Not only am I a great fan of building characters for my World Eaters army (as evidenced by many, many posts on this blog), I also enjoy having models to represent must – if not all – of the possible selections from the Codex. What’s more, I am constantly trying come up with conversions and kitbashes that put a spin on the ideas presented in the book and make the models fit my army’s background: My Chaos Spawn are former World Eaters and still retain some of the gladiatorial feel typical of the legion. My champions and officers are “Huntmasters”, accomplished hunters out to run down their prey. Indeed, most of my army is designed with the hunting background firmly in mind, and for each entry in the codex, I try to come up with a model that is not only clearly recognisable, but also makes sense within the context of the army’s overall look and feel.
The Dark Apostle HQ selection was one that had me stumped so far. You see, for me, the Dark Apostle will always remain a character type firmly connected to the Word Bearers legion. I also wanted to build my own model for a possible Dark Apostle instead of the Finecast one released by GW (though the model is, of course, really cool). So after a bit of thought, I figured that I had two possibilities:
- Make the Apostle a Word Bearer that had been assigned to the 4th assault company during the Great Crusade and had been staying with them ever since.
- Come up with a way to create a “Khornate” Dark Apostle that made sense within the framework of my army’s background.
While the first option may be pretty promising from a narrative standpoint, I somehow just wasn’t feeling it: While the Dark Apostle Azalon actually appears in the background of Khorne’s Eternal Hunt and definitely had a hand in their corruption, he’s a character I would maybe like to spin off into a separate army project one of these days. So I thought about making my own apostle as a member of the 4th assault company.
Several Khorne players have come up with some kind of “blood priest”, inciting his brothers to even greater rage during battle. But while that idea was also very cool, it still wasn’t what I was looking for. Instead, I thought about what the members of Khorne’s Eternal Hunt would possibly use as a means of bolstering their morale and drive them forward. And since it’s a hunting party we are talking about here, the answer was rather simple: a horn.
My Dark Apostle would be a hornblower, wielding an ancient and treasured artifact to call the warriors of the 4th to arms and order them forward. To my mind, it makes a lot of sense that the sound of their most revered warhorn should serve as a surge of motivation to the legionaries of the 4th!
So far so good! Now when it came to actually building the model, everything boiled down to a lucky coincidence, as is so often the case: When I swung by the FLGS the other day after a particularly horrible day at work, I couldn’t help but treat myself to one of GW’s brand new plastic Chaos Lords.
While I hadn’t been 100% sold on the model before, this guy is actually pretty great once you see him firsthand! So I sat down and did a couple of really easy changes to the model to transform him into my “counts as” Dark Apostle. Take a look:
As you can see, it didn’t take much to make the model look quite different: I carefully cut off the hand holding the glaive and used a different head. Oh, and I also “converted” the base to fit on a 40k round base. Apart from that, in a move that is fairly atypical for me, the model remains very close to the original design.
While the head that comes with the model is much nicer than the pictures in WD would have you believe, and while it has a really interesting “Herne the Hunter” vibe going on, it was a little to over the top for the look I wanted to achieve. So I used a champion head from the Skullcrusher kit instead. The Khorne rune on the forehead is quite a nice touch, and while I had originally planned to shave off the small set of horns, they somehow really complement the rest of the model rather well, don’t you think?
The huge horn came from the Chaos Daemon Bloodcrusher kit and is nicely decorated with different chaotic runes. I originally wanted to use the even cooler horn from the Skullcrushers, but that one was unfortunately right-handed, so I had little choice in the matter. In any case, the horn really looks like an ancient and powerful artifact of the Warp…
Granted, this guy still looks very much like a WFB model. But even though I might have been slightly tempted to make an even more involved conversion out of this model, I was too in love with the lines and silhouette of the model to further cut it up. And while I am not one to be easily swayed by GW’s marketing speak, their gushing about how great the model’s sword and cape are designed is, for once, really true. Take a look:
What’s really great about the new Chaos Lord is the depth of the model: He doesn’t look nearly as flat as the plastic models of old. However, this also comes at a price: The parts only fit together in a fairly specific way, so if you want to convert this guy, you should keep that in mind.
It’s fairly easy to swap in a couple of new forearms (and weapons) and the neck cavity will accept pretty much any head you choose to put there. The model could even conceivably be left off the sculpted base. Beyond that, though, converting this guy could get pretty complicated though. Still, knowing people like GuitaRasmus, PDH or migsula, I think we can rest assured that we will be seeing a couple of rather striking re-designs sooner rather than later…
Another word of advice: If you want to make painting this model a lot easier for yourself, you should think about what to glue together and what to leave apart before painting. Personally speaking, I would advise you to work in these four sub-assemblies:
A: You can definitely glue together the base and small rocky outcrop with a part of the model’s right foot on it. If you want to keep the glaive, this will be quite a bit more complicated, since the weapon potentially connects sub-assemblies A and B. Since I just cut it off, I made my life that much easier 
B: The cape and forearms can be glued together: You can still add or remove the rest of the body (C) afterwards without a hitch. Again, see above for possible difficulties if you keep the glaive in the model’s right hand.
C: The model’s main body and right lower leg can also be glued together. There’s really only one possible position here. Even so, you might want to dryfit this part with sub-assembly A to make sure everything fits together.
D: Whatever head you want to use should probably be kept separate until after painting.
Oh, and one more thing: This guy is huge! Especially if you use the sculpted base! While he is a little less bulky than a Terminator, he almost reaches up to the same height as my Lorimar conversion (base included).
All in all, I am really pleased with this guy right now: I may add a small bit or two (and possibly a Dark Vengeance Chosen backpack, to make the model look a little more 40k), but he is pretty gorgeous and quite majestic as he is. I also think he makes for a rather convincing Dark Apostle in the context of my whole army. And I can also recommend the WoC plastic Lord, even though the price is nothing to laugh at.
Anyway, let me know what you think! And as always, thanks for looking and stay tuned for more!
Filed under: 40k, Chaos, Conversions, Fluff, World Eaters Tagged: 40k, apostle of war, background, chaos, chaos lord, chaos space marines, codex chaos space marines, conversion, dark apostle, fluff, horn, huntmaster, khorne, new woc release, warhammer fantasy battles, warriors of chaos, wfb, WIP, world eaters
