World Eaters on Bikes

I've been painting my Khorne army for about two years now and, truth be told, I'm growing a little tired of painting all that red and brass. It seems there becomes a point in the painting of an army where it all stagnates and one must shake things up in order to see the work done to the bitter end.

Well, lepers and ghouls, that's why I'm here--to bring you ideas when your army painting stagnates. To provide a pep in your step. Some zing in your sling. A little jizz in your gin fizz...


I painted up my first squad of Khorne bikers a few months ago, check 'em out here, and of course, in order to run a Daemonkin gorepack I needed another bike squad. It's a tough choice because the chaos bikers kit is an utter disappointment. The package is pretty and all but GW really honeydicked us on this one. They just reboxed old sprues that don't include special weapons or any fancy gear at all really. Yes. It's just the same old shit. A silk coat on a pig. But let's flip the script here. I don't want GW negativity dragging this crummy blog even further down. I must confess that the bikes themselves are quite cool, what with the stretched out faces as seat covers and the more stripped down looking bikes compared to their hum-drum imperial counterparts. I just wish they came with cooler riders and some special weapons.

So, I needed to figure something out. I almost bought some of those ork boar rider guys to represent bikes and decided against it at the last minute. I racked my brain for some time, then forgot all about it and painted up some other crap.

Over time, the thought of that second bike squad stared gnawing away at me. I had some old ravenwing bikers from way back in the day. My second army was supposed to be Dark Angels and I bought and built the big ravenwing starter set which included nine bikes an attack bike and a land speeder. Unfortunately, back in 2011 when I started 40K, the Dark Angels' ruleset was utter dogshit. I wanted to stick with the army however, and started to think about a Fallen army. Yes, I would mix Chaos Space Marines with Dark Angels.

As soon as I started in on the Chaos I never looked back. Bad guys were just too cool. The fifth edition Chaos dex' still had some shining moments but I got the most joy out of painting daemon princes and converting obliterators. Chaos has the best opportunity for those who get joy out of converting and since I was just a wee lad I held a strange fascination for monsters.

At any rate, this is all a roundabout way to present some shit I recently painted up. I ordered some Mark IV meltaguns from eBay, dug around in the bits box and pulled apart some ravenwing bikers.

Like I said. Painting the same army can get a little tedious, so I figured that I could just paint up some pre-heresy World Eaters in order to infuse life into my Daemonkin army.

 Painting white was a little new. I usually only paint your mom's womb with this color.

 I've gotta say, it was a little tricksy. I put three-four layers of white down on these models.

 But I think they came out pretty snazzy. Here's the champ.

I have no idea if these guys rode bikes back in the day--Also, I don't really care. I tried my best to make them look older, but I only had so many bits.

Eventually I'm going to slap some of the appropriate decals on these felchers and do up some stuff on the left shoulder pads.

 The meltagunners got raptor heads. They look a bit like a mutated version of the Mark IV Maximus armor.

 For the rust effect I first dabbed brown on with a piece of torn foam. Then I slapped down a little Typhus Corrosion on the edges and drybrushed orange on there once it hardened.

 A little drybrush of silver on the edges finished the rust effect.

It was fun but I can't imagine painting an all white army by hand. Maybe with an airbrush to lay down the base coats first.

So, hey, want to shake up some of the army painting tedium you've been experiencing lately? Paint up a faction of the army that might be a different color. Maybe throw in a squad of a successor chapter or for chaos do up some pre-heresy dudes. Trust me, it worked.