Today marks a pretty special occasion for me, because my blog has managed to garner its first 100,000 views. Which is rather amazing, seeing how I basically kicked off this small endeavour about one and a half years ago to show you my own, meagre hobby efforts. Back then, I was of course hoping that I would be able to attract some attention to my hobby projects, but never could I have foreseen so many visitors, readers and comments. So thanks a lot to all the people who have shown an interest so far! Getting some kind of feedback is a great motivational factor, even if it’s only seeing that people click on the site, download the odd image or what have you. It’s been a great experience so far, and I promise I’ll try to keep the content coming. Who knows, some of it may even be interesting 
So, what better way to celebrate the occasion than to show you some new pictures of where my World Eaters army currently stands? After all, this army was one of my main reasons for starting this blog!
Even though I may have been rather lazy since showing you the last family portrait some time ago, the army still fills me with pride. Take a look:
I only really painted some 15 new models since the last set of photos was taken, but at least some of them were pretty huge. The army also ends up looking rather imposing lined up like that, if I do say so myself!
The biggest addition to the army since we last saw it was of course the Hellrazor, my converted Heldrake:
But I also managed to paint some more lords (a lasting addiction of mine) and fellows in terminator armour. These three gentlemen can already make up a small Termicide unit, if push comes to shove:
And there’s an equally large collection of Chaos Lords in power armour, of course. Among them my converted Dark Apostle (shown on the left):
Then there’s a small collection of champions and models I painted just for fun (among them the starts of a dedicated gladiator squad). While several of those concepts may be spun off into an own squad, all of these “stragglers” together can almost make up another berzerker squad:
And finally, there’s the beginnings of Joras Turnpelt’s small detachment of traitorous Space Wolves, to be used as regular CSM, if the battle plan so requires:
But let’s not just look at already finished stuff! Blogging is all about new content after all, and seeing these guys neatly lined up like that actually gave me a pretty huge appetite for adding more stuff to my World Eaters — but where to start?
I recently discovered Chris’ fantastic kitbashed Decimator over at A Host of Word Bearers and was simply blown away by the model! Using a Dreadknight as the base model for his conversion, Chris managed to truly transform it into an excellent daemon engine for the dark gods. And it took all my strengths to resist picking up a Dreadknight right away to emulate his conversion.
…
Unfortunately, my resolve lasted all of 24 hours, then I hurried to the FLGS and made my move. And I spent the last weekend in a bit of a building spree, trying to convert my own, corrupted Dreadknight/Decimator.
At the beginning, I stuck closely to Chris’ recipe, only replacing a small bit here and there. After a relatively short while, this was what I ended up with:
As you can see, the basic construction is very similar. I was lucky enough to discover that the armour plates from the Maulerfiend’s forearms were a perfect fit for the Dreadknight legs. And as Chris’ conversion amply demonstrated, the arms from the Forgefiend and Heldrake kits, respectively, make for great improvised Decimator weapons. Luckily enough, I still had both lying around, so the body was finished rather quickly.
Here’s where the problems started, though, since I lacked virtually all the parts used by Chris to make up the head and shoulders of his model. And I didn’t consider the chances of getting my hands on a warsphinx skull head to be all that great. So I realised I would have to improvise and started kitbashing:
My first idea was to use the skull from one of the 40k dice holders. I thought it would look reasonably close to that warsphinx head:
But once I had tried it, I really wasn’t too happy with the result: It just didn’t look as cool as I had hoped.
My next approach was to default back to every Khorne player’s bread and butter choice: A juggernaut head.
But while this would have worked rather nicely, it presented a whole new problem: I had already used a juggernaut head when building Marax the Fallen, and I didn’t really want to replicate a motif I had already used once…
And then I had an idea: I suddenly remembered that head I had originally wanted to use for my second Dreadnought:
Back then, I ultimately had to discard the head because it was simply too big for a dreadnought body. But for obvious reasons, that wouldn’t be a problem this time around! So I made a mockup:
And in a strange way, it worked. I really like the blunt, brutal look of the head! With its cyclopean eyeslit, it really looks like an inhuman killing machine. And while I am normally not a big fan of using old toy parts on 40k models, I felt I could make an exeception here. After all, isn’t this a nice callback to a youth misspent on a different kind of plastic crack?
Anyway, I continued working from there, building up the shoulders with a couple of bitz and bobs. I also started experimenting with a slightly more exciting pose.
I then posted the WIP shots on a couple of forums to confirm whether I was on to something here, and the reactions were largely positive, so I persevered. One criticism, however, turned out to be valid: Some guys over at GW-Fanworld pointed out that the toy head seemed to be far less detailed than the surrounding area. So I used a couple of additional bitz to address this problem:
It might not be perfect, but I am confident I can make it work during the painting stage. In an unexpected twist, I also decided against using the usual Khornate “bunny ears”, because I really liked the head’s blunt silhouette and didn’t want to clutter it with too many different elements.
I kept adding some additional bitz here and there, and a short while later, the model’s construction was basically finished. Take a look:
A few additional chains, skull trophies and chaos icons notwithstanding, I believe the model is close to finished. I have also resisted the urge to glue everything together right off the bat, so the model is currently kept in several larger sub-assemblies (and held together with several gobs of modelling putty and a huge amount of faith). It will probably be far easier to paint that way!
All in all, I am really pleased with this big boy at the moment! Though the original inspiration is still clearly visible, the different head and shoulders keep the model from becoming a mere retread of somebody else’s conversion. And I am also really looking forward to seeing this guy painted. I suspect/hope that painting the model will be slightly similar to painting a bigger dreadnought. I hope I am right in this, because painting my two dreads has been an absolute blast!
As soon as I get my hands on a fresh can of Chaos Black, expect this guy to hit the painting table! Until then, if you have any C&C on him, I’d love to hear it!
So yeah, as you can see, Khorne’s Eternal Hunt is still going strong! A huge thank you must go to Chris for providing the totally awesome inspiration for this conversion! And, of course, thanks to your for looking and stay tuned for more!
Here’s to the next 100,000!
Filed under: 40k, Chaos, Conversions, Pointless ramblings, World Eaters Tagged: 000 views, 100, 40k, army, army showcase, blogging, chaos, chaos lord, chaos space marines, conversion, huntmaster, khorne, khorne's eternal hunt, paintjob, world eaters
