Yet Another Dark Vengeance Update

Just wanted to share these real quick...

I’ve been holding off assembling the Hellbrute for two reasons.  One was that I wanted to actually read the codex first and see if there were any noteworthy changes or options I wanted to make as far as the model went.  Two is that I wanted to read the fluff behind it and see which of my Chaos armies it’d best fit into... which could also result in changes.

Overall, though, it struck me that the Hellbrute is just a renamed dreadnaught.  Which feels like a bit of a cheat, but hopefully it means Chaos is finally going to get a new dreadnaught model after just... oh, sixteen years or so.

Anyway, I decided to make two quick changes to the Dark Vengeance Hellbrute.  Like a lot of models in this set, it’s built into a very static pose and there’s not a lot of places to alter it.  One place you can, though, is the head at the center of the model.

I’d decided this particular Hellbrute was going to join my Thousand Sons army, so it seemed very out of character to have an exposed head.  I dug around and found one of the very old Chaos Warrior helmets from the Fantasy line (back when all those models were a bit more hunched and cartoonish).  Once the tall spike was cut off its top, it had a surprisingly solid resemblance to a Thousand Sons helmet.

The big trick, though?  I didn’t gouge out the Hellbrute’s face, I just flipped it around.  By turning that face plate front to back, it gave me a nice little cradle to set the helmet in. I also discovered if I rotated it 90 degrees the edges fit well against the inside shapes of the “sarcophagus.”

The other little tweak I made was the base.  I had a spare dreadnaught base—the one with all the rocky terrain and shell casings—and decided to see if the Hellbrute would fit on that.  Turns out he does once you snip off the support pegs.  The two low quadrants are pretty much level.

Helpful Hint – You’ll need to clip the inside corners of the scenery-slab under the Hellbrute’s left foot to make this work.  Not much, just maybe an eighth of an inch.  There’s also a shell casing or two that can be trimmed off the base to get a good fit.

Voila.  Cheap and easy conversion to make my Hellbrute stand out.

Here’s another one.  Some of you probably caught this already, but Chaos has a bonus HQ model hidden in the Dark Vengeance set.  Let’s take a look at that Chosen champion, Draznicht...

He’s dressed in pretty elaborate robes and capes.  He’s got a power mace.  His helmet is a stylized skull that’s grown some horns somewhere along the way.  The “vents” of his backpack look like a censer.

He’s a Dark Apostle.  You don’t even need to convert him.  He’d work absolutely fine as is.  However, if you wanted to make two simple tweaks...

I filed down the top of his backpack and gave him one of the chaos star icons from the basic Chaos Marine set.  Someone you know who plays Chaos has a pile of them, I guarantee it (assuming you don’t already).  I also gave him a little banner from one of the old Plague Monk sets (I think that’s what they’re called—it’s a fantasy Skaven thing).  This is a great little piece I grab whenever I find one, and I use it all the time as an additional frilly-prayer piece.  It looks great on Relictors, Grey Knights, and random Word Bearers.  And now on Dark Apostles, too.

And there you have it.  Dark Apostle Keven of the Alpha Legion, ready to lead his cultist army to...  Well, to their deaths, probably.  That’s what generally happens to cultists, after all.

And, yes, Keven is a subtle reference to The Cabin In The Woods.