Started diving into the stacks of sprues and boxes I've accumulated over many months in preparation for this moment, and started building up and organizing some Chaos Guardsmen. The first couple are some test builds, working for the techno-barbarian vibe for the off-world contingent. Basically combining Catachan and fantasy Chaos parts.
The one on the left was the first try. Not sure I like him or the Marauder torsos, but having a couple with the belly armor will help to tie in with the Ogryn that are being made from fantasy Ogres. I like the one on the right more which is mostly Catachan aside from the head and the shoulder armor. I'll probably continue to use mostly Catachan parts on the others.
Other views:
These kits have a ton of mold lines. I forsee a lot of scraping in my future, both for mold lines and iconography. The initial army list plan is for one small platoon of these guys - platoon hq and two line squads. Plus they'll be manning some HW and if I can make the "spawn riders" (Sentinels) work they'll be the guys there too. The Rough Riders will be a mix too, though since they'll be made from the Marauder Horsemen and Chaos Knights kits will be a lot more Marauder-y. I'll probably end up making more squads of the infantry as well for when I don't want to sink the points into a whole squad of Ogryn and will need filler.
I'll be using this Catachan officer as the platoon CO. I think that he looks suitably rough as-is.
Now on to the bad mama-jama, Khonan, the techno-barbarian answer to Marbo.
Booya! With his wound on 2+ runeblade and hand grenade "howdy" ready to go, he's raring to dispatch some loyalists. Since Marbo tends to throw his demo charge as soon as he appears, I didn't see the need to try to model one on the figure. Armor piece is from the Ork Nob kit.
More frikkin' mold lines.
The other part of the force will consist of local cultists and insurgents.
Platoon CO cult leader is a figure from Dark Age, may convert him to have a PF, or just change the list to power weapon instead. The shotguns on the ladies on the left will become flamers and the other two will be considered LP/CCW.
One squad of local cultists. Mordheim chaos guy on bottom left for sgt, mace will become PW. Mix of Tallarn and Necromunda Eschers for the others.
Other squad. Again, Mordheim chaos guy for the sgt and mix of Tallarn and Eschers. "Animal" from the Last Chancers for the squad's meltagunner.
I haven't been having much luck getting the backpack I wanted for Astrakenor, so have been working with a fallback position.
Using one of the Possessed (I think...may be CSM champion) backpacks I sculpted some crude flames coming out of the tops of the skulls. There's already a spike coming out which made it easy - wrap green stuff around spike, twist. Since there's going to be more flames in the command squad, this may work out better anyways as a visual tie-in.
And here he is with his retinue. The two guys with open flames will count as flamers, the priest will have his hand replaced with one with a pistol, and the Necromunda psyker is a stand-in for a standard bearer. I plan to build someone for the standard-bearer job, which will probably be a techno-barbarian selected for the honor. Yet more scraping in store to get rid of some of the Inq. symbols on the henchmen.
And lastly here's the Psyker Battle Squad, a coven of Chaos Sorcerers. The dude with the torch will be the overseer, apparently consulting Chapter 13, "Signs your psykers are about to explode" for warnings of which ones to shoot first.
Don't forget to add some Cawdor gangers into those cultists if you have any. The Cawdor are easily some of the best multi-use minis GW ever produced!
ReplyDeleteExcellent start.
ReplyDeleteWith the look you have selected for your troops, I am curious as to what their vehicles will look like.
It looks like a good start. Are you going to add any heavy weapons?
ReplyDelete@DMC - I've looked at them, and at the Redemptionists, but neither really felt right to me. I have a couple of the old actual cultist figs I may incorporate as sgts or something down the road.
ReplyDelete@Mags - well, there's a captured basilisk that will have to feature somewhere...
@Col - Yep - the initial army plan has some mortars and lascannons. I also have enough Tallarn ML teams for a squad, so will paint those up too.
Pretty cool project dude, congrats!
ReplyDeleteThey look already good, very good ideas and realisation ;D
Keep up the nice job. Subscribed!!!
You really like horns. A chaos imperial guard force using the rules from Imperial Armour 7 has been on my ta do since I learned of the list, but the high model count and my backlog of unpainted figs...
ReplyDeleteI have to get back to painting more regularly, I've been working on terrain a bit, but that will have to be backlogged again to get my army finished for Astro Vancouver. Maybe next year I'll have the rebel guard done, in the mean time I'll probably follow along with your progress.
Maybe I should start a dedicated hobby blog.
@Nesbet - Thanks! Hope you like the rest!
ReplyDelete@Muskie - Indeed, I do like horns, even though I cut them off of a few of the helmets! The horns help with the -barbarian part of techno barbarian IMO. Also see my Word Bearers, which are all exclusively horned.
The IA7 list has been very tempting, and someday down the road I'd like to make an army for that. It's pretty close to the army I dreamed about when I first got back into 40K, plague marines with land raiders, guard-type infantry in gasmasks and zombies.
Glad to have you aboard! Definitely set up a blog, and pop up a link here.