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Hello, fellow chaos players! As you may have found out by now, the new supplement is not nearly as great as we had hoped. In fact, it seems to have increased the dominance of heldrakes on the tabletop. So I figured until GW can fix chaos, we could have a thread to help people cope with the ugly ass heldrake. I'll start off with a few ideas, to get the creative juices flowing.

If you like these ideas, hate these ideas, hate them and think they wouldn't work (but please add why), or have your own, make sure to comment!

First up, I've been somewhat fond of the idea of a pilot merged with his plane (like the fluff, who would have thunk it?) and I have a few possibilities for that:

Converting the Ork Bommer:



might work, along with adding the run down look to it.

Or, the Marauder Bomber from Forgeworld:

the wingspan is way larger that the regular Heldrake, but with some bits from the regular HD kit it might work.

If you want to avoid the Heldrake model (which I happen to like personally, but hey) I'd look at WHFB dragons, like the vampire counts skelettal dragon.

If that isn't your thing, maybe getting a model kit for some kind of fighter plane with sufficient scale to fit a Warhammer pilot into the cockpit would be worth considering.
With a bit of plasticard, you should be able to mess up it's aerodynamics sufficiently that it doesn't look out of place on the warhammer table. ;-]

You can build a decent looking heldrake from the stock kit if you throw in a few other bits. (In this case the head and tentacles from the forgefiend)




Forgeworld Hell Blade:





A few Zombidragon heldrake examples:
Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rZ-VQFUfG8U


http://darkfuturegaming.blogspot.de/2013/02/building-better-heldrake-part-4-more.html








Forgefiend as Heldrake:
http://www.belloflostsouls.net/2013/02/goatboys-40k-kibbles-and-bits-dragon.html

 btldoomhammer wrote:
You can build a decent looking heldrake from the stock kit if you throw in a few other bits. (In this case the head and tentacles from the forgefiend)




Forgeworld Hell Blade:





A few Zombidragon heldrake examples:
Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rZ-VQFUfG8U


http://darkfuturegaming.blogspot.de/2013/02/building-better-heldrake-part-4-more.html








Forgefiend as Heldrake:
http://www.belloflostsouls.net/2013/02/goatboys-40k-kibbles-and-bits-dragon.html

Oh, wow, I like those. Either going for more of the hellblade look or mixing in organic parts seem to be the way to go, huh?

 CommanderAlexander wrote:

Oh, wow, I like those. Either going for more of the hellblade look or mixing in organic parts seem to be the way to go, huh?

It would be for me. But i have seen other approaches like greenstuffed/converted imperial fliers similar to what you have posted.

I had planed for scratchbuilding a heldrake that is supposed to look like the forgeworkd hell blade but on the way of mutation into the dragon heldrake. But i don't know if i'll try it.

i made mine from an arachnorak spider to make a nurgle-y fly

I still believe that you can pull off a decent looking jet fighter mod with this thing. That first one that btldoomhammer posted would be the way to go. I'd say that all you need to do is give it some horizontal wings, probably using the second largest set from the kit and give it a nosecone and you'd be done. I think an Eldar Jetbike with the gems shaved down would probably do the trick and you would end up with an aircraft that looks like a Chaos Vic Viper.

 BewareOfTom wrote:
i made mine from an arachnorak spider to make a nurgle-y fly

oh I had that same idea. Can you post pics or send me a link to some of it, BewareOfTom?

Maverike_prime wrote:

 BewareOfTom wrote:
i made mine from an arachnorak spider to make a nurgle-y fly

oh I had that same idea. Can you post pics or send me a link to some of it, BewareOfTom?

I vote for the pictures!

I made mine from greenstuff, garage sale signs, and spare bitz:












A few more pics here:

http://www.dakkadakka.com/gallery/images-14732-34086_Chaos%20Heldrakes.html

Awesome Lord Scythican!

Here's a shot of work in progress..

Lord Scythican... That Heldrake is revolting. I love me some Nurgle, and I've seen some nasty stuff, but that makes me a little sick to look at with those pus filled boils. Well done!

I didn't convert mine (or have it undercoated yet) but I think it major problem is that its supposed to be a Dragon, with its name, neck/head and fiery breath, but its body is Pterosaurian. Its legs are too short to be a Wyvern dragon (2 legs, 2 wings and birdlike) and no tail. If you were to lengthen the back legs and give it a tail it would look sweet.

 btldoomhammer wrote:

Forgeworld Hell Blade:

This is the approach I'm using for my Iron Warriors army. My approach is, IMHO, IW are the least Chaos-worshipping of the CSM. They're just renegades; they don't love Daemons, they just hate the Imperium. For example, they have lots of bionics because if their flesh mutates due to being in the Eye of Terror, they cut it off and replace it. Thus, the normal Heldrake mode really looks out of place for them, so I went with this fighter jet.

The weapons are swappable, so I'm just looking for a long flamer replacement. It is resin, and one of the two big tips was actually slightly bent, so I had to dip it into hot water for a few seconds, then bend it back into shape. I really like it, so much so that even without my IW theme, even without trying to be different, I think this is actually a really good alternative than the actual Heldrake model.