Finishing your own army is core to the Warhammer 40,000 hobby. In our Army Showcase series, Goonhammer contributors take a look at the armies we’ve been collecting for years, and the new ones we’ve just finished – what drew us to them, why we keep building and painting, and how they play on the table. This week we have Goonhammer supporter BadPosturePainting with his completely over-the-top bonkers Slaaneshi Chaos Knights and Titans.
Hi, I’m @BadPosturePainting on most sites, or Stepador in Discord, and I like Big Cool Robots. Why not GunPla? They don’t have a rule system. But when will you ever use your warlord ti- SHHHH, it’s about the HOBBY.
The Models
My Chaos Titans (I’m going to use “titans” because knights are technically titans) started with converting a Seraptek Heavy Construct with some 3D-printed parts, because it was a cool idea and I wanted to test my scheme, and test the limits of my 3D printer. Some parts are a little rough, but it ended up fine. I call it the Slaaneshi Sonic Spider, and it was the first iteration of my current Emperor’s Children and Riotous Host (an actual titan Legio, look it up!) scheme. This scheme has changed drastically over the course of the past 8 months, as you’ll see in the images.
The first REAL model was the Warlord titan. I did paint some noise marines during it, to test the scheme and get a little bit better, but the majority of my time was spent assembling this beast. It took almost a month which, if you’ve seen me in the hobby channel, is an insane amount of time. I was trying to get it motorized like a titan I had seen someone else do, but I don’t have nearly the mechanical or cutting equipment he had, so I went full Conversion Mode. The weapons, which I’ll likely be reprinting soon, took about a day or so each to print, and they are counts-as Vulcan Heavy Bolters combined with the Titan Melee weapon. In actual 40k, two melee weapons doesn’t give you a bonus, but in apocalypse it does, and isn’t that what really counts? A house mate knocked one of the shoulder-mounted titanic sonic blasters off and it shattered into a thousand pieces, so I made a drop pod for Chaos squats that is mounted there presently. More than likely I’ll make a new one in the future just because I miss the symmetry. Once I got into weathering, I redid a good portion of the top half, so ill likely redo the weapons as well. The lower half is already weathered nicely with the display board / base that it stands on. Other notable tiny details are the locked door on the back of it where I usually put dark disciples to “guard” it, some crucified ultramarines adorned to the leg plates (-2 to bravery if you’re nearby! They shall know some fear!), and a string of the first founding adorned to Slaaneshi heraldry.
A lot of my inspiration comes from the notion “this is a cool idea, has anyone done it? No? Awesome, time for me to do it”, which is harder than it sounds because being the first means being the most inefficient. There’s no groundwork for you to work off of, to learn from the errors that people have gone through, and a lot of guesswork has to happen.
So I wanted to slap a guitar on a knight because I really like noise marines for reasons I don’t quite understand. I was able to get some posable hands from taro model maker (shout out, amazing person, really great service) and a scale replica guitar I saw online. It was cheap enough for “if this doesn’t fit I won’t be too far in the hole” purposes. But, lucky for me, it fit perfectly. The arms are posable for transport and so I can remove the guitar and put it back in easily for games. The knight can also be removed from its base, which has a dead ultramarine throwing up the horns, and a Tau for good measure.
Ok, so we’re going with the obvious theme of a warBAND now, so what’s the next one? I started to plan out a few ideas. At the time, in 8th Edition, most Knight lists used 3 Questoris Knights, so I wanted 3 key instruments going on, and I decided on guitar, drums, and microphone. Unfortunately, the microphone stand on this was extremely fragile and didn’t really fit. But a Cerastus Atropos with the standard DEEP METAL microphone stance still fits the build. Once again I went with the alternating shoulders, as I have kind of decided to keep going with the more Chaotic band members. I was also experimenting with putting PVA in the microwave at the time, which came up with some cool flesh on the face. The disco-lord (ed: Lord Discordant) hanging off the weapon is just a very fragile “this would be really cool if it worked” touch, and it did, so that’s all that counts.
When deciding on how I was going to do the percussion Knight, now named the Gong Knight, I knew I wanted it to be more Chaos Squat-ty than the others. The image of a dwarf playing the drum is very evocative, and I also have a bunch of Chaos Squats in my Emperor’s Children army at this point. Once again, main man taro has the hook up with cool melee weapons. The body is actually a loyalist Knight, but I got it secondhand and already posed to be standing on this rhino, and I was like “awesome, that saves me some time”.
I had the idea of it banging on a gong, which was made out of a Tau flight base with some holes drilled in it. The chain from the gong hooks up to the unused weapon from the Atropos, which currently has spiderwebs in it from being on a display board where spiders apparently were, and honestly, I kind of like the look. The head/faceplate was made from some Kharadron overlord parts and came out really smooth, as this was the first time I’d ever used plasticard.
At one point or another I found out about the Dominus Maniple in Adeptus Titanicus, a game I have no idea how to play, but will one day play in full 28mm scale. The Dominus consists of a Warlord, 2 Reavers, 2 Wardogs, 6 Questoris, and 4 Cerastus Knights. This became my goal, and meant that the Reavers were next, because they’re super cool. Chaos Reavers are a pain to build. Not as bad as the Warlord, but following the logical build plan on the legs and painting plates separately is absolutely Not A Thing. I painted some fun stuff in the cockpit of this, as well as swapping its gatling gun for a drill, because Giant Robots with Drills are awesome, as everyone knows. Honestly I’m super happy with how the knee face came out. Its mostly drybrushing. Insane. He’s currently standing on some cork, but fits well on the wall of martyrs. One day a base will get made for him and his buddy.
“His buddy” meaning this abomination of a Titan. Kidding, I love Armourcast. A friend of mine informed me that their dad had some old unpainted Armourcast. I paid them, waited, and eventually it arrived. 8 whole pieces, most of them connected by literal bolts. Beautiful. This was when I got into weathering, and I did some sick flames on it because the model’s from the 90’s, and it should LOOK like it’s from the 90’s. The face is just so goofy, I love it. Why does it have teeth? I think we’ve been over this.
Sometimes you finish a good commission, and say “treat yourself” as you order a Knight Asterius. We’ve all been there right? I knew that I wanted to slap the top half of a Sisters of Battle tank on top of a Knight, and my thinking was that the bigger the Knight the easier it would be. I was thinking that I could just swap out the carapace missile pods for this literal church. Unfortunately, I forgot the carapace was curved, so some nasty greenstuff and plasticard work was in my future. To make the nasty nicer I made stitches, which I continued along most of the knight, to do some battle damage, and also because I was listening to the Fabius Bile trilogy at this time. The colors are a little different than my normal ones because most of it was done with oil paint. I was experimenting with them and trying it alongside two War Dogs also painted almost entirely with oils. It worked, but I like my traditional colors and they’re a little easier to match the rest of the Legio.
At this point in the project, it’s August. I’m starting the process to move house and I see a Knight on eBay, full assembled except for some broken parts, for like $50. I bite, thinking “well it’s superglue, I can just freeze it and break it, right”? It’s a lot harder than you’d think. I just kept the knight assembled, made some kitbashes with the chain from the Noctilith Crown, and weathered the broken and ugly parts, along with adding some chains of my own. I added a tongue because why not. Also included is a picture of how I plan out armor plate colors. I usually do it when it’s off the model, but in this case I had no real chance to do so.
While I was looking at that Knight/other Knights, I had a moment of inspiration: What if I made a Fabius Bile Knight.
It would have to be a Cerastus class, because of the long legs, and of the variants I went with the Castigator, because Fabius’ needler and cane were basically a Super Sword and a Gatling gun. For the Chirurgeon (ed: not that one), I had to sit down for a while and figure it out. My initial thought was that I’d be using some Drukhari parts, but the Khorne Blood Slaughterer was PERFECT. Scrub off a few Khorne symbols, and it fit amazingly on the back of the knight. The cane I knew was going to be “any long part I can find” plus “the big skull from the skulls box”. As for the needler, there’s a piece from the thermic plasma pipes (which as of writing this are no longer available? Since WHEN!?) that I used on both the top and on his gun, to take the place of some of the vials that the normal Bile has.
A friend who I painted some things for owed me, so I cashed in with him and got three Fabius Bile kits. I used the actual gun and part of the backpack to make the gun for the knight. The base on him is a little harder to see because it’s mostly obscured by the robe, but it has some dead space marines from the Fabius Bile and Space Marine Apothecary kits, with 3 of Bile’s Surgeons swarming around.
Making Bile’s coat was going to be hard to adapt to a titan. It looks more like a skirt on their weird anatomy, but in the end it looks ok. There were more ugly stages in this thing than there were in my first month of painting. It started off with wire mesh wrapped around the legs. I then got plaster bandages and covered it. This gave it a very rough look in comparison to Bile’s normal coat, but if this was made in honor of him, then it wouldn’t be as flawless as his coat, because why would he waste time making clothes for a knight? After this I coated it with modge-podge so that I could have a nice surface to eventually greenstuff and paint. Then came some greenstuff stitches, which I did more as seams because if they know anything about sewing, it’s to keep the stitches on the inside. But it is flesh after all, so I made them weird and just generally gross to look at.
Painting
If you’ve made it this far, Aethermatic Blue, Magos Purple, and Warlord Purple are the best paints in the world.
For colors, I generally do a gradient of some dark purples up to a magenta, and then an all-over wash with Magos Purple. Don’t question it, just do it. The blues are Stegadon Scale Green with some added Ionrach Flesh stippled on up, and then eventually hit with a wash of Aethermatic Blue, followed by more stippling of Baharroth bBue and Kreig Khaki. Weathering I generally hit it with a dark brown enamel wash over grey primer, then drybrush wax metals (you can find these at hardware stores, sometimes. I don’t know) to create a nice transition up to brighter colors. After all of that, I let it sit for a few hours, then come back with some light brown oils and get some rust up on there.
My current brass recipe (Iteration like 5 or 6) is:
- Brassy Brass
- Wash with Nuln Oil
- Do some thinned oil in a verdigris color
- A brass color to highlight, and a copper color to shadow
- Selective bright verdigris streaks because it looks nice.
What’s next?
I’m working on a melee Knight with a scythe, that I’ll add more skulls to as it kills things. The Wardogs will likely be a thing this fall. I’m also working on some Death Guard. You can find me at Badposturepainting on Twitter and Instagram but I use Twitter a lot more.
Here is a photoshoot we did of all of the Emperor’s Children models I had painted this year before the Fabius knight. (ed: that is just an insane flex right there)
Well that about wraps it up here, big thanks to Stepador/BadPosturePainting for agreeing to do this – he kept posting his insane conversions in the Goonhammer Patreon Discord and we cyber-bullied him into letting us put them on the site. We hope he never stops doing whatever the hell it is he does, because the results are invariably extremely cool.
