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CSM on a Shoestring Budget

52K views 214 replies 29 participants last post by  Iraqiel 
#1 · (Edited)
And for my 666th post...

CHAOS!

As the title implies, funds are tight (aren't they always?). This means no pin-drill for me to pin unwieldy things and no drilled-out bolter barrels; old, slightly tacky spray primer and super glue; and most of all... kit-bashed and customized/re-purposed models. The point of this plog is, well, to expedite the (glacial) rate at which I work.

Sounds wonderful, doesn't it? Ah well, we struggle ever onwards, ever upwards.

Currently, I have several projects on the :
- my second squad of homemade Obliterators
- My "bikers"--Cold One riding Traitor Astartes!
- converting a pre-modeled Defiler to have +2 dccw.

+

Obliterators:









The chain/spike halo still dangles loose, but will be glued roughly where I propped it for the second photo of this fellow.



This last one is waay less finished than the others--little green stuff, etc. I'm hesitant whether I want to finish him as is, really. I'm trying to use a set of old Ork warbike rear tread-tracks for his legs, but...am not very favorably impressed by the look. Sorry that the one image doesn't really showcase him that well.

Also, by way of comparison so you lot can see what they should end up looking like:



+

Bikers:





Used to have a plasma gun, which has been...messily lost. Considering what to do with him.













Quite a few of the models suffer from an overabundance of mold lines that slipped past my guard. Humor my fragile ego and please don't point them out; rest assured that they will have ceased to exist by the next time I post up a batch of photos.

+

Defiler:

(what it used to look like)







Recognize that face? ...say, on an Obliterator?

(updated version of the model)



Yes, that's a skeleton in a cage that will be replacing the missile pod. :cool:





Part of the reason for snipping off all the spiky bits was to minimize the target profile this guy has and let him hunt for cover easier. Also, I felt like going for something different. I admit he looks a little bottom-heavy now, but...wait until I get the flail on.
 
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#3 ·
The oblits are definitely cool, I'm all about the ridiculously-proportioned-weapon-festooned kitbashes of them, especially as it's infinitely cheaper that dropping 22.50 a pop!

Interesting choices with the Defiler, though I must say I'm not sold yet on chopping all spikes off. Yes, painting them is a royal pain in the arse and I certainly see the benefit of not having the "I CAN SEE IT'S SPIKE SO I'M SHOOTING IT WITH 30 LASCANNONS!" problem, but it's the character!

The skeleton in the cage and the SM in the claw are nice touches, I look forward to seeing the finished model.

Keep it up!
 
#4 ·
Thanks, both of you.

Boc: I have to credit you with the idea of a havoc launcher on the model for the third Obliterator. Also, I do kind of feel that I went too far overboard with the weapons on that guy, so I've broken off one arm to simplify it. Still...

I'll try to upload later photos in a lower resolution, so they don't mess people up when they load the thread.
 
#5 ·
I always like when people alter/combine/customise bits and figure to suit their own ideas. That's a very importent part of modelling, imo.
And You are doing that very well Mossy. Looking forward to see next step of Your CSM-builds.Have some rep.
 
#7 ·
I like what you're doing. I do most of my modeling on a shoestring budget as well, and you've given me some interesting ideas...
 
#8 · (Edited)
Thanks, everyone, for the comments and the rep! As people have expressed quite a bit of interest in the kitbashed/custom models, I feel compelled to point out that in my army showcase (sig, sidebar, top, or wherever) there are a few more similarly kitbashed--yet finished--models, such as some totally scrap-built Havocs and the aforepictured 3 Obliterators (of less note: homemade sonic blasters on the Noise Marines and a banner bearer of whom I'm rather proud among the normal marines).

Mmm, this thread is giving me plenty of incentive to get cracking on my painting. Just as I'd hoped!

Edit: Here, I'll spare you lot the hassle of heading over to that thread:

Chaos Warriors (archive and modern), Space Marines, Chaos Space Marines--hell, there's even a few IG chunks thrown in there!







Chaos Warrior cloak and banner, and his legs are really CSM arms. Hence the green stuff mud...




These are by no means all of the photos, but I thought I'd just...give some examples.
 
#9 ·
All right, update time!

I've made progress on my Oblits, as you see. Two coats of gold. One more, some wash, then a lighter gold and boltgun metal wash on that part...plus the flesh, which will mirror the white flesh of the middle Obliterator above, I think. And the other parts.









Bikers! Not too much progress on the riders, apart from the fact that I actually got arms on that last guy. I've also taken off mold lines on them, repainted, and re-drybrushed a bit of boltgun metal...but that's unimportant. The big thing is the second coat of red on the "bikes," the dark flesh on the scales (I will work up to a bone color), and the first layer on the saddles.











And now the new purchase: Berzerkers. I've added in a few bodies, arms, legs and backpacks, strategically spread out between the box, to bolster its numbers from 12 to 16. Two squads! Please forgive the glue-frosting on quite a few of them--have I mentioned how old and tacky my super-glue is? I actually have to take the head off of my bottle and daub a stick into it, then anoint the blessed model. Then, of course, it takes hours to dry.

I really need to get some new glue. Ai, my aching wallet. Buying this squad was hard enough on it. "CSM on a Shoestring Budget" is deservedly this thread's title...

This is one squad, in all its glory. I've had that raised squad leader's base for ages, and been trying to come up with a worthy use for it.





Now for the next!







And finally, all of them together. I'm thinking that I want to do both these squads (and when I get them, both squads of Plague Marines) with a very pale, bone-colored armor that's leaking blood at the joints (or vile, rotting ichor a la the Cleaved for the PM squads).





My Defiler is one step closer to completion: full assembly. Well, I need to make a few more swabs of green stuff, but...otherwise finished being built. Soon going to move into repainting. My internal debate is whether I should try to salvage the color scheme or start over from scratch. Well, it's a bit late to Simple Green it...but whaddever.









I've started a few objectives, too, for my battles. I'm tired of using flying bases and spare small blast templates. The angel plinth was made a long while back for scenery (from an old D&D model), but I've dragged it--and some barrels, crates, and bitz--together for spoils to capture/defend.







Bitz for one of my next projects: 14 Plague Marines. I'm thinking that a box of 7, plus a box of 10 regulars, and also these bitz scavenged from my friendly local gamer store, all fairly spread around...should manage. I have 3 scythes for each squad I'll make, plus a few gribbly bits. With some green stuff and Finecast Plague Marine bodies...I think I can make this work.





Now, you might be crying out "but Mossy! that's 17 minis, not 14!" Well, fear not, I have a plan. With the 3 remaining CSM--plus a liberal addition of enough other scavenged bitz to make it 5 whole marines--I will have a Chosen squad with 3x flamers and 2x meltaguns. I've started building that supply of weapons, you see.

I'm proud of how self-made some of these are. The meltagun is a chunk of a building pillar, a bolter, and the cap of a plasma pistol; the flamer is a bolter, a metal flamer bit snipped off of an Ork Nob arm, and a meltabomb. Plus, well, a flamer, a meltagun, and a reeeally archive flamer. And then my few remaining spare backpacks. Here:



And that's all for now!
 
#10 ·
Hi Mossy, Your Shoestring-CMS are working out very well. A lot of good kit-bashing, nice. And the weapons you have made; very chaotic as it seems , fluffwise , a lot of the "bad" guys customises their weapons,. Well they usually don't need to pay much respect to Omnissiah :biggrin:
They have other means..
 
#11 ·
Yeah, I would blanche at the thought of having such conversions on a Loyalist SM army...one more reason why Traitor Astartes are unequivocally better!

I can't decide whether to go with 3x melta 2x flamer or 2x melta and 3x flamer on the Chosen squad. If I go with the former (and still haven't acquired a spare melta by then), then I'll use this old tutorial of Galahad's...
 
#12 · (Edited)
Flush with money from gifts after graduating high school, I've splurged and purchased some hobby supplies. A new super glue, super glue accelerator, white primer, and a handful of much-needed paints are mine.

Also, I bought a decent chunk of another fellow's army for cheap, since he was trying to sell. The paint job is pretty poor--not up to my standards, at least--so I'll be doing touch-ups and repaintings. My brother is in town for the week, too, and he's expressed an interest in repainting the two rhinos. I may buy the rest of his models, too. That would be 15 more CSM (well, 10 CSM and 5 servitors which he uses in the Iron Warriors vibe), 2 preds, a broken defiler, Huron Blackheart, and a Chaos Lord w/ combi-melta.

I've already started the touch-ups--most visibly adding the red shoulder pads, so I can do my fish-hook squiggle on 'em--but I'll update these pictures with the models further along soon. Also, I've made significant progress on the bikers and their mounts, so I'll get photos of those up soon too.











 
#14 ·
I was considering that. Death Guard in a pinch! :p

I've already used the 4 plasma gunners as a squad of Chosen in a recent battle, where they performed admirably: they killed most of a squad of Striking Scorpions in one shooting phase, then a Wraithlord in another turn. Of course, that was after that Wraithlord had made Kharn eat a krak missile, but...
 
#17 ·
I second this. I ran a squad in my last game, 5 plasma chosen with a lord with mark of tzeench and a deathscreamer with a combi melta in a rhino. They performed very well even though they melted one of their number.
 
#16 ·
Yeah, that's what I like about Chaos--they can use any mishmash of archive models, kitbashed special weapons, outdated equipment, etc...and still be a perfectly legal army. :victory:
 
#18 · (Edited)
Thread necromancy time. All sorts of fun things going on with my models. Since the release of 6e and Codex: CSM, I've gotten back in the modeling saddle quite a bit. I've been swapping and chopping bits and weapons on models to represent the new rules, and have begun to build up a Chaos Daemons allied contingent. I got Dark Vengeance, the squad of plague marines and normal CSM I'm going to mash together, as well as a Cockatrice being split into two different flying monstrous creatures. Finally, I've also got a few walkers recently, which have devolved into a bitz-swapping orgy with my existing 2 Defilers.

Unfortunately, I haven't had a painting desk since I last updated this thread (read: a year and a half, or so), so there's been very little progress painting-wise. That should hopefully change in about a month, but until then, I have to make do with half-painted swaps and unpainted new models.

Though I intend to post up more photos in the coming few days (my daemons, Dark Vengeance models, and all the champs and such I've modified), here are the real highlights:

New codex. Wait, what? Special edition? 0010 out of 1000 (and that's not binary, as much as it looks like it)





I've managed to get some progress in on the Bikers since I last posted:



I'm considering also getting some Chaos Knights to turn into Nurgle Bikers, since these are pretty clearly Khornate Bikers, complete with a Lord w/ Axe of Blind Fury.



I also need an Aegis Defense Line with a quad gun, and to warp with paying $27 for some strips of 5" and 2" plastic, you know what I mean? Can we build it? Yes we can!

I had some 6" stone walls laying around, which were easily chopped to size, and threw in some hull plating from a non-GW modern tank model (some sort of humvee) that I've had pieces of drifting around for years now.

Then I started in on the quad gun, taking a mishmash or random bits:



And straining it down, mixing in a few new pieces, to get this:



Which turned into a final product, all of it, of this:





I needed a Lucius model, and had just the head for it, off of the mutations sprue. That wouldn't be enough, though. Chop some faces off models and green-stuff them to my Noise Champion, throw in some wire, and this fellow:



Magically transmogrifies into this:





I have an old Lord of Change I was considering remaking. I have the arms of the ancient Nagash model, which are very similar to the Lord of Change's arms, so I figure I might as well swap em out to give my Lord of Change some unique flavor. I was missing the wings, however, and could only find a dinky pair off of some non-GW Pegasus model that my sister had painted years back...



Then it struck me. I'd bought a Cockatrice, hadn't I? That could provide wings, plus be a stellar head to add to the Lord of Change--presto, instant kitbashed Fateweaver! I have yet to strip it and assemble it, with lots of fiddliness for non-standard joints between different pieces, but:





My Defiler's had yet another remodeling, stripping away more unnecessary pieces to get it as sleek and mean-looking as possible (also: to accurately represent how easily AV12 gets popped grumblegrumblegrumble), with what is now a very cool power scourge, two less legs, and one of those legs replacing the skeleton cage as a DCCW/Power Fist:







While I was doing that converting, I decided to tear my second defiler literally limb from limb. It was a very cathartic moment, venting my rage at his +45 point cost.



What could I possibly have planned for this sinister hulk?



Am I making a Brass Scorpion?



Or something... more sinister?



Yup, more sinister it is:

NECRODEFILEFIENDGRINDER.





Meanwhile, I ask you, what about the rest of the Necrosphinx? I say, no, no to a Necrosphinx.

I'm making a NECRODEFILEFIENDGRINDER. Another one.

Or as I also call him, a Necroarmadillo:





Hmm, what to do with the Warsphinx howdah? Sure, I'm already using the head on the first Necrodefilefiendgrinder, as well as the tail, but... it seems like a waste of a perfectly good chariot to let this howdah go to waste.

Ah, a chariot! Just the thing for me: an archive Flamer as a Herald of Tzeentch, being pulled by 2 Screamers in the howdah, all over the large base handily supplied by the Necrosphinx? YES PLEASE!





Now, all of this furious kitbashing left me with some odd bitz left over. A pair of Lord of Change arms, a headless chicken--I mean, Cockatrice--and a spare Necrosphinx skull head and pair of wings. So what did I do? I threw it into my magic cauldron and out popped a winged Daemon Prince with the Black Mace. Well, it will be the Black Mace once I find a suitable mace-head to top off the staff:



I know this guy looks really freaky and aesthetically imbalanced. Ah, the joy of Chaos! I'm going to see if I can't fit in some more mechanical bitz to synergize with the rather metallic wings.




We're coming to the close of this lump of photos, but have a teaser of the minor tweak I've made to the Helbrute. I need some more meltas for combi-meltas and the like, so I figured I'd swap out the multimelta for a reaper autocannon. Besides, a fire frenzy of that many autocannon shots is going to give a lot more things pause than a fire frenzy of 2 multimelta shots. I had a spare autocannon sitting around (should have thrown it on a Havoc, and it's not a reaper autocannon--so shoot me), which I converted into a handy fencing epee look-alike for my good Helbrute:





Well, I certainly had tons of fun making these guys, and for most of them, the process is only half done! I hope all of you Heretics have enjoyed the results of my crazed insanity. Let's close this photo dump out on a good note:



 
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#20 ·
Hmm? Which story would that be? I didn't think I had any unfinished stories on the Fanfiction forum, if that's what you're talking about. If by "story" you mean "plog," sure...

I'm considering swapping the Necroarmadillo and the Necrodefilefiendgrinder's heads, because the Necroarmadillo is looking too a bit too straight-from-the-kit for my tastes, and too much like just a maulerfiend rather than a maulerfiend/forgefiend/soul grinder/defiler(/Helbrute?).
 
#21 ·
I was thinking of Desolace. Regarding the headswapping, how about a prominent icon on the chest, some spikes, a couple of armourplates, like the ones the back. I quite like the " untouched " face, it would give a good contrast to the evil parts... I think :wink:
 
#23 · (Edited)
Update time! Lots of kitbashing going on. Looots of looovely kitbashing. Need to buy more greenstuff pronto, so I can knock these models into shape.


Scratchbuilt Warpsmith w/ the BBoS. I needed to make legs and only had the feet/calves available. I wound together a bunch of different wire into a "rope" and poured glue into it, then chopped it into bits and stuck those on as thighs I'm pretty proud of. Not quite happy with the crotch, though. Going to do something about that. The cat is an optional combat familiar.













Fateweaver. Very rough still--I need to sculpt the segment of the arm to extend Nagash's sword arm a bit, and do a whooole lot of feathers/ruffles and blending with green stuff to make things work.









Herald of Tzeentch on Chariot. Proud of this one, though I still need to lash the Screamers to the Chariot somehow. Or do I? I mean, psychic rope is invisible, isn't it?









The Blue Scribes. Definitely need to add more parchment, books and scrolls. That's what green stuff is for. I do like the idea that the first one shoved the second one off and he barely managed to grab hold of their mount's tentacle.









Aaaand lastly, a Daemon Prince. Still looking for something suitably mace-like to cap off the staff so he can have the Black Mace when I run him in my CSM.









All together now! Also a Finecast Bloodthirster, whose base I stole for the Daemon Prince. A replacement, and one for Fateweaver, is coming by mail order from GW, along with a few other gubbins and Christmas presents to myself.

 
#27 ·
Thanks, ck.

My brother has pointed out that by gluing the models to their clear flying bases before priming them, I've kind of ruined the point of having clear plastic. Never fear, though, I'm going to mask the clear stems off with tape before I actually primer them.
 
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