All for one

Today I offer up four Champions to the Chaos altar of t'internet for sacrifice. By which I mean I finally got my act together and painted some more Chaos Space Marines. These were sort of an experiment of combining various styles and techniques while creating a cohesive central theme at the same time and I like to think that it was a success and I hope you agree. In light of the forthcoming hardback version of the Black Legion supplement I'm painting my Chosen Marines (and most of the rest of my CSM) as Black Legion. At least until another supplement comes out and I start painting some stuff for that one. I think I'm going to end up with a set of models worthy of the Index Astartes by the time I'm done. I think we'll need a bigger display cabinet...

The first offering has actually been the most popular on Twitter and is my Khorne Champion. I decided that the one with the Lightning Claws would suit Khorne better as they're a pure assault weapon and remove any ranged capability from the models that have a pair. The combination of techniques here comes from my experiments with Khorne Daemon armour so the entire model got the full on drybrush treatment much like my Skull Cannon as well as the Glaze/Wash effect on top. As a nod to my original concept I painted the loincloth in white because I was originally going to do a mixed force where my Khorne units would have been World Eaters and not Hounds of Abbadon. The claws were interesting though I can't claim credit for the idea as it came from the September edition of White Dwarf. They were painted in Naggaroth Night then progressively highlighted with Screamer Pink, Pink Horror and Emperor's Children. I thought this would provide a nice contrast as well as break up the wall of darkness that makes up the rest of the model.

Next up is my Nurgle Champion who looks like he has seen better days and therefore means I did a good job on the weathering (I may as well toot my own horn, no one else is going to :p). You can see how I painted this one over here and I'm linking it because I really can't be bothered to go over it all again. The only issue I had with this model was that even the weathering was dark (contrary to how the picture looks) so I added in the green on the pipes and the red on the gun to break it up slightly without ruining the effect.

Third in this parade of evil comes my Tzeentch Champion. If you're anything like my nephews you will have already noticed that he has no pupils in his eyes and I will say that that WAS intentional. I decided that the third eye granted by Tzeentch came at the cost of his normal eye sight so no pupils. I didn't drybrush anything on this model (with the exception of the slight weathering on the cape) because I wanted the full effect of each layer to be really REALLY striking and to look unnaturally bright, especially the gold trim. The reason for that is that I want my Tzeentch units to stand in direct contrast to my Nurgle units so where they are dark and decayed my Tzeentch units are almost painful to look at in comparison. This one also has the most signs of possession as I painted the Daemon on the shoulder pad as a Pink Horror and the face plate on his right leg, which on the others has just been painted as metal, has been painted as a Blue Horror. The reason for this is that as we all know, Tzeentch is arguably the most fickle of the Gods and so as he gives favour he also expects and gets much more in return; in this case the Marine has almost become a living warp tear.

Last but by no means least is my Slaanesh Champion. Now I have to confess that I had way more fun painting this one than I did with the others. I was a little worried with this one that I wasn't going to be able to balance the riot of colour with being Black Legion but I like to think I pulled it off. The highlights seem more stark in this picture than they actually are but they actually look very well blended on the actual model and that is thanks to my new best friend, Reaper's Flow Improver. I've raved about this somewhere else so I won't repeat myself. I linked this model to the Daemonettes I painted by making the loin cloth look like their skin. The pink really works well here and the fact I was using so much bright colour led me to the decision to drybrush the gold trim so that it wasn't as bright and shiny as the Tzeentch Champion but still contrasted well with the Khorne Champion. I probably should have mentioned before that I went into this with the Daemonic alignments in mind (i.e. Khorne v. Slaanesh and Tzeentch v. Nurgle) which led me to paint each one in contrast with it's pair and opposite. This was more for personal use than for specific fluff as it just helped me to create very individual themes within the overall theme of Black Legion. So back to the armour, I wanted it shiny but different to Tzeentch so I chose to drybrush it instead of paint the layers on. I chose green for the bolt pistol because it clashes terribly with the pink but I kept the boltgun black so that attention was drawn where I wanted it to be drawn. I was going to paint the orbs on the bolt pistol as misty orbs but I wanted a less obvious sign of possession so I decided that they would be eyes and that the gun effectively aims itself. Now you may be wondering why I chose this one for my Child of Torment and the reasons are twofold; firstly the blade/horn/whatever it is on his head and the other is the power fist. Basically there's a big, hard long protrusion that could allude to a penis and I imagine that the Slaanesh marines would get some kind of huge orgasmic kick out of using their hands to choke the life out of their enemies as opposed to using a weapon.

The observant among you will have noticed that I haven't touched the bases and to that I say you may take 5 house points. The reason for that is that I plan to get some resin bases and rebase my entire CSM army so I'm not going to waste time and effort on these bases when they're going to get ripped off later anyway.

So that's all for my CSMs for now. For my parting shot here's a list of what I'm working on at the moment:

1. A kit bash for the Blue Scribes
2. Two Juggernauts of Khorne
3. Two Plague Drones
4. Another Chaos Cultist (just got to pin down a Thousand Sons colour scheme I like)
5. Assembling more Thousand Sons Rubric Marines to finish off that unit
6. Working on a possessed Rhino conversion
7. Admiring the amount of whips that have been brought out with the new Dark Elves models and wondering how I can use them with my Daemons... Perhaps a Shadowblade conversion as a Masque of Slaanesh? Then my Masque of Slaanesh can become a Herald and I can justify not using my actual Herald of Slaanesh because the more I look at that model the more I just don't like it. For such a graceful dancer it looks clunky and awkward, but I digress.