COLLECTING THE ARMY

In the past when collecting a new army I’ve written an army list first and then built and painted that army. For the Word Bearers I decided I would collect what I wanted to and then create a theme and an army around that. This army has gone through several incarnations over the last 2 years but all throughout its construction I’ve had an image in my mind of how they should look, I imagine the Word Bearers to beat their drums or blow their horns and raise their Dark Standards high as they march to battle against their enemies. I’ve modelled up Standard Bearers and Musicians for my units of Word Bearers, they also make good focus points for the summoning of daemons to the tabletop.

Jason added Musicians to his Word Bearer unites

Throughout the army you will see that I’ve heavily personalised it by utilising different miniatures. Some of the components I used ranged from Chaos Fantasy Warrior Helmets, Marauder Drums and standards, Beastmen Standards and Horns, Emperors Children Torso’s, Iron Warriors and even Death Guard models. This has helped forge the look and feel of the army. Individually they are all slightly different, but the colour scheme and basing is what brings it all together as a cohesive looking force. Even the bases have different bits and pieces such as skulls, Ultramarine helmets & weapons and Imperial Guard weapons and helmets.

When it came to painting I wanted a colour scheme that was quick to do but one that still looked really good on the battle field. I have a tendency to be a perfectionist and taking too long to paint armies. When it came to painting the Word Bearers I wanted this to change. This is not to say that I would accept sub standard painting but it meant I would have to explore some quicker ways of painting this force. I decided to use pre mixes of all the different colours that I would utilise while painting up my army. This was before Games Workshop produced nice clean mixing pots. I had to resort to buying inks pots and tipping them down the sink and then washing out the ink pots so I could make my pre mixes of colours. This saved me countless hours of mixing each colour for each Traitor marine as I wasn’t using colours straight out of the box.

Obliterators

The new Obliterators just looked massive and imposing, they had to be a part of my army. After gluing these behemoth's together I had to use a bit of Green Stuff to fill some gaps and tidy some areas up, but this was good practice for what was yet to come! When painting them I decided to use natural flesh tones as this would complement the red colour scheme very nicely. To help blend the flesh with the armour I watered down some Red Ink and gave the flesh a quick once over with it. Then I quickly rubbed my thumb across the areas I had just inked, this took the excess ink off but it also let the original flesh colour show through on the raised areas.

Chaos Predator

This is one of my favourite models in the army and I do have a soft spot for tanks! I purchased the Forgeworld Spaced Extra armour and the Forgeworld Word Bearer Hull / Door sets. I liked the more low tech appearance of the Spaced armour over the hi tech looking reenforced armour; I felt this fit the Chaos imagery better. By fitting the side sponsons with heavy bolters means I dont use this Predator as a dedicated tank hunter, rather it’s an infantry support platform. I’ve also given it Dirge Casters as these spill forth litanies of hatred.

I was a bit intimidated about painting this tank as I had spent a lot of money and effort building it. In the end though I used a tank brush for the majority of the tanks armour and as I got to the point of final highlights I painted smaller areas and used a large dry brush. For the final highlights I ran the large dry brush over the edges at nearly a 90 degree angle for the final highlight. The Dirge Casters and weapon heads were a mixture of Desert Yellow and Chaos Black. This came out quite effectively I think. The only bad thing about B’Coath the Revered is that he is usually destroyed by the end of turn 2 in most games he’s used in; I think this due to the fact that it’s the only tank in the army so far…

Chaos Marines & Havocs

With my Word Bearers I wanted to give the impression that they've been around since the Horus Heresy in the 31st Millennium. Using Chaos Warrior helmets from our Fantasy range gives them that look of antiquity of a time long past. For added variety among units, I removed the horns from the helmets. The chaotic perversion does not end there, Chaos Marines have been around a while and I'd imagine that the effects of the warp and raw Chaos energy would eventually start to mutate them so I used Green Stuff to model flesh that has started to merge with their power armour and weapons, much like the Plague Marines of Nurgle.

Aspiring Champion Gelgane

The conversion I'm happiest with is the Techmarine conversion, Gelgane the Mountain. This is a fantastic miniature that I had to include in my Traitorous war host! Gelgane tends B'Coath the Revered (my Predator) and will look after the Land Raider and Dreadnought I plan on adding in the not to distant future. In gaming terms he has Daemonic Mutation (this takes into account the Servo arms), a Master Crafted Power Fist and finally a Bolt pistol (he's so big he uses a Bolter the way other marines use a Bolt pistol). Building conversions is half the fun, creating a background for each conversion makes for a special and very characterful army. Each character has an agenda and a story to tell. This is certainly the most fun I've ever had with building and playing an army and I would highly recommend that every one give something like this a go.

Daemons

For the Bloodletters I decided to not paint them red as they would blend in too much with the Word Bearers. Instead I would paint them black and their fur was painted up as if they were flames instead. The flesh of the Bloodletters started off with a Chaos Black basecoat and for each successive highlight Bleached Bone was added to Chaos Black. This creates a very dark and dirty grey colour. The fur was started with Red Gore and I worked through the remainder of the reds, the oranges and finally Golden and Sunburst Yellow. To help tie the Bloodletters into the army all of their loin cloths and standards were painted red. The metal was Tin Bitz, and then Dwarf Bronze and some Mithril Silver was added to Dwarf Bronze.

The Daemonettes colour scheme was one I took my time with. I decided to paint them a basecoat of Warlock Purple and Red Gore (roughly 80\20 mixture), to highlight this I started with pure Warlock Purple, I then started to add Tentacle pink to Warlock Purple and finally a small amount of Skull White was added to Tentacle Pink. The Daemonettes themselves were started with thin coat of Pallid Flesh, then a second coat of Pallid Flesh was applied and then a final coat of Skull White until I was happy with the alabaster type skin colour. Their hair and cloth is Chaos Black mixed with Hawk Turquoise.