Wrong Side of the Maelstrom

The Legion of Violence rides to war

By Zach

Hi, my name is (Chaos) Zach. You probably know me from models like This…

And this….

I consider myself a pretty prolific converter in my armies. What I’m writing here is my personal opinion about my hobby, and is not intended as a slight or a shot at any readers of this article. I (generally) do not want my armies to look like anyone else’s army: I want my force to be immediately identifiable as “my dudes” on the tabletop, which is why I like to customize my models. I also use my conversions as a way to proxy models that don’t go with the vision I have for my army. Usually this takes the form of converting most of the character models from my army, and whole units where feasible. 

 

Today, I want to take you through one of my army projects as a showcase and show you how I’ve used my conversion to create a narrative for my army. I hope this inspires you to try and convert some of the models in your own army projects (and at the very least you can look at some pretty pictures of an army project).

 

I’ve decided to show off my Soulblight Gravelords army from Warhammer: Age of Sigmar. The current version of the army took form at the end of 2nd edition (around 2021), but a previous version of the army has existed since the start of Age of Sigmar (2015), and the narrative technically stretches back even before that into the days of Warhammer Fantasy Battles.

The Time-Line of Malakai

 

The general of my force is Count Malakai, the Mortarch of Violence. He has been the “point of view” character for my force since the beginning of the Age of Sigmar. I’ve created a few different versions of this character as the narrative for the force has evolved, that I’ll show off below…

 

Malakai is a Vampire wanderer, who appeared in the Mortal Realms sometime around the tail end of the Age of Chaos in the Hysh the Realm of Light (dramatic irony for a creature of the night).

I actually “based” this model off of art from the 8th Edition Warhammer Fantasy Army Book.

The actual model is an older 6th Edition Blood Dragon Vampire (circa 2002?), with the head from the old plastic Vampire on Zombie Dragon, and arms from the plastic Blackguard kit, along with a sword from a kit I no longer remember (leave a comment if you can figure it out). The over the shoulder portion of the cloak and the flames on the blade were sculpted. 

 

This iteration of the character was when he first usurped the Kingdom of the Setting Sun, a desert Kingdom in Hysh. I also converted a mounted form of this character riding his Skeletal Dragon Ossiriach.

Malakai himself is converted from the mounted version of the metal model the foot version is based on, while the dragon is based on the Dread Abysaal from the Mortarchs kit for Age of Sigmar, with the wings from the plastic Lord of the Rings Balrog (back when you could order certain bits from the GW website!). I imagined the Kingdom of the Setting Sun to look similar to the Tomb Kings range from Warhammer Fantasy Battles (now Warhammer the Old World). Many of the characters and units around the time shared the same Desert basing, as well as the army project mixing some Vampire Counts models (the Warhammer Fantasy Predecessor to the Soulblight Gravelords) with Tomb Kings models.

 

Eventually, the Tomb Kings models were retired from the Webstore, and I evolved the army aesthetic to be more “Vampiric”. To me, this represented the advancement of the story of the Age of Sigmar, and the Kingdom becoming completely under the thrall of Malakai.  To coincide with this advancement, I created a new Malakai…

I kept the same head while using the old Archaon model from Warhammer Fantasy Battle (model circa 2004, but this version was finecast so it wasn’t a ton of metal), coffin lLid from the Nighthaunt Black Coach for the shield, and I gave him a large blade (which is actually the glaive from a Stormcast Protector), painted up to be a blade of a Shadeglass (a magical material from Shyish, the Realm of Death). This model would later return, but we’ll come back to that.

 

The next advancement in the narrative came with the release of a new army, the Ossiarch Bonereapers. During an undead Civil War (between my own undead armies), Malakai lost the Kingdom of the Setting Sun to the leader of my Ossirach Bonereapers, Malik King of the Eternal Sun. This caused Malakai and the remnant of his army to flee to the Realm of Beasts (which was the setting of the Age of Sigmar story during the 3rd edition of the game). During this arc, Malakai became infused with the magic of Ghur, the Realm of Beasts. This along with other factors caused him to devolve into a Vengorian Lord, a monstrous type of Vampire.

For this one, I tried to keep the same torso and cape, so Malakai would be recognizable but I gave him the Vengorian Lord Bat-Centaur lower portion, the Vengorian Lord head (which I thought looked close enough to bald Malakai but more monstrous), and a twisted claw from the Crypt Horror kit to show off how far he had fallen and sell the bestial nature of his transformation. This narrative arc also coincided with a revamp I did for the army, complete with a newer colour scheme, basing scheme and nods to the previous narrative that had taken place (more on that below).

 

With the release of the new edition of the Age of Sigmar, and the story moving away from the Realm of Beasts, I decided to have Malakai overcome his Bestial form and return to his previous form (for now…). This time, I didn’t want to completely remake the model as the parts were very difficult to find at this point, so I updated the paint scheme and base on the mounted Malakai to match the current iteration of the Army.

And that brings us to the present, after ~10 years and many model iterations (including unfinished ones I haven’t mentioned here).

The Legion of Violence

 

Above I gave an overview of my army from the point of view of Count Malakai. Now I’ll show off some of the conversions I’ve done throughout the years, and how the aesthetic of the army has changed to match the narrative of the army.

 

For the earliest version of the army I’ll showcase a few characters and conversion to match the Tomb King aesthetic for the army.

I wanted to use some of the Retro Vampires that the original Malakai to keep a through line for the initial characters. I used a Tomb King Bone Giant since the rules allowed at the time, but I used some bits to make it seem more controlled by Malakai. The armoured Retro vampire is Prince, so was designed to be an executioner for Malakai. Prince Soren was one of the first of the nobility that Malakai turned into a vampire when he first came to Hysh. He wields a sun-forged spear that is used to dissuade any treacherous vampires that might seek the back stab Malakai. I also converted a mounted version of Prince Soren riding an Abysaal Terror (a warscroll that has not been valid for a few editions of the game). The female Vampire is Veira, Witch of the Dunes (a retro Lahmian Vampire, which were a Vampire lineage with strong ties to Nehekhara). The Bone Giant is the Tomb King Bone Giant, with some extra bits I added to try and bring it in line with a more Vampire Aesthetic that the army eventually went in.

 

After I moved away from the Tomb Kings Aesthetic, I created another character for the army, Ezekial the Knight of Balefire. This is where I went more into the Vampire and Skeleton aesthetic for the army. Ezekial is an ancient wight that Malakai struck a deal with to provide soldiers to protect Malakai, as you can’t always trust your court of scheming Vampires. This model was designed to represent Mannfred Mortarch of Night (another army rule/ preference I have is that I don’t use Special characters, I convert my own proxies for them). Again, I made a mounted and unmounted version of the character, the unmounted version would just be used as a Wight King.

I’ve updated Ezekial on foot to have the basing scheme for my newer force (see below), but not the mounted Ezekial. Now we come to some of the conversions in the current iteration of my force. In the past I’ve leaned towards Skeletons as my foot troop of choice in an undead army, but this time I wanted to go with Zombies. To go with the living dead, I wanted to convert some Corpse Carts (which are carts filled with corpses, and pulled by zombies). Unfortunately, the official model is old enough to vote so I needed to modify it a bit.

I decided to have the carts mounted on the back of giant undead corpses. I used the current Mawcrusha Sloggoth as the base but swapped the head out using a large skull from the Citadel Skulls kit (along with a bit of cork and greenstuff to act as the brain in the open skull). The howdah is just the Corpse Cart model itself, which I thought look a lot better like this. I’ve mentioned that this force is based in the realm of beasts, but I specifically imagined a fetid swamp riddled with corpses, and tried to reflect that in the basing scheme for the army. Another conversion I wanted to show off was my Coven Throne.  The official model (in my humble opinion) is very busy, so I decided to convert something else…

I decided to use the Soulscream Bridge Endless Spell as the base for this one, use the Chalice of Ushoran Endless Spell as the magical foci on the top, and then a few Vampire models to be the Vampire and her Coven. Also in the tradition of converting a proxy to represent a Special Character I made this to represent Neferata the Mortarch of Blood…

This is Lady Nightvenom, an Aelven Vampire and Lieutenant for Count Malakai. The idea for her was that she was a Melusai (a Corrupt Aelf-Snake from the Daughters of Khaine) that was betrayed by her people, and given a second chance by Malakai. In the narrative she used to be part of the Army of a certain aelf loving friend of mine, further tying her and the rest of the army into the Narrative of both my army and the army of my friend’s.

 

Another way I wanted to tie my army to the Narrative history of the force was through the banners of my Barrow Guard. The script is (supposed to be) Nehekhran script from an old Tomb Kings army book. As I mentioned, that was a major influence for the very first version of the army, and I wanted to try and carry that forward a little bit. I’ve also used some Tomb King bits in my skeleton unit to help nod back to that as well. They are not painted, so I won’t show them off today.

So what is the point?

 

You might be asking yourself at this point, “Zach, was this just an excuse to show off some of your work?”. To which I would say… multiple things can be true. Besides showing off some cool models, I wanted to show and talk about how I used conversions to help theme one of my narrative forces, how the narrative evolved throughout the years and how I chose to reflect that in how I built and painted my models. I’m not saying everyone needs to go out and make a host of fully custom characters for every army project they do. Maybe you get your hands on some bespoke shoulder pads for your custom Space Marine chapter, or maybe you use some spare heads to represent your specific Astra Militarum regiment. Even little painting nods and embellishments such as different coloured helmets representing specific ranks in your army can have a huge visual impact on your models and help you show off your narrative. 

 

Thank you for coming on this little tale of mine, as I talked about how I converted this force and a little bit about my personal philosophy behind army building projects. Now if you’ll excuse me I have to get back to building a [REDACTED].