Metal Bloodcrushers and Conversions: How to spend two weeks on eight models.

With last summer's release of the plastic Bloodcrusher kit, I found several weeks of my work to be invalidated.  Months before the second wave of Chaos Daemons, I spent quite a while repositioning all eight of my own metal Bloodcrushers.  While I am happy with my work, I don't think I would have made this effort had I known plastic models were just around the corner...

Knowing the in-game power of a unit of Bloodcrushers, I knew that my Daemon army was going to need a few.  By playing the "wound allocation roulette" game, it would make sense to run these guys in units of four.  Hence, the eight Bloodcrushers.  While the metal models certainly are not cheap, I was able to buy many of them from a friend who had given up on building a Daemon army, so the eight models were not unreasonably pricey.

Conveniently, three or four of the Bloodcrushers were from the Khorne Champion kit, so there was already a bit of variety in the group.  To add to the variety, it was quite easy, albeit time-consuming, to file down the "neck area of each Bloodcrusher, so when I attached the heads, the beasts would be looking in different directions.  A bit of putty filled in the uneven gaps in the neckline, and the unit really began to have some variety.  Unfortunately, this was not enough for me.

I used a dremmel to grind out the bodies of a few of the Bloodcrushers, and then used these new gaps to reposition the attachable legs.  While this left me with some interesting cavities on the bodies of the beasts, I was able to not only fill these with putty, but do some minimal sculpting to continue the lines and textures which hid the putty work.  This allowed the units to contain some Bloodcrushers that appeared to be galloping forward, ready to, well, Bloodcrush.

As far as the riders go, I was able to replace a few of them with plastic Bloodletters, to get a variety of poses.  I used the bell from the plastic Zombie sprue to denote the "musician" in the units, and I was able to drill out a small hole in the spine of two Bloodcrushers to mount standards from the Bloodletter sprue.  Unsure of how to paint the banners, I went with a collection of runes from H.P. Lovecraft's Necronomicon, because I thought that these would surely aid in the summoning of daemons.  Also, as I said before, I try to avoid going overboard with imagery.  "Skulls and Flames and Blood and Awesome" doesn't really do it for me.  It is also worth mentioning that by leaving the standards unglued, I can easily remove these upgrades, and this leaves me with more flexibility.  For example, if I wanted to run the unit as a group of eight, with one icon, I can do so.

The final "rider" issue I had to deal with, was marking out which Daemon had the "Fury of Khorne" upgrade.  The trouble with a Chaos Daemon army, is that there are many upgrades and abilities that are hard to model on a figure, due to their esoteric nature.  How the hell can you make a Daemonette model with a "Transfixing Gaze"?  Anyway, the solution I came up with for the collection, was to denote such models by adding something special to their base.  While it is true that my Vraksian Militia is all based on the great Dragon Forge bases which contain a plethora of battlefield debris, the vast majority of my Daemons are on basic GW slottabases, with simple sand and flock.  This meant that the addition of any embellishment, would truly stand out.

Here, you can see the result.  By adding a trampled victim to the base, both myself and my opponent can easily tell that this model is upgraded with the nebulous "Fury of Khorne".  The victim comes from the plastic Zombie sprue, with some basic conversion done to make the pose more lifeless and limp.

Again, had I known that there would be an easily modified plastic Bloodcrusher kit coming out over the summer, I doubt I would have done all of this work.  That said, there is truly something imposing about picking up these models, and feeling just how heavy they are.  Call me crazy, but there just seems to be an element of gravity communicated by such weight.

I am off now, to join the ogling masses in viewing the Christmas tree at Rockefeller Plaza, followed by too much French food at one of my favorite restaurants.  I hope everyone has a great holiday.  Here's to hoping Santa fills all of your stockings with Forgeworld!   Just think of the savings of shipping...