+ 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? +





4 comments:

Mordian7th said...

Looks great, man! I've got a small "true/primaris-scale" heresy-era Alpha Legion project bubbling in the back of my mind and this may have tipped me over the edge into doing it. :D

Floyd Lawton said...

Betrayal at Calth is a surprisingly fun game. I also bought it for 30k marines (along with a second copy, plus Prospero) but I have had a lot of fun playing it against my son. It is super fast to set up and was a great way to introduce a 9 year old to the GW game concepts without getting out my whole table. I use a squad of 2nd edition Red corsairs to stand in for the Word Bearers and classic RTB01 Crimson Fists for the Ultramarines.
Glad to see I'm not the only one who enjoys it. Great work on the minis so far, can't wait to see the finished products.

apologist said...

Brill – looking forward to seeing what you come up with. You should pop it up on the Facebook group. :)

apologist said...

Yes – it's got a great balance of complexity and pace. Feels a lot like Space Hulk, which I think is high praise.