(Lead) Mountain Musings - "World Eaters" May 2019

World Eaters WIPs - The Chaos Space Marines have been assembled and primed

A sudden, all-consuming urge in recent weeks to play the latest edition of “Warhammer 40K” by “Games Workshop” has lead to this month’s themed attempt to chip away away at my ‘lead mountain’ firmly focusing upon several miniatures set in “the distant future, where a stagnant human civilization is beset by hostile aliens and malevolent supernatural creatures.” In fact, I rather fear my devotion to the Chaos Gods of the Forty-First Millennium has actually caused me to somewhat significantly add to the tower of hard-plastic moulded sprues safely stored away in a corner of my hobby room, rather than reduce its formidable height.

Of course, the beauty of building a daemonic fighting faction based upon the Blood God is that the vast majority of its figures will also be entirely eligible for my “Age Of Sigmar” Blades of Khorne warband, so I haven’t been shy in both buying and building another load of Bloodletters armed with Hellblades. In my experience, these Slaughter-kin are easily a match for even Primaris space marines when able to engage their enemy in close combat and utilise their hand-weapon’s -3 Armour Piercing. Whilst the Crimson Death's 5+ Invulnerability Save seemingly finds favour with the dice gods time and time again…

Bloodreaper WIPs - The daemon leader has been primed, washed and dry-brushed

However, my Chaos force currently badly struggles during the "Warhammer 40K" Shooting Phase, due to none of my current infantry units carrying any sort of firearm whatsoever. Resultantly, I have decided to field a small five-figure unit of Primarch Angron’s finest Heretic Astartes, all armed with either Boltguns or a Plasma Pistol, and assembled from an old, long out-of-production, Chaos Space Marine starter set which I recently uncovered during a big clear-out.

Quite delightfully, I have discovered that this box also contains a 'conversion' sprue with which to personalise my gun-totting World Eaters into a truly recognisable Khorne-devoted force, complete with Chaos standard and all manner of extra blood-drenched iconography. Perhaps unsurprisingly, I have subsequently found myself compelled to purchase a box of the Legion's famed Khorne Bezerkers as well, so plan on predominantly pigmenting my 'ordinary' Chaos Space Marines in black and gold, so as to allow the all-red chainsword-wielding maniacs to really stand out on my tabletop.

Baba Yaga WIP - The resin figure has been cleaned with a modelling knife, primed and dry-brushed

With at least one of my options to provide my 41st-Century warriors with some firepower sorted, another potentially being a plan to include an old Khorne-covered Rhino model which I found alongside my Heretic Astartes, I have also decided to split my current Bloodletter figures in half so my army's centre consists of two daemonic units. This means I need to have another Bloodreaper with which to lead my second warband, so I have been busy assembling and priming just such a mini from the "Start Collecting! Daemons of Khorne" set.

Momentarily stepping completely away from "Games Workshop" though, I also plan to paint one of several "Spectre Miniatures" I recently acquired in order to 'game' some "John Wick" influenced skirmishes. I actually missed the Nottingham-based company's special resin sculpt of Baba Yaga at "Salute" 2019, but was lucky enough to 'bag one' from their website before the figure went out of production...