Heresy & Heroes

It turns out that things move fast in the world of duel building. It’s already time for my second update, and I have plenty of progress to show you already – it has been a rather busy week. Let’s start with where the action has been most focussed – the terminator.

I always remember the original drawing that Jes Goodwin did of an Emperor’s Children Chaos Space Marine where there’s a note about how the Emperor’s Children raided and stole a lot of their gear, allowing them access to lots of different marks of armour, weapons, and why their look was so chaotic and colourful. I wanted to bring some of that to this miniature, and so when it came to the arms, I tried to add a bit of variety and nods to other Chaos Space Marine warbands in there as well (well, I figured they stole from other warbands as much as they raided Imperial fleets and planets).

The combi-weapon, I imagine, comes from an Alpha Legion operative (it’s hard to tell in the gloomy photo above, but it’s a dark turquoise colour), while the chain blade was taken from a fallen Iron Warrior. That big skull shoulder pad was taken from a slain World Eater, perhaps on Scalathrax, while the power fist came from a trade with a Night Lords champion. They all lend themselves to that colourful and chaotic look that I mentioned earlier. Also, I’m so happy with the lightning on the power fist, I may actually do a bit of Night Lords work at a later date – a legion/warband that I’ve always been a little scared of in terms of painting.

What’s more, I’ve found the head I want to use. I had wanted a face that could looked defiant, yet in a lot of pain (he has just had his insides mangled by a strand of monofilament wire after all). But because it’s Slaanesh, pain is pleasure, so I settled on having a characterful face, full of feeling. That’s why I was going to hack the head out of a Dark Apostle. It’s got some mutations going on, it’s a bit more modern so no worrying about the sculpt being too dated. I thought it would be perfect, but in the end, it just didn’t look right. It was too shouty, and it almost looked a little pleading when I looked at it up close. So, instead, I picked the bare head from the CSM terminator box set. Why mess with a classic kit, right? I should also mentioned that I’ve tidied up the pink on the horn since taking the above picture – it no long looks like he has a gentleman’s appendage growing out of his temple.

The last thing to do is a spot of weathering, and then I’ll mount him onto the base.

And speaking of the base, that’s come on a little too. Yes, that’s another skull – like I wasn’t going to have one on there, right? Everybody loves skulls! Hell, GW’s core marketing concept for the last 20 years has been ‘needs more skulls’ so I’m hoping to curry favour there. I’ve also added a mix of sand, small rocks and some cork to give the base some texture, and I think I’m going to try and use some GW tufted grass too – not tried that before so will be interesting to see how that works.

After some rummaging around, I finally found my Harlequin. As I mentioned in my last post, I’ve had this idea for a while now (a couple of years at least), and that’s when I bought the Solitaire. Well, the past version of me was not quite as careful with hacking the arm off as the present version of me would have liked him to be. It’s a bit scratched up and hacked apart, but I reckon I can rescue it. Though I’m not going to risk it – if I can’t make it all look clean, I won’t use it – I’ll just have to go and buy a new one. We shall see.

Lastly, and just for fun, I pulled out an old terminator from the Emperor’s Children army I had built many years ago. I literally just plunged my hand into the draw where they all languish and plucked out a model that felt terminator sized. Well, it turned out to be my old champion that was kitted out with the same legs, torso, arms and head as the miniature I’m building now. It was spooky – had my tastes in EC terminators really not moved on in all these years?! Apparently not. Fun to see how far I’ve come in painting terms though.

That’s your update for today done. I hope your projects are going equally as well, and that you’re having lots of fun with you paints. Onwards!

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