Old School here with another look at building better Chaos Space Marines. Today's post is a challenge since there aren't a lot of people out there producing things that have the Night Lords feel to them or with the Night Lords in mind. Also, the web just isn't filled with Night Lords stuff either. That will hopefully change in the future. Several e-mails have demanded we look at this legion in particular and with it being a favorite among the authors, we will do the best we can ...
Like I said, there isn't much around the internet for the Night Lords, but GW does have some good stuff out there for us. I would start my search with the new Raptor kit. The armor has some lightning bolts on the legs and other armor and the helmets are pretty mean. If you are going to order the bits online, thenI would stick to the arms and legs as the torsos are meant for jump packs. There are also some pretty sweet shoulder pads in this set.
I found this idea at Bolter and Chainsword as an alternative to the clumsy looking Finecast helmets GW sells.
The parts come from the Vampire Counts skeletons kit and while the kit is cool, I would just bits order the heads from Ebay or from a reputable seller. The banner is also pretty nice.
Puppetswar makes these sick shoulder pads for Chaos Marine and Terminator sized models and while they aren't the classic winged skulls, they look damn fine!
If you are looking for some scary weapons, they also sell these axes.
For those who don't want bat wings on their helmets, Chapterhouse Studios makes this great helmet, which is right in line with Night Lords theme.
There is also a skull shoulder pad at Chapterhouse, but it honestly doesn't compare to the one from Puppetswar at all.
Finally, I included the GW bits below just to have some options for tricking out vehicles and Hellbrutes (still getting used to calling them that). Also, the banner is pretty sweet in this kit.
Overall, I think the bottom line is pretty clear: There really isn't much out there interms of support for the non-cult troops of the Chaos Marines. This is changing due to folks like Puppetswar. Getting creative with GW kits and spicing things up with some conversions, sculpts on top of using one or two third party bits will go a long way though.
As always, suggestions, comments and feedback are always welcome! If you have some more alternatives, don't forget to link!
Pretty good ideas all around. Now if only the new CSM codex did Night Lords properly...
ReplyDeleteOh well, we still have the BA 'dex.
That B&C one is balls-out awesome. I love this series by the way, lots of useful info, so do please keep it up.
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I think there's a different core reason why there isn't much model support for Night lords: There isn't much model wise to differentiate them from most other Chaos Marines. Like comparing Ultramarines to Imperial Fists. Take away the iconography of the respective armies and whats the difference between, model wise, between an Ultramarines Chaplin and an Imperial Fists one? A fists captain and an Ultramarines one? Librarians? There simply isn't much there to differentiate the two armies on a model level. Same thing with the Nightlords. the Nightlords trilogy has made enough of an impact with people that there's interest in fielding them. That's great. There just still isn't much to differentiate them from generic Chaos Marines.
ReplyDeleteI was looking forward to this, but there just isnt much out there. This I find a bit odd considering thaat the skull and bat wing symbol pre dates even GW and I thought somebody would have jumped on it.
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