Piratical Scum

When Dark Vengeance hit the shelves I immediately invested in the Cultists from an eBay reseller - After pondering various uses for them, I finally decided that they would best suit the role as "generic 40k scum". The plan was to make them look a little less rag-tag (removing completely makeshift weaponry - the barbed wire-wrapped maces, the morning star-esque weapons and replacing them with swords and axes) and a little less Chaotic (replacing certain heads with too many lenses, removing the little cult symbols and brands). Above is how they look right now...

My favourite is the leader of the band of merry savages - I wanted to be able to use them as pirates playing on the Space Hulk tiles, or a marauding band of thieves on an Imperial planet. I've filled in the Chaotic symbols on the armour plates and replaced the sword blade. I kept the guard on the weapon and used an axe from an old Commissar. I also gave him a flintlock pistol to fit the piratical scheme and my favourite part - the bearded head from the Space Wolf sprue, originally meant for a Scout. It fit my vision for the miniature perfectly!

Finally, the flamer trooper - I wanted to put up another picture of this guy as the camera washed out all the detail on the head. Seemed to fit the miniature perfectly - I love the gloves on this miniature!

I'm pretty close to being able to base the squad and crack open the undercoat - I have a few more weapons to replace and a few heads to put together - I'm thinking more of the Thunder Warrior-esque helmet you can see above. I've always liked the classic design and I figure that it's quite different for this squad of marauders - I reckon they'd love to think of themselves as "as tough as the Thunder Warriors of legend!" - they might even call themselves that!

For those not familiar with the Thunder Warriors or Thunder pattern armour, see above - they were the proto-Space Marines, the first ones created by the Emperor to unite Terra before he created the Primarchs and Space Marine Legions. I've wanted to put the conversion together for a while but never had much reason - I finally found one!

Comments are most welcome - I should have a chance to work on these early in the new year!