Hey everyone, it’s already mid-February, and the fact that I still haven’t managed to complete the second part of my Eternal Hunt Awards writeup for 2019 has basically become a millstone around my neck that actually prevents me from posting any update at all, and we cannot have that, so here’s what we’ll do:
For today, I would just love to share some of the stuff I have been working on lately with you, seeing how I keep making progress with my little World Eaters kill team project.
As for my various favourite blogs and recommendations, I will commit to turning those into a rather more forward-looking post of its own in the near future — scout’s honour! For those of you who are looking for an excellent look back at the projects of 2019 and want their fix *right now*, feel free to peruse the following, excellent articles courtesy of the Brothers Wier and Wudugast, respectively.
To those of you who had been looking forward to my post, I can only apologise — and promise you that something not quite unlike it will be along sooner rather than later. For now, however, in the interest of keeping this blog going, I’ll just have to go with sharing some stuff I am actually motivated to work on right now. I hope you guys understand!
So, anyway, with that out of the way, where were we? Oh, right, I remember: In my last World Eaters related update, I already showed you this guy who is part of my “Hateful Eight” World Eaters project:
I could really kick myself for forgetting, once again, to take step-by-step pictures while I painted him — I guess the model would have made for a pretty cool tutorial. Oh well, next time, I guess…
Anyway, this is what the model looked like with most of the paintjob already in place:
As you can see, I decided to add some glossy blood to the meteor hammer — because it just seemed really, really appropriate in this particular case. In fact, I tried to take this even further with my idea for the rest of the base:
It was always clear that I would want to add some kind of “special effect” to the base. A trail of blood, as the World Eater drags his bloodied weapon behind him, seemed like an obvious idea. But I wanted something even more gruesome:
The idea was to make it look as though the World Eater had just crushed some unfortunate opponent’s skull, so I went the extra mile and included some bone shards 
Here’s the finished model:
While the pose remains ever so slightly hokey, on account of the base model I used for the conversion, I am still pretty happy with this chap. The two things I wanted to achieve with him — having a model wearing a massive, ancient suit of armour that also has a bit of a gladiatorial flair, have definitely worked out: In spite of all the quasi-medieval stylings of the armour, you could still imagine a suit of ancient Mk. III Iron Armour as the starting point underneath it all.
And here’s a closer look at the base again, now with the meteor hammer in place, obviously:
And once again, in order to round out my progress report, here’s an updated group picture of the new World Eaters models I have managed to finish so far:
Regarding the general progress of this progress, I’ll admit that these models seem like a bit of an evolutionary step for me in that, after all these years of building and painting World Eaters, I have now arrived at the point where the models actually end up looking very close to the way I’ve always wanted them to be: massive, baroque, highly individual and very sinister. Are they perfect? No, certainly not — there’s still a lot of room for improvement. But it’s not hyperbole to say that these are the closest I have yet come to realising my personal vision of what the warriors of the 4th assault company should look like.
At the same time, however, it’s becoming painfully obvious that I’ll be ending up with more than eight models, mostly because I just cannot stop building stuff. Case in point, here are the next guys in line for the painting desk:
Granted, some (okay, alright: two) of these are older conversions. But I just keep adding to them. For today, I would like to point out two models in particular.
The first model was born from the desire to do something, anything, with that very weird, two-handed Bat’leth-style weapon that comes with the AoS Blood Warriors:
So I shaved off the secondary blade, and used some Blood Warrior, CSM and Mk. III Marine parts to make this:
As you can see, it’s yet another conversion that combines most of the parts from a stock Blood Warrior with Mk. III greaves, although I would argue that the graft is a much smoother one this time around. I also think the somewhat more medieval Blood Warriors armour, when used in moderation, creates a cool, somewhat gladiatorial look that really suits 40k World Eaters and moves the models beyond simply looking like vanilla CSM with bunny eared helmets. It was also cool to be able to re-use the backpack I had originally spliced together for the guy with the meteor hammer! 
I am really stupidly happy with the guy, to be honest — he definitely has some presence, wouldn’t you agree?
Seeing how I have a prospective painting session at Annie’s place scheduled for later this week, and maybe I should just allow this guy to jump the queue
The second model I want to focus on was converted just the other day when I realised the squad/kill team still needed some kind of icon bearer — I am a bit of a traditionalist in that respect: Every squad of traitor Astartes needs an icon bearer, and those new-fangled, backpack-mounted icons just don’t cut it for me.
On the other hand, the idea of a World Eater lugging around a massive standard always seems a bit iffy. However, there was one model I have always loved for just striking the right balance in this respect: the metal World Eaters icon bearer from the mid-90s.
And seeing how one side objective of this particular project has been to give shout outs to classic models or artwork, I couldn’t resist the temptation to just rebuild that particular model for the new millennium. Take a look:
I’ve had to flip the model horizontally for logistical reasons, but apart from that, the new guy is a fairly involved attempt at a proper re-interpretation of the classic sculpt. I didn’t have one of those old banner tops, unfortunately, so I used what felt like the next-best thing: a Wrathmonger/Skullreaper standard that seems like it could be used as a weapon in its own right with its many vicious barbs and bladed edges.
Here’s a comparison with the classic model and my new interpretation of the sculpt, side by side:
So as you can see, in spite of everything, I am at least reasonably successful at coming up with new members of the 4th assault company. And I would, of course, like to hear your thoughts on my progress, so please leave a comment!
And, as always, thanks for looking and stay tuned for more!