Army Profile - Hell Hounds Word Bearers Chaos Space Marines

I originally started planning out my Word Bearers under the 3.5 edition era codex, and painted their leader, the Daemon Prince Garm but the rest got sidelined until after the 4th edition CSM codex came out. 

The army was planned to have a couple of main themes:  the "Hell Hound" theme which would show up in some of their iconography, the use of Space Wolf parts and the use of summoned "hell hounds"; the preponderance of melta and flamer weaponry (back in the 4th ed days of plasma everywhere).






Whereas the normal approach to Word Bearers  is to take the more robed, monastic approach, I went with a more barbaric warrior look via the Space Wolf parts and mixed weaponry choices.  Evil barbarian priests in space!  The Hell Hounds are just as devoted as other Word Bearers, but rejoice in having their own personal representative of the gods walking among them in the form of their Prince and battle in his presence with equal parts religious fervor and ruthless savagery.  They engage in many deep raids, and are often called upon to retrieve particular artifacts or strike particular key targets as part of larger plans. 

Another of the walking gods that accompany the Hell Hounds (though they all consider themselves such to greater or lesser degrees), the lovely Forge World Word Bearers dreadnought kit.  He usually dies pretty early on in battles, but sometimes he manages to perform well. 

Continuing with the Elites choices, a unit of Chaos Terminators.  For smaller games I generally drop the Lightning Claw champion.  I usually teleport them in to triple-combi-melta something, hopefully in a position to limit return fire or at least draw off attention from the rest of the army.

The third Elites choice, the Chosen.  I like them, but they're usually dropped when building lower point lists.  Two meltas, flamer, power fist/icon, and champion with twin lightning claws (centaur-like on  a flesh-hound like body; halfway to daemonhood).  Sometimes they'll Infiltrate like in Spearhead missions but usually they'll Outflank.

The first of two troops squads, regular Chaos Space Marines.  Like all the units, icon of Chaos Glory.  Great for morale rerolls, but also key in this army to bring in daemons and the Terminators.  Two meltaguns and a champion with power fist and combi-flamer round out the unit.

The other squad of Chaos Marines, equipped the same way.

 The rides for the CSM squads; two basic rhinos.  I used blown-up copies of Space Wolf transfers to trace for the wolf head designs. 

The shields along the sides are meant to evoke Viking longships.

The lesser daemons; two packs of ten each.  The metal flesh hounds (right) are literally pains to put together; it's painful trying to fill gaps/assemble them with all the spikes on their backs, and they all needed significant work to fit.

Moving into Heavy Support, a Vindicator.  This was added to the plan after the 4th ed codex was released, when any CSM and not just Iron Warriors could have access to them.  In theory it gives a good tool against enemy Terminators and tough vehicles, but mostly it just scatters until its gun gets knocked out. 

And last but certainly not least, the real pride of the army, the Defiler.  Another walking god, and a lovely wicked contraption.  It may be hard for many newer players to imagine, but back when the Defiler was first introduced in the rules, there was no official kit and just vague ideas on how it was to look based on its stats and a few pictures.  There were a lot of conversions and scratch builds made, but few had any inkling of just how large the actual kit would be.  Most of the earlier ones made were mostly modified dreadnoughts with a battle cannon added. In game, another big target that often gets destroyed early on, but sometimes it manages to shine.

In theory you can leave the legs free to move, but in practice it tends to fall a lot if you do so, making gluing them in place pretty mandatory.  The torso/turret is magnetized, allowing for easily turning to fire the cannon and it makes transportation a lot easier. 

Thanks for looking and reading!  There are more pics with the various battle reports featuring them, which can be found on the Battle Reports page or by searching through the tags.