool and flavorful model.

Yukishiro has a very good idea there. That model has the flavor…

Seabass wrote:
I *REALLY* don't like the helbrute model. any of them. For thousand sons, they just dont look clinical or clean enough for them to really mesh into the army. So I'm looking to add some helbrutes to my collection of thousand sons, and was curious what you think would work best. I really don't want to use contemptors, because there are already contemptor dreadnoughts available to the army, meaning that I don't want the confusion running around of which is a relic and which isn't, or if they are all relic or whatnot.

I was thinking just basic space marine dreadnoughts, and then add some terminator sprue bits or something like that to them to dress them up a bit, but everytime i think about that, i dont know how much i like that idea, as they would just look a bit too "imperial" any suggestions?

Thanks in advance!

well, for a long time the the chaos dread WAS a standard marine boxnaught with few mods, so that'd fit right in, and lore-wise its easy enough to do, it could be a more recent convert or a regenade marine dreadnought that has allied itself/been manipulated into fighting for the Tsons.

I'm on team 30K Contemptor w/ some conversions. The Castellax is also pretty cool, but it's small, although hight-wise I suppose it actually is a better match to the box-naut or helbrute.

Another alternative is the Domitar--it's between the Castellax and Contemptor in size.

Its dimensions are actually much closer to a helbrute than a contemptor's are. It's almost exactly the same dimensions as the old Tsons FW dread. It's a bit less chunky than the helbrute, but overall its silhouette is quite close.

You can see them all compared in this pic:

https://i.imgur.com/GMzeVvW.jpg

man, thank you all so much for the great response and suggestions. I ordered 2 of the castellax robots. with minimal effort (and a bit of off-scale weapons) I'm using them with contemptor weapon mounts since I already own several of those.

Thank you all so much for the assistance!

Post some pics maybe in this thread … looking forward to seeing what you can do with these.

xerxeskingofking wrote:

Seabass wrote:
I *REALLY* don't like the helbrute model. any of them. For thousand sons, they just dont look clinical or clean enough for them to really mesh into the army. So I'm looking to add some helbrutes to my collection of thousand sons, and was curious what you think would work best. I really don't want to use contemptors, because there are already contemptor dreadnoughts available to the army, meaning that I don't want the confusion running around of which is a relic and which isn't, or if they are all relic or whatnot.

I was thinking just basic space marine dreadnoughts, and then add some terminator sprue bits or something like that to them to dress them up a bit, but everytime i think about that, i dont know how much i like that idea, as they would just look a bit too "imperial" any suggestions?

Thanks in advance!

well, for a long time the the chaos dread WAS a standard marine boxnaught with few mods, so that'd fit right in, and lore-wise its easy enough to do, it could be a more recent convert or a regenade marine dreadnought that has allied itself/been manipulated into fighting for the Tsons.

Nope. For many, many, many years, the only chaos dread was the metal chaos dread with its own gubbins and different body shape (not a boxnought).
For plastic, it was conversions or nothing until the Helbrute. Unless you decided to use the 'chaos robot' from Space Crusade (which wasn't really dread-sized), and add weapons to its... interesting shape.

Voss wrote:
Nope. For many, many, many years, the only chaos dread was the metal chaos dread with its own gubbins and different body shape (not a boxnought).

It was a boxnought with a face...


Unless you're referring to this ancient thing. Or even these two.

FW used to make a bunch of chapter and legion specific normal dreads. Grey knights had one, Tsons had one, some others I can't remember offhand. Unfortunately they stopped doing that because <reasons>.

Here it is with a particularly psychedelic paint job:

http://wappellious.blogspot.com/2012_03_06_archive.html

FW used to make them. Others still do, but we can't discuss that here.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

Voss wrote:
Nope. For many, many, many years, the only chaos dread was the metal chaos dread with its own gubbins and different body shape (not a boxnought).

It was a boxnought with a face...

Spoiler:

Unless you're referring to this ancient thing. Or even these two.

The Rogue Trader one was dead and buried by second ed, the two “Chaos Dreadnoughts” from Space Crusade more narratively fit with the “Chaos Androids” in the set so I always thought of them as Porto-Necrons heavies. The Chaos boxnought came out around the time of the second ed codex, I am in the middle of painting one now

Yeah I have one.

It was affectionately called "Triple-Corpse Hammerblow" by a friend of mine.

A worthy epithet for a boss of a model. I always wanted one as a kid and was lucky enough to get one in a large haul of models from a guy selling locally. And honestly it’s probably the most Thousand Son-y of all the Chaos Dreadnoughts/Helbrutes.

https://dndtonight.com/2021/03/06/how-to-paint-a-classic-metal-dreadnought-thousand-sons-legion/

Came to suggest the Metal Chaos Dreadnought as well, but I see it has been mentioned.

I have one in my Death Guard army, but the exposed sarcophagus looks much more Ksons.