#professor paris

[paris-rokin]

Paris' guide to making kickass Chaos Space Marines

specifically turning Berzerkers into a Legionary kill team

I had to do something with the new Khorne Berzerkers kit, so I decided to turn one into a Legionary kill team. This tutorial will follow my thought process for assembling & kitbashing models, which is my favorite part of this hobby tbh. It'll be it rambley & I probably didn't take enough pictures, but hopefully this'll inspire other hobbyists to chop up their expensive plastic & stick it back together in beautiful ways.

I'm assuming basic knowledge of model assembly; how to clip, clean, & glue plastic together is beyond the scope of my post, and extensive coverage of those topics can be found elsewhere.

Step 0a: Strategize

A Legionary team can use six astartes at a time, so I want a Chosen, Icon Bearer, Butcher, Anointed, Shrivetalon, and Gunner. I'll also make a Heavy Gunner, so I can choose between two guns each game. That leaves three models to join the Berzerker horde I already own; I'll give them two-handed weapons or a plasma pistol, as my collection lacks those options.

Step 0b: Gather bits

In addition to the Khorne Berzerker box, I have an unopened box of Blood Warriors from AoS, as well as spare parts from Bloodletters & many, many Chaos Space Marine boxes. I ordered some custom female heads from an Etsy shop, designed by Keta Minies. This project isn't as elaborate as my Berzerker horde, I'm not replacing Blood Warrior shins or anything. But it's more than enough bits to make sure none of these ten Berzerkers are 100% made out of Berzerker bits.

Step 1: Bodies

I made all ten torso & leg assemblies as per the instructions. I like to work on all of them at once, so I can compare how bits look on different poses. I've also glued the icon to its backpack.

Step 2: Two-handed weapons

Any object that's connnected to both arms is more annoying to assemble; the pose is more restricted, there's three points to glue at the same time, and (when kitbashing) you may find that certain torsos just don't fit well. Therefore, I want to do these weapons first, so I can give them any of the ten available bodies, and so I get the annoying part out of the way first.

The special & heavy weapons are taken from the Chaos Space Marines (reaper chaincannon is from the Legionaries; the same kit with an extra sprue for Kill Team). They are assembled per the instructions. The two chain weapons are Khornate eviscerators from the Khorne Berzerkers. The normal axe is the goreglaive from the Blood Warriors; I cut the smaller blade off, mostly to differentiate it from my Master of Executions, who uses the same weapon.

Before I actually glue arms to bodies, I spend a lot of time holding them in place, comparing poses, making sure everything lines up in a satisfying way.

Blood Warrior arms don't fit well on marine bodies, they must be scraped into shape. This can be a bit tricky; how you carve into the joint will determine the exact angle of the arm. I recommend doing this with one-handed weapons to get a feel for it, before trying the two-hander.

Step 3: Custom weapons

Now for my favorite part: custom weapons. I don't have another daemon blade, Shrivetalon knives, or Annointed claw from the Legionary kit. So I make my own.

For the Shrivetalon, I take a Blood Warrior axe & remove the axe head. The blade I removed from the big axe will make for a strange, short brawling weapon (my apologies for not getting a good post-assembly picture of the axe. You'll see it on the finished model below). The other arm will be the knife arm from the Chaos Space Marines missile launcher model. For the Anointed, I use a Bloodletter arm. It must be trimmed to fit under a pauldron. Note that the unseemly hole in the shoulder will be covered by the armor piece. Any bare Blood Warrior shoulders will need to be filed down a bit, as they are just too beefy to fit in a pauldron. Always dry fit, after little bits of work, to make sure you don't take too much away!

For the Chosen's daemon blade, I want a Bloodletter hellblade. First I look through the Chaos Space Marines chainsword arms for a good pose, and remove the sword from it. I remove a hellblade from a Bloodletter's arm. Simply gluing the blade & hilt to the hand could work, but I don't trust that to hold, so I get the hand drill. I put a rod through the hand, connecting the blade & hilt, so now those tiny joins aren't so fragile.

Step 4: Oh yeah, it's all comin' together

Now I can start gluing the rest of the arms to bodies, as well as backpacks & pauldrons. There are infinite choices to be made here. A backpack with more skulls might make more sense on a leader, or one with horns growing out of it may be better for the Anointed, for example. For the left shoulders, I've used blank pauldrons from the Chaos Space Marines instead of World Eaters pauldrons from the Berzerkers, so I can paint a custom warband sigil.

For the Icon Bearer's weapon, & the Chosen & Annointed's pistols, I carefully consider the different bits to make good poses. They're from the base Berzerker kit, so they aren't exactly kitbashed, but these choices are critical to giving a model a pleasing silhouette.

Step 5: Heads & bases

I always leave the head as the last bit to glue on, before I glue the model to the base. Tiny changes in the head's position can radically alter the emotion or action of a miniature, it's the most important part.

The 3d printed heads I have don't have astartes collars, so I make tiny green stuff balls to serve as necks. It goes tiny bit of super glue, green stuff, press head into place, remove head, tiny bit of super glue, place head again.

Note, this one model is an exception to my head last rule, as I need to place it in such a way that the braid fits, before I can make decisions about the right arm.

Finished Models

Chosen: I am so very happy with her!! The hair, arm, & body all come together in a pose that, dare I say it, could pass for an official sculpt :D

Shrivetalon: this is an example of a pose that doesn't photograph well; from this angle, the knife isn't visible. From other angles, the right blade isn't, or we've got an odd angle on the face, or whatever. This isn't terrible, but professional model design is all about making a 'golden angle' to view it from, & this model doesn't have that. She's cool anyway.

Anointed: here's another good pose. I imagine she's tearing our some poor mortal's throat as she transforms.

Heavy Gunner: I've always loved the idea of a Khornate Havoc, so I made this gal a normal Berzerker, except for the big fucking gun. This amuses me.

Gunner: I pretty much always make my special & heavy weapons aiming down sights, it's satisfying to check line of sight with them. But I am so happy I didn't do that here, she's so brutally aggressive, she looks like she's running up to a barricade & blasting a hidden coward >:D

Icon Bearer & Butcher: these are standard Berzerker models, with headswaps. Not difficult, & sometimes a headswap is all you need to change the feel of a model.

Khorne Berzerkers: the three remaining models will join my 40k army. They each have a bit or two from the Blood Warriors, just to keep the Crimson Hounds from having any non-converted models in it.

Thank you for reading! I'll do a painting tutorial, hopefully soon, as I'd like to have these gals finished in time to play a game in one month. If I've inspired you to do your own kitbashes, please show me ^v^