Building a Better Noise Marine with 3rd Party Bits and Standard Parts!

Old School here with the first in a series of articles on building better Chaos Marines with third company parts. As many of mine are in the mail, I will simply walk you through some of the parts that are out there for an aspiring Chaos Champion. Today's post will cover Noise Marines. The noise Marine has had a special place in the hearts of many Chaos players and with a new codex and a lowered points cost (as well as a sweet weapon profile), there are sure to be many new converts to the path of flesh. Let's take a look at what is available out there.

We all know that GW has the old Sonic weapons in finecast and beyond that, I haven't really seen anything that beats the look of the old sonic weapons, so let's look at Shoulder pads, head swaps and backpacks.

First up are the Bedlam Shoulder pads from Kromlech. While I don't own these bits, I have ordered bits from Kromlech before and really enjoyed the quality. I think these are pretty great and fit the look of the GW models pretty well.

Next up is the Daemon Children shoulder pads from Puppetswar. Since my Noise Marines will be Emperor's Children, these are my pads of choice and, yes, mine are in the mail. They are available in both Terminator size and regular size blisters.

 

Next we have the Sonic Helmets from Maxmini! I REALLY like these and am torn between these shoulder pads and the next ones. What I like about these helmets is the low profile, vox grills and wide eye lenses, which make me think of the peeled eyeballs inside!!

 

Here are the Bedlam Helmets from Kromlech. I like these as they seem to have the classic Emperor's Children look to them, though if I had to do a test without the legion being an issue, I would choose the Maxmini helmets every time.

For those who like the weird Geiger look, there are the Prometheus heads from Puppetswar, which have the androgynous quality of Slaanesh (and of Fulgrim for that matter), some kind of cabling on the head with the odd shape and open areas of the scalp.  I don't really know how I feel about these, but they may be right if somebody is truly going for something different.

When it comes to backpacks, I haven't seen any with speakers on them, though I do like both of the backpack options from Maxmini. The Gothic ones above could easily fit the eclectic theme of Noise Marines.

Out of the two types of packs though, the bio hazard packs seem to speak to me a little more. I may use these or just carefully turn the vents around on some Chaos backpacks for the Noise Marines, which brings me to how I will actually build mine ...

... I plan to use the bodies from the Raptor/ Warp talon box as the armor looks great. The shoulder pads also have the grills and faces that could fit in with the noise Marines, though I will likely stick to the legion ones. I like that there are little grills on the knees in some models and I really like the ability to put the Noise Marines into running poses since I don't see sense addicts standing still for long! From there I will use either one of the heads mentioned above (maybe the crested ones for champions) and the bio hazard ones augmented with a little conversion work.

For the bases, I plan to convert some bases up to cast for myself. Much like my Plague Marines, I want the noise Marines to corrupt the ground around them. With that said, I plan to mix cork basing techniques with some partial faces from the Daemonette models and some tentacles from the Tentakle Maker from Greenstuff Industries.

Some examples of what the tentacle maker can do.

The Tentakle Maker is cheap, has several models and is easily one of the best hobby investments I have ever made.

No matter what you do, you should always take a look at what is out there from third party companies as well as what is available in the GW line. When you pay as much as we do for miniatures, it pays to build them to what you would consider perfect! Nothing feels better than fielding a unique army that fits your vision!