+ inload: Kurtha Sedd's Word Bearers +

+ Kurtha Sedd at Calth +

+ Apologies for the chrono-interim since the last inload, it's been a busy – and exciting – period. As well as some happy personal news, I've also been invited to participate in a couple of events, so behind the scenes things are a-brewing... +

+ However, no-one comes to read a blog about things they can't see, so here's something else I've been enjoying playing with: Word Bearers. +

+ Despite being a trifle short on hobby time, I squeezed in a game of Betrayal at Calth. This is a boardgame, released a few years back, from which I long since cannibalised the model parts. +

+ Although I had unearthed it on a whim, I found it to be a strikingly good game; fun, tactical and – importantly – quick to set up, play and pack up. It seemed a shame to be using proxy models for the Word Bearers (the Ultramarines side being well-supplied by my Praetors of Calth), so I've started to build a set of Word Bearers. +

+ I very much enjoyed building my Astral Claws Kill Team [+noosphericinloadlink embedded+] and dwarfs for Shadespire [+noosphericinloadlink embedded+], and I suspect much of that is because they were small, self-enclosed projects. This is a slightly larger undertaking – twenty-one marines plus a dreadnought – so to avoid burnout, these are deliberately relatively simple conversions. Hobby time has become rather a precious commodity, so I'm making some compromises here and there. +

+ Kurtha Sedd (front centre) and a mob of Word Bearers at various stages of corruption +

+ Rather than being the more involved true-scaling I used for my Ultramarines, Iron Warriors etc., I'm using Primaris as the base, as for my Astral Claws and Blood Angels. This vastly speeds things up. +

+ Using parts from the limited edition Sergeant Jovan let me get some cool posing through easy kitbashing rather than involved conversion. +

+ One of the nice things about the Word Bearers in Betrayal at Calth is that background-wise they're meant to be a bit of a hodge-podge. At this stage in the Heresy, the different Chapters of the Legion were already beginning to have their own traditions and customs – particularly in terms of how they showed their devotion to the Dark Gods. This is exacerbated because the game concentrates on scattered survivors meeting up in the underground arcologies. +

+ Background-wise, Lorgar sent all these marines to their deaths, in service to a greater plan. As well as the primary aim of summoning the Ruinstorm, destroying Calth wholesale formed a purge of his Legion, an opportunity to rid himself of vacillators, doubters and – conversely – those too unstable and fanatical; or who could not get over an obsession with the Ultramarines. This is a great excuse to include a variety of different styles, and just have fun. I think including relatively uncorrupted figures (like the marine below) alongside more Chaotic-looking ones helps to create a sense of continuity – and tragedy, by making it clear that such corruption can build through reasonable-seeming steps; rather than jumping straight into the mouth of madness. + 

+ This mini-project therefore lets me save some time by using a couple of previously abortive attempts without modification: the Chapters of the Blasted Cedar and the Justifiers. These more extreme examples will fit in beautifully, I think, and any variation can be happily explained in-universe by variation between Chapters. +

+ A simple marine – with a different paintjob, he could easily be an Ultramarine. +

+ I always find space marines fun to kitbash and convert, since there's such a wide range of kits. Using Primaris as the basis for this diverse mix also lets me liberally add various cool bits that haven't found a home elsewhere to this group – allowing me to switch from more restrained marines (such as the two above) to those with more traditionally Chaotic visuals – up to and including some all-out mutated figures based on Gal-Vorbak. +

+ The new Chaos Havoc arms and backpacks fit perfectly on the Primaris marines; you need only trim away the backpack 'nub' from the body. +

+ And speaking of the Gal Vorbak, here's a size comparison pic of a simple arm swap conversion (left) from the Gal Vorbak alongside a Primaris-based marine (right). Very similar, no? +