Sic Semper Tyrannis

I know I said I was going to start working on some vehicles for my Astral Claws, but two things got in the way.

Firstly, I don't currently have any Space Marine vehicles to build and paint, which, as I'm sure you'll admit, is an issue.

Secondly, I had such a good time kitbashing my Ork Skorcha, I decided to continue on this theme by using the only Marine miniatures that I currently have unpainted: the Space Hulk Terminators. And the only Terminator armoured miniature that I had plans to add to my army was Lugft Huron, the Tyrant of Badab himself.

You may be wondering why I've decided to kitbash my warlord rather than search out the rather excellent out of print resin miniature that was produced by Forge World.

Well, my reasons are threefold: I wanted my version of Huron to scale well with the Space Hulk Terminators; I wanted a model that could conceivably work as a more generic captain as well; I currently using both of my kidneys.

However, the Forge World mini is firmly based on, what I believe to be, the only official piece of art of Huron as the Tyrant of Badab. Therefore I turned to this image for inspiration.

The key features were the Heavy Flamer and Lightning Claw, the back banner and Iron Halo, a loin cloth and the raise lions on his shoulder pads.

In terms of painting, I'd need to increase the amount of blue I used on the armour compared to rest of the Terminators, and make sure that there was plenty of gold to help him stand out from the crowd.

When it came to building the model, I was able to equip him correctly, although technically the weapons are in the wrong hands and the Heavy Flamer is the wrong pattern.

The Lightning Claw was constructed by adding Mk VI claw blades to the Power Fist, whilst the Iron Halo was trimmed from a Blood Angels helmet (the accessories on his belt also came from the same upgrade sprue). The loincloth is a trimmed bit of flag. A small Bretonnian shield was added to his shoulder to hide the small gap created by posing his arm a bit more widely spread.

The only thing I couldn't replicate were the ornate shoulder pads, but I can live with that.

When it came to painting I used the same simple methods as I have with all of my Astral Claws, although I did have to wrestle with the dregs of a can of Army Painter Gun Metal Primer, which I absolutely do not recommend. I've had it for years and it's been a really problematic paint in terms of thickness and coverage - I'd just run out of my more reliable Colour Forge spray.

I used more blue on the weapon arms as shown in the illustration and set about adding a bit of bling. Basically, anything that I'd painted bone on the other Terminators became gold along with the helmet and the Iron Halo. The idea was to evoke the illustration on a model that doesn't have the same amount of trim.

Transfers were added, but the Maelstrom Warders symbol on his knee was freehanded as I was out of transfers that size.

All in all I'm really pleased with how he's turned out. He scales appropriately with my army and has enough to clearly mark him out as a HQ choice.

However, by being my own conversion it means that he doesn't have to be Huron in the next campaign event if someone else has the official model.

In game I'll be using the profile for the Chaos Lord in Terminator Armour with a Combi Weapon and Exalted Weapon. Although there is a Huron Blackheart profile, I can't really use that as he's not in Terminator Armour and therefore can't join the Tyrant's Shield (his bodyguard unit) in game.

I'm now well on my way towards 1500 points, which seems likely to be the next benchmark in the campaign.

Acquired: -84
Painted: 59
Lead Mountain: 514