Going Renegade with Chaos Space Marines (Again)

As a servant of the Ruinous Powers of Chaos, it is tough to stick one army for too long, without the occasional lost wandering through tangled forests of bits. And like the noble Chaos Hogmen, the snuffling produces exquisite treasures, not of yummy fungus, but of Chaos Marines.

So I've been busy organizing my Chaos Space Marines lately, while painting and assembling more Hungry Ghosts. Which inexorably leads to an interesting bit and another and another, until a mighty Champion of Chaos is spawned.

Playing around with the CSMs from 1995 and later, with their more regular and humanoid appearance, brewed desires to convert some minis with more exotic and disturbing shapes reminiscent of the old Rogue Trader Chaos Renegades. One for each of the 4 Major Powers.

We'll get the Crazy out of the way first. This monster is the oldest of the four, a Tzeentchian explosion of body parts and magical fluxions. The main body is not a Citadel bit, it came to me in a lot of minis, and I don't know what it is supposed to be. But it kind of reminded me of that picture of the Chaos Columns in the old Realm of Chaos books. It also had lots of areas that scalloped inward, allowing easy attachment of a bunch of Chaos Spawn bits that are too big for my Squats or CSMs.

Next is a Champion of Nurgle's Plague Marines. One of the 40K 2nd edition plastic Plague Marines with an assortment of hideous extra faces and pointy bits to deform the silhouette of the mini.

I don't usually work in the area of Slaanesh, but sometimes it can be fun. With this mini, I wanted to create a crossbreed between the old Rogue Trader Renegades and the old beetle-back Epic Warlord Titans. To hunch him over, I used the body of a Knight Paladin and built the CSM backpack bits on to it, and then built a large banner on top, in the fashion of the early days of Epic Warhammer. He's been given 4 arms like some of the old Renegades, and is perched on one of the new Chaos Terminator Lord bases. Rogue Trader era Space Marine remains moulder beneath his feet. This guy uses a lot of bits from a lot of armies.

I also tried out a quick painting method on this conversion. He was primed in Space Wolf, and then various colors of the newest Citadel Washes were used over the primer, in just two fast coatings. My intent was to figure out a way to paint all these Chaos Marines that I've been converting in a way that makes them look reasonably good on the shelf and battlefield, but that doesn't take much time. My scheme was meant to improve upon the unpainted metal masses more than to compare with my Hungry Ghosts, and I think the experiment worked out well.

Last, we come back to everyone's favorite Blood God with a fresh new Champion of Khorne. I've given him the popular Khorne mutation of weapons for hands (a Necromunda Pit Slave Chainsword Arm and an Epic Knight Errant Power Fist Arm). I tried to give this Khorne Champion a bunch of curved areas in his armor bits to go along with his smooth skull head, and then broke violently out of the curves by giving him a collar of giant spikes. He is also equipped with the Backpack Cloak of Salamanders Chaplain Xavier, providing a nice scaly appearance from behind, and some weight in the back to balance his metal arms.

So what have we learned from all our converting of miniatures thus far? That the aspiring Chaos Lord can never have too many Tyranid bits or Undead bits.

As these future Slaanesh Noise Marines will soon find out.