Obliterator - Minor Conversion

Obliterators: part marine fused with armour and technology, and part daemon; obliterators are of utility in nearly any chaos space marine force.

The obliterator model has only a couple of different castings, but each has the same pair of arms. The arms come with a selection of ranged and close combat weapons that can be added to the end of each arm - a bit like weaponized fingers. Therefore the obliterator model can be constructed in a number of poses and configurations.

One problem that I've had with the model is its sheer fiddliness. Getting some of the weapon options to fit in to the metal holes that they're supposed to can be terribly tricky - especially the small bladed close combat weapons and some of the larger weapons if the holes in the arms aren't particularly deep.

Really, there is little point in converting the rest of the miniature unless there is a specific goal that you have in mind. Perhaps a few additional spikes to the shoulder area. The arms and fingers of this model do, however, present a good opportunity for a little work.

Pictured is one of my work-in-progress obliterators (possibly for use in GT2009?). On the right arm, I've replaced the entire row of finger slot with a space marine missile launcher pod from a land speeder. The missile pod fits snugly over the top of the wrist of the obliterator with little additional work. Admittedly, in the new chaos marine codex, obliterators can no longer fire missiles, but I still regard it as fluffy that they might be able to manifest missiles. So, I've also replaced three of the missiles in the pod. The lower two were cut out and filed down so that I could pin a heavy flamer on to the model. The heavy flamer comes from the chaos terminator boxed set. I like this as the pipes from the heavy flamer wrap around the side of the arm and re-insert themselves back in to the arm. Finally, one of the upper missiles has also been removed to make way for the front of a plastic plasma gun.

On the left arm, I've gone for a more typical obliterator configuration. The las cannon and other weapons come from the obliterator sprue. Each of them has been pinned in to the arm to give better stability and durability. Moreover, the pinning has enabled me to extend these weapons further away from the arm and make the look longer and more protruding. The chainblade is sourced from a rather old space ork sprue and is positioned on the outside of the fist, much like a chainfist.

All of the new components have had milliput (i.e. greenstuff) applied to them to help them blend in with the rest of the arm. This is particularly evident on the missile launcher arm. On the las cannon arm, milliput has been used to extend the length of the weapons so that they poke out further from the bulk of the fist.

This miniature hasn't been painted yet, so a second article on the paint job will be posted once I've gotten around to the painting. I'm thinking of a rusted scheme to be in keeping with my Death Guard forces, with the fleshy bits in something contrasting; perhaps blue.