Bearing the Word- Now with Recycled Metal Marines!

[darth_giles]

Wow, seems like everyone here's starting a Space Sharks or Carchadons army. Not me; I've got enough Chaos Space Marines leftover to build a small army. Which is exactly what I intend to do with this, build an army. Specifically, a Word Bearers army. The finished pieces thread in the Hall of Honor will be linked here at the top, once I get some finished. Its going to take a while, so please don't switch to your internal air supplies.

 

Unfortunately, this is all I can offer right now:

 

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v245/darth_giles/Chaos%20Space%20Marines/CSMsVatting.jpg

 

A huge vat of Simple Green, with a lot of guys vatting in it. If you look closely you'll see a Disc of Tzeentch; that might be for a future lord or something given how all Traitor Legions are functionally the Black Legion now.

 

Here's the color scheme I'm looking at. I've always preferred the older bright colored Word Bearers to the new darker red-and-silver. The guy on the right is showing the champion variant from the IA with gold shoulder pad trim; the commanders are each going to be unique. My goal here is to hark back to the 3.0 days, when the colors of chaos were often brighter than they are today. Leftovers from the Red Period and all that.

 

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v245/darth_giles/Chaos%20Space%20Marines/csmphp.jpghttp://img.photobucket.com/albums/v245/darth_giles/Chaos%20Space%20Marines/csm1.jpg

[Olis]

How big are you planning on making this army?

[darth_giles]

How big are you planning on making this army?

At this point, "as big as it gets." Between the possibility of a new codex, the old one being somewhat bleakh, and all that; I might just be in it for the painting and conversion more than anything else. At least for the near future.

 

I'm toying with the idea of a kill point denial list.

[darth_giles]

Awright, got the first few out of the stripper. The rest seem to need more time; that old style GW primer really digs in to plastic.

 

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v245/darth_giles/Chaos%20Space%20Marines/2011-08-06_11-04-28.jpg

 

Group photo of the first squad. Mainly bolter bunnies; the guy with the power sword is the AC and then we've got two flamers since this is a 10-man squad.

 

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v245/darth_giles/Chaos%20Space%20Marines/2011-08-06_11-05-00.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v245/darth_giles/Chaos%20Space%20Marines/2011-08-06_11-05-25.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v245/darth_giles/Chaos%20Space%20Marines/2011-08-06_11-05-55.jpg

 

Close-ups of everyone. The two guys on the end are what happens when GW primer doesn't want to let go from plastic; there were a lot of guys worse off than this so I took them and put them back into the vat.

 

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v245/darth_giles/Chaos%20Space%20Marines/2011-08-06_11-09-39.jpg

 

Wouldn't be a Word Bearers army without a few Daemons, and what do I have on hand but a few of the 2nd Edition-era mega claws Daemonettes. I'm missing a few, otherwise I'd have two packs of six, each with a full command group.

[Evil eyeball]

I love the origional Chaos Legions and Loyalist first founding best.

From the Love of one god, to you with your love of many Best wishes, and May our master, the Lord of Change smile upon you and grace your presence with some horrors.

[darth_giles]

Thanks. These guys are something of a homecoming for me, because I played a Word Bearers force in the a league years and years ago. Although now that you mention Horrors, I think I've still got a few of those guys bouncing around one of my bitz boxes. I know I chopped one of them up to make a really possessed dread, but I think I've got one or two left.

[darth_giles]

Update: Looks like what I'm getting out of the stripper isn't good enough for my own standards, so I'm going to be having to get some fresh plastic CSMs. The stuff I've got is just too... mixed up. It isn't working.

 

So here's my shopping list for when I get back to work and get some money in:

• Chaos Space Marines boxes (several)
  
• Dark Angels Veterans Boxes (2-3)
  
• Grey Knights Terminators (2 boxes)
  
• SM Command Squad box (1)
  
• SM Commander box (1)
  
• Tyranid Red Terror
  
• SoB St. Celestine
  
• Grey Knights Warrior Acolyte 1 (the one with the firepot) (2)
  
• Lots of GS and paint
  
• Miscellaneous bitz- chaos terminator heads (?), shoulder pads, and either heavy flamers or reaper ACs; Word Bearers shoulder pad sets, BA Sanguinary Guard thunder hammer, brass barbed wire, plastic tubing or brass rod,
  

Ok, now to talk about what this mess of random stuff is for.

 

The stock CSMs, I've already discussed. the only thing of note are the icons. I'm probably going to try to make my own custom icons instead of going with the standard ones. The standard ones look nice, but... somehow, they feel too... standard. The Word Bearer pads are again to try and give it a unified feel. Chapter heraldry goes on one side, "other" pad goes on the left. Need to find some kind of squad identification system- helmet colors? Shoulder pad borders? Color of the skull on the legion pad? Color of the skull's horns?

 

The Dark Apostle is going to have a DA "sissy" torso, a crozius made out of the thunder hammer and a banner pole topper from the command squad box, and... I'll make a hooded skull helm somehow. The acolyte is getting kitbashed for his firepots, which are going to be attached to his backpack vents. He's going to be the model for the squad ACs, but they're only going to have standard backpacks and standard robe helms. And the detail work on their robes is going to be less ornate. Dunno if I'm going to do a terminator version of the DA or not; right now I'm leaning toward not.

 

The Apothecary is going to be a different convesion, from the SM Commander box and Command Squad. One of his hands is going to have a Narithecium, and he's going to have the Reductor. And converted lightning claws. All in all he won't be *too* chaotic, even if I give him back his old Hyoian Bison Pelt (a counts-as Demonic Rune). He isn't a very extreme conversion because he's still a firm believer in resisting mutation and maintaining the purity of the geneseed. So he's highly conservative, even compared to some loyalist Apothecaries. Obtaining pure Word Bearers geneseed is one of his goals, although he's collected a fair bit from other chapters. Ultramarines from when he was at the Iron Cage, Howling Skulls from when he stole their copy of the Codex Astartes, Black Legion (he claims) from when he served the Warmaster before the Heresy.

 

I'm going to have to freehand his heraldry, because he makes a big deal about being a Son of Horus and not one of the Black Legion. He and Abbadon don't get along.

 

St. Celestine and the Red Terror are my daemon princess. Going to take a LOT of GS work, but I think it'll be worth it. If nothing else, watching my opponent's jaw hit the floor will be worth it. She's a former Daemonhunter who got in trouble because of an Ordo Hereticus rival but turned to Chaos because she discovered some prophesies regarding the C'tan and the extermination of humanity. So she became a DP sometime in M37 and then had a hand in the Dark Apostle and Apothecary taking over the warband.

[darth_giles]

Okies, so while I wait for work to start up again so I can get paid- stupid seasonal unemployment- I finally got around to getting some new tools. New clippers, fresh plastic glue, new hobby knife blades, all that. Also parted out about thirty sprues' worth of bitz from various sources: chaos spawn, possessed, sanguinary guard, 'nilla marines, old 'nilla marines, the 2001 or so Chaos Space Marines sprue, the mutation sprue that always got bundled with them, all that stuff.

 

ANYway, I got to wondering about what I could work on, and I had the idea for scenic battle bases. I've seen them used before, both in GW kits and homemade ones- particularly Archaon from WFB, and the boxed Chaos Terminator Lord. So if GW can do it, anyone can. After about an hour, I had these bad boys made up.

 

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v245/darth_giles/Chaos%20Space%20Marines/2011-08-24_14-21-50.jpg

 

Not every exciting? Let's see how they look with some volunteers from the scrap heap

 

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v245/darth_giles/Chaos%20Space%20Marines/2011-08-24_14-21-36.jpg

 

Yes, I am aware they're a hair out of focus. Best I can figure is that my depth of field was too shallow because the camera decided that it wasn't leaving f5.6 and 1/50 shutter speed. Next time, things WILL be in better focus.

 

Now for the good and bad. Good, they look amazing and they can hold a figure in place really well with that pin sticking out of them. Not that I've ever had a problem with figures coming off their bases; I usually have the opposite problem and can't get them off. Bad, they're noisy to make, make a fair bit of dust and particles, and the Marines have to be individually posed for each base. Thankfully, I keep a chipping hammer at my workbench...

 

Why scenic bases? Well, for starters we've all seen armies where the only figure with a scenic base was the dreadnought. Everyone else has boring static grass, modelling sand, or turf flock. Well, I wanted to do things different. After my last experiment with scenic bases many years ago (actually, it was my last Word Bearers army) went bad, I've kinda shied away until know. On the other hand, I've also seen tournament armies that used cast resin bases; my personal favorite are the Armorcast ones, but since a lot of tourneys seem to require the exact base that came with the figure (or at least a GW base), these are middle ground. That is a GW base underneath all that dental stone.

 

Anyway, I like the unifying feel that scenic bases can provide.

[darth_giles]

Well, thanks to firefox crashing, I lost my original post. Anyhow, here's Brother Testoras, the tester of bases:

 

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v245/darth_giles/Chaos%20Space%20Marines/Brother_Testoras.jpg

 

Brother Testoras is a Black Legion Plague Marine of a squad that I never finished. His purpose here was to help me test how my battle bases might look if I painted them to look like lava instead of the usual grey stone, and to help me determine how easy painting those bases would be. Sure the colors aren't that believable- I was out of Bad Moon (?) Yellow and Blood Red, but they mainly show how well things hold up under drybrushing. And it turns out, these rocks have enough nooks and crannies to look like proper lava.

[Dark Apostle Thirst]

Word Bearers! Yes! :tu:

 

I think the basing is pretty nice, but make sure it doesn't overwhelm the model :P

[darth_giles]

Word Bearers! Yes! :P

 

I think the basing is pretty nice, but make sure it doesn't overwhelm the model :D

Well, the general idea is that the figures will be a lot redder than Brother Testarus, there, so the base won't be that overwhelming. That, and they're pretty large rocks. I try to keep at least some of the GW base visible, but it all depends on smashing them to the right size. I might have to get another mold if the rocks get too repetitive.

 

That, and there's one rock that I just can't seem to smash, no matter how hard I whack it.

[Khargan]

man at first I was like.. thank god @ not another carcharadon.. and the my eyes deceived me after staring at bolts for the past hour... Brother Testicles.. what..wait? Ohhhhhh oh dear.. really glad to see some chaos going on! the base looks cool and I might even go as far as to suggest getting yourself some brown MIG pigment and making it into a wash to wash over the top of the rock (where the lava is not..) it will give some real character and make it look even more earthy!

 

good job so far!

[darth_giles]

Okies, time for another update.

I've got 20 shoulder pads and the DA "crossdressers" sprue on order, so my Dark Apostle is going to be coming along fairly soon. Rawr.

Backpack. Since I didn't have the money to buy the two Inquisitor henchmen with the fire pots, I decided to make my own. So instead of having the usual braziers and all that, he's got two severed Space Marine heads blowing fire out of their mouths. Although I'll be the first one here to admit that sculpting actual fire is difficult. Decorative flames are one thing, but real fire is something totally different.

Shoulder pads. The one on the left is from the Sanguinary Guard with the blood drops cut off and replaced with a skull. The one on the right is a BT pad with the logo brutally removed, then augmented with a skull and part of a Chaos Terminator body. Apply GS to fill the gaps, and that's about it.

Head with hood. I took a Khorne Berserker "arx death helm" and de-bunnified it, then sculpted a hood over it. The hood was kinda hard; I didn't even get close to decent until I drilled out the bottom of the head and then stuck it onto a paper clip, which was locked into my bench vise. First time I've ever used that bench vise, too.

This head was a challenge. It took me something like five tries to get it even halfway believable, and I'm still not entirely satisfied with it.

[Brother Ambroz]

I like the head & hood. Not too sure about the right anatomical shoulder, it looks a bit too angelic I think. The other one looks great though.

[darth_giles]

Update time. My boxes of stuff arrived.

First up, the completely modeled Dark Apostle.

That was actually my second try on him; the first one I had a lot of trouble with the body so I had to carefully pull the arms and head off, and start with a fresh robe torso. I'm still getting the hang of plastic glue; the bottle seems to like to dump more than I need which causes trouble.

Aspiring champion with BP and PF. After building the two further down the page I'd run out of power fists, so this one came off a leftover Chaos Terminator arm with a bit of sawing and pinning. I also did a bit of GS work to cover the Dark Angels mark on his faceplate, and to put some decorative flames on his shoulder pad.

Aspiring champion with BP and PF. I tried sculpting some decorative flames on his power fist, and I think they came out sorta ok. From the close-up, it looks like I need to file down the Deathwing logo on his chest a bit more, too. /sweatdrop

Final AC with BP and PF. The blob of GS is a patch covering a broken hose; I figured he'd patch it with whatever instead of just leaving it broken. Looked like an extreme case of mold line disjoining. This guy is a little bit mutated, but really extreme. I might have him at the head of a squad of slightly-mutated CSMs, dunno for sure yet.

[Dark Apostle Thirst]

Why does the Dark Apostle have an aquila at the end of his crozius? :rolleyes: Other than that, nice work <_<

[Brother Ambroz]

I think the apostle would be more kick :( if it was a eight point star on the end instead of that one. Other than that it looks pretty awesome.

[darth_giles]

Why does the Dark Apostle have an aquila at the end of his crozius? :D Other than that, nice work :D

 

I think the apostle would be more kick :P if it was a eight point star on the end instead of that one. Other than that it looks pretty awesome.

 

He killed the previous owner and then used it to slaughter a lot of imperials, so when he finally came into office as the DA it had already been psychically desecrated. Plus, you have the fact that the dead chaplain's battle-brothers would recognize it as one carried by their fallen comerade.

 

Edit: I did a bit more converting on it, but pics will have to wait for a while. I don't feel like getting my camera and flash-on-a-rope out right now. Let's just say his crozius now looks 100% more awesome, and leave it at that.

[darth_giles]

Ok, in light of the last comments, I got to trying to figure out how to make a better Accursed Crozius, without any eight-pointed stars Because I seem to have run out of them. What I did find, though, was the ribcage and skull off one of the old WFB skeletons- the ones that came 25 or so to a box and looked generic enough that you could use them for almost anything.

So a little drilling and pinning and a lot of GS work later, I came up with this:

Also, here's a group shot of the DA and his ACs on the cookie sheet I use to store completed minis:

[Dark Apostle Thirst]

Much better ;) Why didn't I think of that awesome explanation though? ;)

[darth_giles]

So now that I've got a few figures modelled, its time to start thinking about paint. Specifically, the details of my palette for the army.

 

I've always tried to run with a limited color palette. My Wytchlight list (an old BA successor from mid 3rd Edition) was black and pale green. Scorpion Green, IIRC. My Khorne Berserkers were black, scab red, and fiery orange. My short-lived Black Legion army was black, silver, and fiery yellow-orange. From the Word Bearers IA, I already know that two of my colors are going to be Blood Red and Chaos Black.

 

Ideally, my palette is composed of three colors- a dark color, a light color, and a third color or process color that contrasts the other two. Specifically, this color is for plasma gun coils, exposed hoses, exposed hair (not that I like having ponytails on my CSMs; that seems to have been something appropriated from the Chaos Terminator line when they made the 2002 CSM box set), the wax part of impurity seals (the "parchment" gets an effect to make it look like flayed skin), and the like.

 

ACs add a color or two (skull white robes and dwarf bronze trim on the shoulder pads), and HQ characters each have their own palette.

 

The problem comes with the highlight color. At this point, I've got two real options- fall back to the fiery yellow-orange that I like so much and try to ignore the fact that it won't be as striking a contrast against red as it is against black, or go with a darker color. In this case, I'm thinking about a process blue- skull white, thin wash of Enchanted Blue, then glaze with a pale blue ink. Emphasis on PALE blue ink; a darker ink like the old Dark Green Ink (which later became regular Green Ink when GW phased out the light green ink) or Purple Ink will overpower everything. Vallejo seems to have a nice pale blue ink that I could try, although I'm not really sold on their use of squeeze bottles.

[TheDarkApostle]

Blue could work.

 

Myself I'm going light green however for a good contrast to the red. I'm not sure you want to go blood red though, it might be a tad too bright for Word Bearers.

 

TDA

[Brother Ambroz]

I agree that GS'd crozius looks much better. Lookin forward to seeing it painted now.

[darth_giles]

Blue could work.

 

Myself I'm going light green however for a good contrast to the red. I'm not sure you want to go blood red though, it might be a tad too bright for Word Bearers.

 

TDA

I've thought about green, but when people see red and green together these days they think Xmas and I'm not sure I want that. As for the red being too bright, the IA shows them as being bright red and black. I never really liked the darker scab red colors.

[TheDarkApostle]

Blue could work.

 

Myself I'm going light green however for a good contrast to the red. I'm not sure you want to go blood red though, it might be a tad too bright for Word Bearers.

 

TDA

I've thought about green, but when people see red and green together these days they think Xmas and I'm not sure I want that. As for the red being too bright, the IA shows them as being bright red and black. I never really liked the darker scab red colors.

Now that would require a really green green.

 

I was thinking more of a sickly pale, maybe even blended up to pure white, green.

 

TDA