Heresy Era Word Bearers - Army Complete!

Another army complete, and likely to be sold off without ever actually hitting the tabletop? Seems that way! The Word Bearers army that I'd initially planned for Adepticon proved to be thematically incompatible with the events that I'm participating in (hence the recent World Eaters). Nevertheless, in the background I have been chipping away at 'em and with the delivery and subsequent painting of some last remaining bases, the army is complete! Figure I'll let the pictures do the talking:

Argel Tal

Kor Phaeron and Erebus

Zardu Layak and his Blade Slaves

Legion Chaplain

Gal Vorbak

Cataphractii Terminators

Apothecarion Detachment

Cortus Contemptor Talon

Assault Squad

Tactical Squad

Ashen Circle

Sicaran Venator

The all important painting chart!

Pretty happy with how the army turned out, and am a little bummed that it won't get any table time at Adepticon. Such is life, however! They'll be going on the auction block soon enough to help fund the next project - What that may be remains to be seen, but there's a non-zero chance that it's going to be a return to the Benevolent Cult of the Four-Armed Emperor, if the recent upcoming release reveals are anything to go by...

Heresy Era Word Bearers and World Eaters - The Shadow Crusade kicks into high gear!

The Heresy train has no brakes, and over the last month I've not only been cranking out Blackstone Fortress and Necromunda models, but also feverishly working on my Shadow Crusade force of Word Bearers and World Eaters! The original intention was to take a Word Bearers primary detachment with some World Eater allies to Adepticon in March, but due to a misunderstanding of the event that I signed up for, it turns out that the Word Bearers are a no-go. Turns out the event I signed up for is actually intended to be a Great Crusade era event, which means that the heavily-corrupted Word Bearers I have are thematically inappropriate (as all that chaos-y nonsense didn't happen until later in the Heresy), but more to the point, they're all in the wrong livery which is, as we all know, really inexcusable. Nevertheless, I pulled out the force to snap a quick pic of where things stand (minus the dreads and Sicaran Venator as they're not fully done)!

While that set me back on my heels a bit, I'm not one to give up so easily. Suddenly what was going to be a little 500 point allied detachment of World Eaters is now slated to become a fully-realized 3000 point army, and I have less than three months to accomplish it. Eep! Nevertheless, I've set to with gusto and have the first two squads nearing completion.

Pretty jazzed with how they're coming along thus far, still gotta get some weathering and blood spatter on 'em, as well as buy and paint up enough bases for the expanded scope of the force. So much to do!

I've more or less settled on a list for Adepticon, though some further tweaking will no doubt occur. While I don't intend to take the Angriest Ron with me to the event (hence why the list is 400 points over in the chart above), I do plan on painting up both him and Lorgar for the now ridiculously-sized Shadow Crusade force. 7000 points combined isn't too much, right?

Heresy Era Word Bearers - Contemptors and Chaplains and Venators, oh my!

With the recent release of the Adepticon events registration, I was finally able to zero in on what I would need to get completed for the Word Bearers. I've got a Zone Mortalis game at 500 points and a big 3k game vs. Xenos, which should be interesting! In both cases I've decided I was going to continue the "Assault on Armatura" theme for my force and run a very infantry-heavy army. That said, there needs to be some anti-armor punch and you can't go wrong with a talon of Contemptors to do the punching.

While poking around on the Oldhammer site, I ran across some embiggened RT-era Dreadnoughts, which tripped my nostalgia trigger hard and I absolutely had to get a few. I'll be running them as a Contemptor Cortus talon armed with twin dreadnought close combat weapons each with a twin-linked bolter. Cheap and cheerful Str 10 mayhem!

I'm really jazzed by how they turned out, however after getting them painted I realized I never ordered any 60mm bases to match the rest of the force, so they're on hold until the package shows up from Secret Weapon...

While I was about it, I also got the Sicaran Venator more or less complete as well! I always loved this model, it's just such a mean-looking tank! It's rather fearsome on the tabletop as well, though in my experience the lascannons are superfluous as the main gun is an Ordnance weapon which generally precludes the ability to fire the sponsons. As the tank will take a lot of fire, having the extra weapons to soak up the inevitable 'weapon destroyed' results isn't a bad thing though!

While going over the lists, I realized I needed a 'vanilla' chaplain to fulfill the Word Bearers FOC requirements (in addition to the warlord, the force must include either a chaplain or champion), but rather than just use the Betrayal at Calth model as-is I figured I'd chop him up and make something a bit more unique! Kept the torso, cape and backpack, but gave him some alternate legs which changed the stance dramatically. Swapped the crozius over to the left hand, and pillaged the Thousand Sons sorcerer bits to come up with a warp flask and creepy hand. Your basic skull helmet is essential for any self-respecting chaplain, and he's ready to get painted up!

Speaking of, it's been a while since I updated the painting chart and am quite pleased to see how close to the finish line the force is. Well on track to get everything completed for Adepticon, and with it being almost entirely infantry it should hopefully be easy to transport!

Heresy Era Word Bearers - Argel Tal built!

All of the various bits and kits I'd ordered to build Argel Tal finally arrived and I could get cracking on attempting to get a model that's been rattling around in my head for years out on to the tabletop!

Vargheist wings, some custodes weapons, a possessed arm and a torso from the FW Gal Vorbak kit were laid out and dry fit to get a feel for what was going to need to be trimmed away - including the head to make way for one that more closely matches the description of a bestial face in the books.

I was really jazzed by how the parts fit together - Had to trim down the wings a little and cut the two arms back from the shoulder a touch, but minimal greenstuffing was going to be required!

The wings are perhaps juuuust a touch too large, but I think it gives him a real sense of presence. I'd test-fit a set of Dark Eldar Scourge wings which definitely looked anemic compared to the bulk of the model, and Hive Tyrant wings would have been massive. These worked out about as well as I could ask for!

Tried to blend the wings into the pack and keep the organic look going, we'll see how it works out once I get some paint on him!

The intent in-game is to run him as a Praetor with a jump pack, artificer armor, iron halo, and a master-crafted paragon blade and bolter to represent the Custodes weaponry. Not a perfect fit, but I figure most heresy players wouldn't mind!

Heresy Era Word Bearers - Assault Squad Built!

Just a quick hit today on the Heresy front, before setting them aside for a while and diving in to my Dreadtober project. I wanted to add an assault squad to the Word Bearers force, but with the recent price rise the big resin assault squad just got crazy expensive. I figured that as I had a plethora of Mk.IV plastics, I could likely put together something a little more frugally. After trawling through eBay and Pop Goes The Monkey's offerings on Shapeways for appropriate bits, I more or less succeeded!

Though the legs on the plastic Mk.IVs are fairly static (not a lot of running poses), with the assault marine arms they still look pretty dynamic. I really dig the PGtM jump packs as well, though they're a little blown out in the pics. Quite looking forward to getting some paint on 'em, but that's going to have to wait, for now it's time to paint GIANT STOMPY MACHINES!

Heresy Era Word Bearers - Argel Tal bits accumulation begins!

After re-reading The First Heretic and Betrayer for the 4th and 5th times, respectively, it was more or less a foregone conclusion that I'm going to have to build an Argel Tal model for my burgeoning Word Bearers force. ...Especially since there are no rules for him and barely any way of representing him on the tabletop, so the whole project totally wouldn't be a huge waste of time, money and effort. Nope, not at all!

I'm attempting to coerce a friend of mine into doing some World Eaters and come up with a "battle brothers on Armatura" themed team force for Adepticon/NOVA next year, though I might break down and do some World Eaters myself next anyway. Love this piece of art, if anyone knows the original artist please let me know, my web searches have been inconclusive. Whomever it was, they did a fantastic job!

My plan is to make and Argel Tal model where his daemonic aspect is at the fore (and really, why would you not?) so figured this Gal Vorbak model would work well as the basis for the conversion. I may update the head if I can find a viable replacement, but if not I do think it works pretty well as-is.

For the left arm, I'm planning on utilizing the arm on the far right of this picture, one of my favorite bits off the Possessed sprue. Generally used as a stand-in powerfist for normal-sized troopers, it ought to make a decently-scaled 'regular hand' for Argel Tal. Some of the remaining bits may find themselves scattered throughout the rest of the force...

Great pains are taken to note Argel Tal's wings, which as the former Captain of the 7th Assault Company is only fitting. I didn't want to go super massive with them with something like Daemon Prince or Hive Tyrant wings, but they needed to be imposing. Made a roll of the dice and ordered up some Vargheist wings, which appear to be a good medium-sized wing set. We'll see once I have them in-hand, I suppose!

Of course weapons are a consideration as well - Argel Tal is described as carrying a pair of Custodes guardian weapons, a spear and sword which he swaps between in combat depending on the circumstances. Scaling being a consideration, I went with some Allarus Terminator arms figuring they'd be slightly beefier than their power-armored counterparts, and suitable for the bulk of the Gal Vorbak model he'll be based on.

Finally, I was a little stymied by what to use for his sword, as I really didn't like the look of the slightly stubby Sentinel Blades from the Custodian Guard kit, but eventually stumbled upon the swords from the Vertus Praetors kit, a good size and sheathed as well, so I can have him wielding the spear and have the sword sheathed across his back as described in the book. On the up side, there's multiple spears and swords, so I may be able to build a version of Argel Tal in his 'regular' form as well and have some continuity on the look!

Of course, all the bits are coming in from the four corners of the globe so it may be some time before my fevered scheme comes to fruition, but I'm really looking forward to getting stuck in!

Heresy Era Word Bearers - Ashen Circle Painted!

I was having a good time painting up the Ashen Circe, and pressed on to the finish line with 'em over the last day and a half!

From a pose perspective they're a little odd - I definitely understand what the sculptors were going for with the models leaping/touching down, but from certain angles they tend to look like they're pirouetting. With a single toe or heel touch point on each model, they were all given nice long pins up into the legs and deep into the bases to hopefully keep them in place.

Can't be one of my projects without getting my signature blue on 'em somewhere. Hah! Still, blue and red are good contrasting colors.

Part of the intent was to put some shredded/charred papers on the bases of the Ashen Circle (among other models) so I went out on the interwebs and pulled down some arcane script pages and shrunk them down to try and make something I could print out. This first pass ended up being a little large for my needs and shrinking them further made them more or less illegible smears on my printer, but they may be useful to attach to vehicles and the like as pages from the Book of Lorgar!

So far so good! ...Or should I say, so far so evil?

Heresy Era Word Bearers - Ashen Circle painting begins!

Just a quick hit this morning, pressing on with the Word Bearers and the Ashen Circle are next up on deck!

Painting them separate from the bases and backpacks is a new thing for me, still working out what works for me. Originally I had them on paint sticks akin to what I used to do with Napoleonics, but they proved too unwieldy at this scale. So the long pins were repurposed as handles, and I'm using a foam block to hold them upright as I work through the group. Got the reds and pewters down, on to all the fiddly detail work!

Heresy Era Word Bearers - Zardu Layak and the Gal Vorbak painted!

Was down with a massive ear infection a week and a half ago which meant there was a surprising amount of hobbying being done (mostly due to the insomnia from the pain). The newest Heresy project rears its ugly head, in the form of...

The Word Bearers! Over the years I've done the most loyal of loyalists, and several misunderstood traitor legions, but figured it was time to do the full-on moustache-twirling-evil guys!

 

While I will undoubtedly get around to painting Erebus and Kor Phaeron, my initial intent was to have a force led by Zardu Layak and his Blade Slaves, as I was really taken by the models. More or less followed the 'standard' paint scheme for them, with Zardu wearing the old greys, while his possessed bodyguards wear the crimson and silver livery of the late-heresy legion.

 

 

The models that really got me into the project in the first place also marched across the painting desk over the last week - The Gal Vorbak are just extremely creepy models, and are really what the possessed marines ought to look like! I'm tempted to do a second five and try some conversions and kitbashing (so it's not just two of each guy). Great fun to paint!

The intention is to do a force that was present on Calth, and as such I knew I wanted to do some faux-marble bases as befitting of the Ultramar worlds. Turns out Secret Weapon does a near-perfect set of bases for just such a theme! I added a little talus to them to rough 'em up a little (they're 'pristine' out of the package) and spent a fair bit of time trying out various techniques until I settled on one that I liked and could reproduce reasonably consistently.

Of course, can't have a new project on the trot without a new painting chart, now can we? Working on the Ashen Circle next, pics to follow soon!