Good news, everyone: Since the stifling heat has let up a bit, I am back to my usual state of semi-productivity ;-) Anyway, I promised you a more substantial update in my last post, and you shall have it!
I mentioned that a couple of fellow hobbyists have recently sent me some pretty nifty stuff, and today’s update will deal with the first of the projects to come out of this latest supply drop.
First up, PDH provided me with an absolutely massive package of bitz and left me truly staggered by so much generosity! Ungrateful git that I am, I only have a fairly meagre first project to show for it yet: I finally started building the last Dreadnought/Helbrute weapon still missing from my collection, transforming a stock Dreadnought rocket launcer Peter had sent me into its suitably chaotic counterpart:
Certainly nothing mind blowing, but rather a nice and simple bit of kitbashing that eased me back into the regular flow of things — still, having an entire set of fully exchangeable weapons for my Chaos Helbrutes will feel enormously pleasing once it has finally been accomplished ;-)
But the rocket launcher is not really the star of the show today. That role falls to the second model I would like to show you. So, what is this about?
You may remember that my attempt at coming up with some Obliterators that didn’t look like Chaos Terminators covered in meat wastes turned into a rather protracted conversion project (chronicled, for instance, here and here). I ended up with three custom Obliterators that I was reasonably happy with. These:
Some of you may already have been wondering why I hadn’t yet managed to get these painted. The reason, apart from my egregious lack of painting discipline, is that fate intervened and I discovered a recipe for building Obliterators that I liked even better:
Thamier’s wonderful Balefire Legion has been a constant source of inspiration. But what really blew me away more than anything else was his approach to sculpting and kitbashing his own, completely customised Obliterators (whose creation you can witness starting here)!
Maybe the best part about these is that while they are perfectly in line with the look and feel of GW’s other chaos models (almost moreso than the official Obliterators, in fact), they forego the fleshy, mutated look in favour of something more mechanical and imposing. Take a look:
Obliterator built and painted by Thamier
I was really blown away by the sheer awesomness of these models, but alas I could only gaze at them from afar and hope that one day I might be able to come up with something just as cool.
Well, that day may have come, because – while Thamier only made these awesome bitz for use in his own army – I was actually lucky enough to get my hands on some of them as part of a bitz swap between the two of us. This is a really exciting opportunity, of course, so it goes without saying that I immediately started assembling my very own “Thamier pattern” Obliterator.
Now Thamier had warned me in advance that the castings weren’t of the best quality, and that the parts would require some work. And indeed, there was quite a bit of flash to be scraped off. But all in all, the parts really cleaned up rather nicely. Here’s a look at the cleaned and prepared parts for the Obliterator:
custom Obliterator parts sculpted by Thamier
As you can see, a full set consists of a torso (in two halves, in fact), a pelvis, two thighs, two (rather massive) lower legs and two feet. The parts were cast from Thamier’s original master model, as far as I am aware, and considering the pieces have been entirely sculpted from scratch, the amount of detail is rather nice. Of course these are not as crisp and cutting edge as a factory-made GW kit, but I am in fact even more impressed with the sculpting that went into these after having made some first hand experiences with the parts: Not only do they take all the right design cues from GW’s own chaos models, but they also come with amazing little touches like the profile on the Obliterator’s armoured boot:
custom Obliterator parts sculpted by Thamier
That is true dedication, ladies and gentlemen ;-)
Like I said, scraping off the flash wasn’t a big problem, and even a bit of rough texture or damage here and there actually work towards the effect that these guys are ancient veterans of the Long War, so no problem there.
Here’s my first mockup of the whole model:
As you can see, the model is really rather massive, which makes it clear that this guy is not just any standard chaos Terminator. And while the overall shape and construction may recall Tactical Dreadnought Armour, there are several visual shout outs to the new Helbrute design, like the armour panels to the side of the head, the slightly more elaborate armour trim and, of course, the pelvis area that looks very similar to that of the Helbrute.
I used a Warp Talon head as a placeholder, which should show you that the sculpted torso will accept pretty much any (Chaos) Space Marine or Chaos Warrior head without a hitch. The comparison should also give you a rather good idea of the model’s rather impressive size and bulk!
Working from there, I had to get a bit creative, because – unlike Thamier – I cannot sculpt for toffee. So where Thamier sculpted his own upper arms and shoulder pads, I defaulted back to my usual approach and solution to any hobby problem — glorious kitbashing! ;-)
In this case, though, the task of actually finding suitable arms that scaled correctly with the rest of the body almost drove me crazy: While natural looking proportions are not exactly a priority for a hulking monster like this, many arm setups that seemed promising ended up looking too short and undermining the sense of threat given off by the model.
In the end, the solution was found in the most unlikely of places: I was messing around with the magma cutter bitz from the fiend kit when I realised that these could actually work as arms for the Obliterator! So I combined them with some Chaos Terminator fists and a couple of leftover Centurion weapons (it’s a good thing you get LOTS of leftover weapons with the Centurion kit), and my Obliterator really took shape. Take a look:
As you can plainly see, I took a lot of inspiration from Thamier’s painted model shown further up in this post, but then I thought it looked really awesome and wanted to replicate some of that coolness ;-)
For the shoulder pads, I chose Centurion pads, as you can see. I also added some Ogre armour plates to the hips to bulk out the model’s middle a bit. As an added benefit, these will also create some visual consistency if I ever want to use this big guy alongside my converted Centurions, as they are using the same armour plates for decoration.
I still needed to bulk out the upper arms, since they were looking a little scrawny. Plus the clean and loyalist shoulder pads needed some chaotic love as well. So I added another round of bitz, and here’s where the model stands at the moment:
While some additional cleanup along with a spiky bit here and there may be required, I am really rather happy with this guy! I think the design works really well as a less-mutated but really impressive and utterly chaotic Obliterator! And I am also reasonably pleased with the solution I came up with for the arms!
One thing I need to point out again is that this guy is absolutely MASSIVE, with much more bulk than a regular Terminator. In fact, like I said, he’s the perfect missing link between Terminators and Helbrutes, not only in design but also in height and bulk.
Provided the temperature outside stays agreeable enough, I hope to be able to paint his guy rather soon. Afterwards, I’ll have to consider which way to go with my overall strategy for the Obliterators: Will this veritable beast be used as a “unit champion” of sorts, leading the other, Centurion-based Obliterators into battle? Or will I become so addicted to the Thamier-pattern that any other kind of Obliterator just seems like a cheap travesty to me?
For now, I’ll just try to build the biggest, baddest Obliterator imaginable. Thanks so much to Thamier for letting me have some of those bitz to mess around with! And if any of you have any suggestions or criticism about this guy, let me know!
And, as always, thanks for looking and stay tuned for more!
Filed under: 40k, Chaos, Conversions, WIP, World Eaters Tagged: 40k, behemoths, chaos space marines, conversion, helbrute, khorne, khorne's eternal hunt, kitbash, obliterators, scratchbuild, sculpt, thamier, thamier pattern, WIP, world eaters
