Bolt Shells And Body Bags

Greetings, fellow fans of evil teleport-capable slabs of excessive violence. I bring to you our preferred vehicle for such things... an upsettingly large amount of Word Bearers Terminators:

Nothing like a freshly defiled church to whet the appetite for a bit of the ol' ultraviolence

Yep! As is often my wont, I decided not to do things by halves, no mucking around with a compact, bijou support unit of termies, ohhhhh no. Big ol' brick of 10. As party favours go, that and a pair of Obliterators really make a spicy deep strike offering. They had their maiden run this weekend having been finished at pretty much the 11th hour and were a distressingly destructive presence all round. The dark gods are thoroughly delighted with my offering.

First squad, the up close and personal one, very fond of flames

I should caution you all, I ought to come with a warning label that reads "will wax rhapsodic about terminators with little provocation". I've always loved them, even when they were profoundly goofy back in the day. It's the helmets I think, that design just absolutely sends me. Add in to that the feeling of piloting a small dreadnought, intended to fill a corridor and exert maximum violence in chokepoints and you get a really visceral mental experience.

Second squad, firepower support until everything is right up in their face

This "new" Chaos Terminator kit therefore was already pretty well primed for me to love it, and love it I do. They've managed to capture a glorious sense of inexorable movement. All the models have weight, no-one is running, but no one is truly still either. I really salute the sculptors. Between this and the new Astartes ones they're really getting terminators right. Desperately want them to do some new Grey Knight ones in this modern style and size. Pls James? Pretty pls?

Not much has changed in the painting of the Word Bearers since I started them; about the only difference is I now add a tiny bit of black into the initial Gal Vorbak red basecoat as it is so feeble that sometimes even two basecoats was not enough over the metal, sigh. So instead of going over basic ground, let me show you some cool things from these models in particular:

One of the problems with very similar armed models is being able to tell what people are armed with at a glance from above. For this reason I chose to treat the powerfists as just part of the armour and thus in red. Whilst anything else was treated as a "weapon" in the design language of the army and thus got whatever seemed to count as its casing painted black like the bolter housings. This means I can cast my eye over a unit and immediately see how many powerfists are left alive. I'm also very fond of the subtle black transfers on the powerfist of the middle model in the photo above. Kinda wish all the runic ones were black even if they wouldn't stand out so well. Speaking of:

I do a lot of decal work in my armies, I'm not the best freehand painter (though I can in a pinch) and I've got long experience of making them work for me. I've got a guide to the basics on what is now a terrifyingly old blog post (probably should do an updated one here at some point), but I'm getting ambitious these days. For these figures I wanted the runes to feel cut-in to the trim as it makes them feel a bit more hand painted. This is easier to do than you might think. First, follow the directions on that guide I mentioned right up to the point where you're about to apply the MicroSol. You will have cut the transfers to cover the entire area, trim and all. Next, give the transfer a really good slosh of MicroSol and press into the surface to make it conform, a damp folded tissue is still my weapon of choice for this. Once it is in place, take a sharp knife and cut along any straight edges of trim (the outline of the skull, the point of the arrow on the power fist). Once the carrier film is cut, gently scrape the unwanted section of the transfer away with the point of the knife. You can also pick away at individual letters or sections by freehand cutting the film and again scraping the excess. Once that is all sorted, give another little coat of MicroSol and press down again and finish the guide. Easy!

These chaps have really nice trophy racks too, I was especially chuffed at how well the White Scar helmet came out. Trophy racks are a really fun way of getting to experiment with paint schemes you've always liked but have never really intended to do a whole army of. The very fresh imperial guard head on the left was clearly new so I made sure to add some dried blood to the spike, as yet unwashed off by rain.

Probably enough waffling on from me for a little while, let's meet them and get a sense of the character of these fine fellows through the inevitable narcassistic monologueing of our guide to the Graven Star, Sorcerer Orcus Kairon:

Another example of the decal wrangler's art, the extra fancy pauldron of Iarto Arthustra

"People always get the Legions wrong. They talk about us as though a monolithic culture. That we all feel and act a certain way, and I'm sure it seems so to the ignorant and uninformed. Ask any simpleton what the defining characteristic of a Word Bearer is and they will tell you theology. And for the most part they are correct! Many of our bretheren spend as long at prayer or in study of the arcane or aetheric as they do in battle preperation. But that is not our sum total. The fleet is here now so I'm sure a slight thing like you has been nearly crushed underfoot by one of Saeperath's guard dogs. Those massive terminator suits tend to stay on the ships for boarding or repulsion duties but they do like to be let off the leash planetside. The men inside those suits, almost to a man, have little truck for ritual, study or scholarly inquiry. It's why they've banded together. They like nothing more than to destroy. They're killers, through and through with little interest in dressing it up in tales of martial prowess or justification narratives. They just like it. They get all the toughest jobs as befits their armament and seem to revel in the earthy, base nature of their warcraft. Even the name they've chosen for themselves 'Gravediggers' is workmanlike. Don't expect much bonding or bonhomie from that crowd. They're just glowering until the next time they get to smash something."

And with that I think we're done, just a last, lingering shot of a truly sedate and reasonable firearm and I'll be on my way. Really enjoyed these lads, although I am getting to that "could sure use a break from cutting in all that chaos trim" feeling so might be switching gears again for a bit. Until next time, lovely people

TTFN