Taking care of something ugly

The original hunchbacked multi-part plastic Chaos Warriors

The old, unfashionable plastic Chaos Warriors were the first multi-part Warhammer regiment box that Games Workshop released, back during the 5th edition. They heralded a new era of relatively affordable units around which players could build their armies. Previously the only choice had been expensive all-metal regiments, or (where the option existed) single-pose plastics where every model in the unit looked identical. 

I'm beautiful on the inside.

As ground-breaking as these old Warrior models were, they are ugly. Like, seriously deformed. Sure, they look human enough. Or maybe humanoid. If you were to remove a person's neck and instead plant the head squarely in the centre of the torso instead, that person would look a lot like one of these old models.

Anyway, these guys were around for a while, and there are now a lot of them kicking around in people's collections and on the second-hand markets online. They don't fetch great amounts of money because they're really not very desirable. The newer Chaos Warrior kit that replaced them has far more impressive-looking models, even if their poses are all the same. So what is one to do with these poor old Warriors?

Some people, like my friend Benji, have a lot of these guys kicking around.

A few years ago I set myself a challenge to try to update some of these guys, and make them a little more pleasing to the eye. It's long enough ago that I don't have any WIP photos to show you, but I can explain what I ended up doing and show you the results. 

On the right we have an unmodified specimen. The guy on the left has been given "the procedure".

The obvious thing that needed to be fixed was the head. I removed the existing head and bored a new neck hole (up on top of the torso, between the shoulders of all places), so that I could attach a spare head from one of the current models. Most of the old 5th ed heads are too ugly and their joiner is at the back of the head instead of underneath it, so if you have (or can get your hands on) some newer ones, do so. I also used some Marauder heads when it suited me. This process left a hole in the chest of the model where the old head had gone. I basically just filled it up with greenstuff and allowed it to bulge out a bit under the neck, which just made it look like part of the armour and helped accommodate the new head.

A few more modified examples

These command models use Marauder Horseman heads

On some of the models I removed particularly large metal frills or spikes that were on the top of the shoulder plate. I just hacked them off with knife and file. Those bits help make the model look weird and don't work so well with the new location for the head. I didn't remove all of the extra rims, but I don't think I left any of the gratuitous rows of spikes.

This guy had his left shoulder trimmed down to more sensible proportions.

I cheated somewhat on these models, in that I used ones that had metal halberd arms. A lot of the old plastic weapons (and in particular the plastic halberds) are big and goofy, and don't help the look of the model at all. You can pick and choose with these things. It's likely you won't have enough bits to update every model to look more appealing, but you might still be able to get a decent-looking unit where previously you had 2 ugly units that were never again going to see the light of day. Better than nothing.

Or you could just go ahead and make use of the silly plastic halberds. Like this guy did. One sawn-off halberd in each hand, choppa-style.

The metal halberds really are much better.

The whole modified group together for a family shot.

The banner is from the Marauder Horseman set.

We're (relatively) beautiful! Hooray! Let the realms of man burn in celebration!