The theft of the space marine army that I was using as stand in's for the Khan based bike army is kicking my desire to get this semi secret project finished and on the table asap. I have most of the "bikes" converted, just some finishing detail work and the last couple bits orders waiting to arrive.
Overarching theme for the army will be a mid to late Heresy Thousand sons, still doggedly loyal to the empire. (can you see a trend? I am addicted to the art and fluff).
Low model count to try and balance out the fact there would not be a lot of them. And a lot of Bionics replacing the mutations that spring up and keep them “pure”
In the mean time I figured with an unexpected day off I would work on what will be the centerpiece of this army. All of the bikes are converted horses with added bionics and servo assists. To make Khan stand out I needed a strong model as a base. Searching not only the Games Workshop catalog of figures I really only ended up with one or two models that would be a good base. Both from the Warriors of Chaos Fantasy line. I liked the Chaos Lord on Daemonic Mount alot, but I felt the positioning was too static for what I wanted. In the end I went with Archaon, The Everchosen as my Khan base.
To start the process of making Archaon, The Everchosen look Loyalist I first had to go through, carve off all the chaos iconography, gap fill the Chaos star on the flank of the horse, smooth out all the rough edges and then I could start converting and adding Bionics.
Next was the torso, I decide to keep it, as it fits the mono pose legs on the horse perfectly. To clean it up I removed all the skulls, the chaos star and ground it down to the base and began to redefine the breastplate to make it look more mid-heresy. I added a custom "stack" built into the rear of the torso to account for the power armor as I think a backpack would have killed the flow of this figure. I am hoping to sculpt a winged scarab on the center of the torso if my skill is up to it.
To fit in with the Egyptian feel of all of my units I did a fairly basic weapon swap, also giving my Captain a greater reach when attacking and being a good stand in for Khan's weapon of choice.
For the head I am still undecided. In a perfect world I would custom sculpt a Anubis head for this project, a power armored Jackal head much like the Space Wolves Wolf head. The real question is how much my greenstuff/greystuff skills have progressed in the past year.
Anyway, here are some photos of the current WIP. More soon.
