That Guy is Hella Brute

I really hope you like this one as its one of my favourite conversions to date… my Chaos Helbrute.

I put some real effort into this one, it was one of those where it took longer than i expected not just because of a lack of time or being busy (which is always s factor) but also not wanting to screw it up. I know I like what I’ve done so far when that happens.

It would look just as finished without these right?…

I never had big plans for an old chaos dreadnought, i didn’t really like the model. I think the arms put me off for one thing, like the weird array of sticks with claws on the end. As time went by and forgeworld was a thing, i was tempted. Despite Nurgle having the coolest dedicated parts, there was a Thousand Sons body that i liked… But still not enough to part with my pennies.

The other factor of course was the rules, the Chaos Dreadnought could on a whim, suddenly turn all of its heavy weapons on your own things. While i might be the kind of reckless player that wouldn’t care that much, the fact i had friends not fielding them for that reason, put me off acquiring one.

Then the Helbrute happened. Lets face it, its a chaos dreadnought with a chaos name. The important difference was it didn’t tear into your own guys because it stubbed its toe. Unfortunately… I still wasn’t super into the model. I liked it more, but not enough. I liked a lot of the details but my gripe was its body posture was kind of on the same plane without the option of re-posing. it reminded me of those old models that as a result of moulding a solid piece of metal or plastic, looked like the had been frozen in carbonite.

Dark Vengeance did come with some other cool models though (although i understand that was like everything else a subject of much debate). The chosen are a bit busy looking but do stand out against standard marines and have a lot of cool details. The other model to catch my eye though was the lord. I loved it and intended to use him to add to my coven of sorcerers.

I sourced ebay but I couldn’t find one for a decent price. Then i came across a buy now option that altered all of my plans. For only a few pounds more than all the other sorcerers being sold… Was the whole chaos half of Dark Vengeance.

BUY!

So now i found myself as the proud new owner of the model i wanted plus chosen, 10 more cultists and the Helbrute for basically free. I excitedly got building everything apart from the cultists (having just converted about 30 already so i would have no exact duplicates). I kept the chosen but ear marked the champion for a possible apostle conversion and there was one duplicate which i found annoying so he got condemned to the Possessed roster. I obviously kept the lord as he was, then looked long and hard at the “finished” Helbrute. I still didn’t like his posture.

I have a thing though where if i get a model i already have or i get one i didn’t really have to pay much for, I’m far more likely to try and convert it. So with very little hesitation i started hacking away at this one. I chopped its arms off, as i didn’t like the like that linear stance and wanted to change the melta on the gun arm. I put them back on facing more forward, which wasn’t much problem with the gun arm, but the arm with the fist arm there was a lot of missing material at the shoulder. I packed the gap with bits of spru and used a spare daemon prince shoulder pad on top. It looked a bit front heavy now, so I cut into one ankle and tipped his body back a bit and propped up the rock under the other foot.

So that was the pose dealt with but I definitely wanted to do more to personalise him. My army is all Tzeentch so a few continuing themes i try to put somewhere are bird parts, weird mutations and possession amongst other things. The shoulder pad i put on already has a daemon face in it. On the feet, i cut of the two side toes, leaving one at the back and two at the front to make it more like a bird foot, then I greenstuffed talons instead of the nails. I turned two of the collar horns to face outwards just for more variation and i think it makes it look more fractionally aggressive. I don’t really like spikes for no reason, my chaos army is relatively spikeless… But in order to give the Brute some height and a different silhouette from the standard Helbrutes, I added two banks of spikes busting out of the shoulder armour. The biggest and most obvious modification is my Helbrute’s face. I knew i wanted to make it different when I built it, i just didn’t know how at the time. I did intentionally omit the face from the build though. For a long time during a period of “I don’t want to screw up this next bit”, instead of a face was a curved and crooked paperclip. Eventually i got to work sculpting a tongue onto the paperclip. I incorporated some very short guitar string pipes in there and threw on some eyes for good measure.

 

 

As far as his load out, my vehicles tend to favour lascannons so i decided to give this guy one as well. I quickly ebayed a landraider lascannon and awaited its arrival… Only to realise too late my mistake. The photo i saw of two barrels was in fact two halves of a single cannon. I just hadn’t read the description properly. I didn’t want to waste more money and refused to be defeated. I cut the barrels away from then guns housing. Leaving me with a long barrel and some power cables. I cut the tip off the barrel, then cut the barrel in half and turned around the half i cut off. I attached these to where i removed the melta heads and used some chaos lascannon and heavy bolter accessories to cap the two barrels. I carefully filed away at the upper cap, so the two would sit against each other neatly. It wasn’t a bother connecting the cables to the arm, but in an effort to again make this Brute different from others i decided to add more cables to his new gun using a variety of guitar wires and greenstuff “tentacles” (using a tentacle maker). On his other arm I also added a couple of small cables and after noticing i could take a heavy flamer, opened the hand mouth up a bit and popped the flamer heads in there.

 

 

Then I was just the odd detail here and there. I liked that the daemon shoulder pad had some cables in the surface already, and a convenient place to insert another. I ran a long guitar wire cable out of there and across the back. I didn’t like where the chain was, so cut it off and moved it to a relatively blank area. I also wasn’t keen on the weird horns coming out of his side mouth, so i cut those out. Finally after painting it , I varnished the tongue a few times, then added glue gun drool to the tongue and side mouth.

That’s it, i hope you like it, i’m real happy with it. Its worth mentioning at this point that when i got this ebay bundle, dark vengeance was still the only way to get the helbrute. Before I finished the conversion the new Helbrute kit came out with optional faces, load outs and different pose. I’ve considered getting one of these in the future but I still like my unique one.

 

 

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~Pandora’s Bitz Box~