Knights are awesome. They're great models, they add a scary aspect to games they're involved in, they're very imposing and for us veteran hobbyists, being able to see a plastic Titan on the table is almost surreal. So I wanted to add a Knight to my Death Guard.
Great. Now what?
I did not want to change the overall outline of the Knight. I've seen some conversions for Chaos Knights which, whilst great, add too much bling to the thing for my liking. I still wanted it to be a Knight. Instead, I decided that I wanted to keep the general form and grotify it. Now, I think I'd better divide the explanatory notes into sections.
Torso
I didn't do much to the torso, which is why I'm starting with it! I drilled a few holes into the back to look like corrosion, but otherwise left as-is.
Torso interior
There's a bit of a wasted opportunity with the Knight's interior, I've always thought. There could have been a Pilot cockpit in there. I had this vision of a hellish once-human or possibly-daemon creature in there, with a degree of ambiguity about his role: commanding force or living battery? I wanted a scarred body, so I chose an Electro Priest's torso. I sawed his legs off (I'll use them for something else). I added the upraised hands from the same kit, and a Plaguebearer skull from the Citadel Skulls kit. I pinned this to the inside of the cockpit after separate painting, leaving an inch or so of pin so that he was hovering in mid-air. Then came the legwork: I built up a hideously biological interior using tissue paper, PVA glue and green stuff. Now came the hard part. I had this idea of horrid capillary arrangements throughout the compartment. For this I used Woodland Scenics lichen - that stuff does not like being glued down and took some patience!
Legs
The easiest part of this was replacing the flag. I instead added the Nightmare Bell from the Great Unclean One kit, which was a pretty simple replacement. I added some tentacles from the Blightkings kit to one of the knees, and a mark of decay from Spellcrow to the other. The shinguards I covered in skulls from the Citadel Skulls box, as well as a couple of groping zombie hands. Worth noting: I cut the skulls in half horizontally so they would fit easier. I drilled a few holes in the shinguards to give the appearance of pockmarking.
Left Arm
Really simple, this. I took off the Reaper Chainsword and replaced it with a chainaxe from the Lord of Skulls. I then drilled pockmarks across the whole arm and created curious anomalies with green stuff. I added the brazier components from the Great Unclean One's flail to add a bit of movement.
Right arm
Very little change here. I just drilled a few pockmarks on, and then attached the skull components of the Great Unclean One's flail, against for motion. I also replaced the stubber with a Plague Spewer.
Carapace & Shoulder pads
I did the usual pockmarking as detailed above. On the shoulder pads I chucked a few skulls on, and on the carapace used green stuff to create a couple of flesh patches. I had to cut the front of the carapace back a little bit because of the big head. It felt like something was missing. So I attached the Sassy Nurgling to the carapace, as if he's ordering the Knight forward!
Head
Yes. This bit was... interesting. I chose the Bloat Drone face plate with a vaguely knightly appearance. To create the rest of the head, I turned a spare Maggoth head upside down. I pinned these two components roughly together, and used copious amounts of plastic glue to fix the bits together and to the torso. As you can imagine, there were some EPIC gaps. I used tissue, PVA and green stuff to fill these gaps out. I finished the head by adding the long tongue from the Great Unclean One.
Base
The curious fish I got from Ebay, it's from the Silver Town box. The broken down fence is simple mesh and a couple of plastic components for posts. The rotting jetty is lolly sticks. But I felt it needed something else. So I got a Cadian, repositioned his arms so as to make him spread-eagle. His hands are from the Warhammer Fantasy Zombies regiment. I wrapped him in model barbed wire which you can get from Ebay. I tried to make it ambiguous as to whether it's a corpse... or if it's still moving. You can decide.
All in all, I'm quite pleased!
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