Chaos Marines Rocking Out

Chaos Space Marines are like normal Space Marines except much more metal. Paradoxically, they are now available in plastic. Ten thousand years ago, the Chaos Marines were loyal to the Imperium and Bolt Thrower were GW’s house band. However, the Chaos Legions were banished to the Eye of Terror for liking heavy metal by the Emperor of Man, who is more into Wagner. Now they lurk in the warp, occasionally bursting out to wreck things on behalf of the chaos gods and generally make the Imperium less tedious.

The stance of one about to rock

I had some old chaos marine miniatures lying around and thought I'd give them a new lease of life. Some of these models were absolutely ancient: I can remember buying a set of them about 22 years ago in a toy shop in Berkhamsted, in South-East England. The others came from the next update, in 2004 or so.

They might be really old, but they're not classic. The older models don't have the ball joints of later marine legs, and have squashed, neckless heads built into their torsos. And of course they're small. On the other hand, I feel less bad about chopping them up...

This chap got the fly head off one of the very weird Killteam Rogue Trader villains.

I've never been much interested in the whole "making big marines" thing, but I did need to compensate for the general dinkiness of a few of them. So I cut the models across the thighs, inserted plasticard discs to lengthen the legs, and sanded them down and applied Green Stuff to hide the changes. A couple of models had discs added to their waists to make them taller, too.

Because I am an avant-garde artiste (and not because I'm lazy at all) I opted for a quick, slightly surreal paint job for most of the bodies: white armour washed with Strongtone, with rusted metal details. I decided to paint one area on each model a bold, different colour: partly because I'm an avant-garde artiste, and mainly to distract from the god-awful - sorry, impressionistic - painting on the rest of them.

This guy is the unit leader. Having a face that's basically just a huge mouth makes it easier to bellow orders. It does make it harder to see where you're going, of course, but what the heck.

This is Flyhead and his friend Leggy, who has the legs of an old plastic genestealer.

And here's a delightful fellow with the head of a Nurgle plaguebearer - painted red, for no real reason - and a bloke with a stomach made from a fantasy breastplate and an unwholesome tube made out of wire. They were based on some resin bases that I found on Ebay.

I'm mot sure what to make of them, really. I think the white armour sort-of works, in that it's not realistic but it covers the models and draws attention to the interesting bits. I'll do a few more and see how it goes from there.