Chaos Armiger, Pt 1

I bought the box of Games Workshop Armigers, which are small Imperial Knights - but are still a fair bit bigger than a dreadnought. You get two armigers to a box, and I thought I'd make a bad armiger for my chaos army, and a good one for my knightly space marines. I had a lot of chaos bits and pieces that I'd got off ebay, mainly from dreadnought and maulerfiend kits, and I decided to go all-out on this thing.

First, I added a head from the maulerfiend. I cut the tongue off - I find those protruding tongues look a bit silly - and filled the gap. I needed a neck to attach it to the body. For bits like this, you just need some random tech, and I found that part of a chaos backpack would do. The attached head looked like a dinosaur's, and that was the style I'd follow.

I decided to replace the autocannons on the original kit with two ectoplasma cannons from the maulerfiend. The cannons have teeth or claws around the barrels, like pincers, and would make good arms. I'd keep the upper part of the arms, which form mountings for the guns. Connecting the cannons wasn't easy, as they attach from the side, not the top like the autocannons. I found two headlamps in the bits box - from a batmobile, I think! - and used them to connect the cannons to the upper arms. 

I left off the usual shoulder pads and used a pair of random dreadnought plates, which were much more spiky and chaotic. Attaching the arms to the body, they looked like this:

The larger body was going to make the legs look a bit spindly, and the new head stuck out quite a way, overbalancing the model a bit. I couldn't let my giant robot dinosaur look unrealistic! It needed a tail. I also wanted to echo the spiky look of the upper body in the legs.

The tail came from the random dreadnought bits. It was one of three lashes on a dreadnought whip-type weapon, and looked like a mechanical tentacle. It fitted fairly well onto the back of the groin section.

There were some large gaps between the tail and the groin section, which had to be filled with green stuff and DAS clay. It was missing the tip, so I stuck a plastic blade from an old skaven sword on there instead. Useful for jabbing the mewling lapdogs of the false emperor!

There is a shield piece that goes on the front of the groin. I left it off and replaced it with a very old fantasy chaos shield, which looked much more, well, chaotic.

I had a few organic spikes left over from and old tyranid carnifex kit. There were several small metal hoops on the armiger's legs - clearly where ropes or chains might be attached - but they didn't look chaotic enough. So, I carefully sliced the hoops off and replaced them with the carnifex spikes, which made nice dewclaws on the back of the monster's legs.

The original kit has extra plates to protect its ankles. They look cool, but slightly too heraldic and "clean" for a chaos machine. So, I took them off and gave the robot spiky new ankle protectors made from the shoulder plates of some old fantasy chaos knights. Handy for punting the minions of the corpse-god! The original ankle protectors were raised to brace the legs just under the knee, so that it would look a bit more bulky.

The bits on the base were from the old large basing kit. 

So that's where we are! Here are some finished pictures. It's just time to stick this thing together and paint it.