Yet more conversion and kitbashing hijinks for today’s update — I know, I know: I will eventually have to get back to painting! Bear with me, though, I have some pretty cool things lined up for today’s post.
Let’s begin with a bit of an “appetiser”, if you will: You’ll probably still remember this conversion from my previous post:
I have finally committed to the conversion for good, gluing the Blood Warrior mid-section to the Skullreaper/Wrathmonger legs (the actual torso remains only tacked-on for now, but mostly to make the painting process easier). I have also thrown together a belt buckle/belly plate with a leftover bit from an AoS Slaughterpriest and the dangling skull from Abaddon’s loincloth (the thing just snapped off, so I thought I might as well use it here):
Some cleanup remains, but I am fairly happy with this conversion! From a background perspective, I want this guy to represent Syrax, a shampion of the Harriers – the fourth assault company’s own brand of Raptors – and right-hand-man to a certain character named “Charun, Lord of the Harriers”, if anyone should still remember him from the earlier days of this blog…
As for today’s “main course”: You all should know by now that I have never learned to resist the utterly dreadful “Ohh! Shiny!” syndrome, so working on this model…
…really gave me an appetite for working on some more updated Terminators. Ultimately, I decided this with an impeccable sense of timing, buying a box of the “new” Chaos Space Marine Terminators just a week or so before the re-scaled loyalist Terminators were announced. Oh well…
But anyway, I was still looking forward to my first experiences working with the new 2019/2020 (?!) Chaos Terminators. They are a great update on the older kit (which, let’s face it, does seem slightly dodgy from a modern perspective). The updated kit is not without its quirks, but its more organic shapes and bulkier armour really do a great job when it comes to making Chaos Space Marine Terminators like lumbering, threatening behemoths (even if, as seems to be the standard with GW’s modern kits, each of the bodies only goes together in one specific way).
At the same time, the conversion standard for these models has become rather crazy while I wasn’t looking, with many hobbyists coming up with brilliant World Eaters Terminators! One source that I found particularly inspiring, if not downright intimidating, were fellow hobbyist RocPSU’s fantastic Terminator conversions — so I knew I would have to up my game for this project 
My objective with the new Terminators was threefold:
- turn every one into an individual, because these are ancient veterans of the Long War and deserve to look the part
- believably turn each of them into a World Eater
- have them still read as Terminators: Now this sounds like it wouldn’t be a big deal, but you can really end up converting Terminators so much that you lose a huge chunk of the classic look that actually clearly makes them come across as Terminators, so I needed to keep a balance between creating cool conversions while maintaining the iconic look.
So here’s what I have so far:
You have already seen the gentleman with the twin lightning claws, of course. For my first “test model”, I tried to hammer out the general look I wanted to achieve, in some shape or form, for the whole squad:
Nothing too crazy here, just an attempt at making the model clearly read as a World Eater: The addition of a rebreather head from the new berzerker kit already did most of the work, and adding a Caedere Remissum crest to the top of the armour (courtesy of the blades from a weird Skullreaper/Wrathmonger weapon) was obviously the first oder of the day. Apart from this, I exhanged the head of the stock power maul with an axe blade from another Skullreaper/Wrathmonger weapon. And I added a small World Eaters legion symbol-like medal as well as a Khorne rune to the breastplate. Oh, and a heraldic tilting plate is a bit of an experiment for now — although I really like the idea that some squad members would be holding on to some remnants of their personal heraldry and/or squad markings from the Heresy…
Next up, the heavy weapons guy. For me, the silhouette of the massive autocannon is so very iconic of Chaos Terminators that I knew I had to use that gun. Beyond that, it was, once again, mostly a matter of adding some visual flourishes to make this guy look like a World Eater:
The (Forgeworld) World Eaters shoulder pad is the most obvious addition here. The helmet crest came from the Skullcrushers this time around, and was added on top of the armour, rather than being stuck directly to the neck seal. The shield is, once again, a bit of an experiment, but it’s an element that keeps appearing throughout my army to represent the World Eaters’ gladiatorial leanings, so I think it might be a cool little detail here. Oh, and I also did some work on the model’s breastplate:
And the final model so far: What is probably my least favourite body pose from the kit ended up turning into my favourite conversion:
Another helmet crest, this time from the Blood Warriors (arguably the best and most consistent source for this kind of bit at the moment). The small, Khornate tilting plate is another touch of personal heraldry (and came from the Skullcrushers). The power axe was spiced up a bit by swapping in the blade of a two-handed Necromunda Goliath chainweapon — to be perfectly honest, I’ve been looking forward to using that weapon ever since the new Necromunda came out
Oh, and I carefully shaved off the little air intake/exhaust from the centre of the breastplate and replaced it with a legion symbol.
All of these changes were not my favourite part of the model, however: What is perhaps most noticeable is the helmet:
I had this weird desire to find out whether I might be able to re-create a plastic version of the vicious-looking, slightly Predator-like, mawed Terminator faceplate that can be seen on Forge World’s Lord Zhufor model:
I used a skull from the box of plastic skulls for this, carefully shaving and gluing until I had what I would say is a pretty promising prototype:
That was not the end of it, however: Fellow Reddit user Money_Cost6121 suggested maybe using an ork skull for that grafted-on faceplate conversion, and while I originally discarded the idea as possibly ending up looking …too orky, I was still intrigued. So down the rabbit hole I went and created two more options. Here’s a comparison shot with all three versions I made:
Not going to lie: In hindsight, I feel a bit foolish for only trying the most obvious option (using a Bloodletter face) last…
They all have their merits: Personally speaking, the Ork-version seems almost too monstrous, ogre-like to me. The Bloodletter probably looks like the most natural and refined option, although I have to admit that it ended up being just as finicky as the other two, and really mostly came together through sheer, dumb luck.
That being said, the conversion process is really not that complicated: For all three versions, you bascially just cut away the “face” from any given skull at a slight angle, starting at the bridge of the nose and cutting down. Then you carefully cut and shave away the lowest part of the faceplate from the Terminator helmet, trying to create a soft, concave curve. And then it’s a matter of careful test fitting, shaving and gluing — I might have to write up a mini-tutorial for this in an upcoming post…
In any case, I think the results so far a pretty promising!
Oh, and because this question came up regarding the twin LC Terminator Lord in a comment to my previous post, here’s a scale comparison with one of the new Terminators:
As you can see, they work fairly well together: The older Terminator body seems a bit lankier (with a weirdly narrow torso piece), while the new Terminators are much bulkier and seem more ponderous. Even so, the models should look quite alright together, once everything has been painted, in 2034 or so
And that’s another update in the bag! Once again, I would love to hear any thoughts and suggestions you might have. And, as always, thanks for looking and stay tuned for more!