De-Emoed Astorath

Hey all!

Just quick update for all you faithful SGS viewers. I'm here with an Astorath "Counts-as" model for my all-Death Company army. I really don't care for the Astorath model, so I tried to come up with an appropriate substitute. When I do "counts-as" models or armies, I strive to make sure that when playing games, my opponent will be able to immediately associate my "counts-as" model with its intended rules.

I read the fluff, and kept in mind that Astorath's job is to mercy-kill Death Company before they go so insane as to become a danger to their fellow battle-brothers. He also has a two-handed executioner's axe. I figured that a Grim Reaper, with its visage and scythe personified this role perfectly. Astorath also has a jump pack, so I had to make sure I included that.

The starting point for the model was the new Lemartes figure, but including a two-handed weapon was stumping me for a bit. GW doesn't produce a whole lot of figures that are actually wielding a weapon two-handedly that wouldn't add another $15 to the overall cost of the conversion, (my first thought was Typhus, but I didn't want to pay $25 to get his Manreaper). I searched through my Marines bits box and found the new Blood Angel Death Company Thunder Hammer bits (right-handed) and the Space Wolf Pack Frost Blade bits (left-handed). Based on Lemartes' posture, the Frost Blade looked best. I cut the Frost Blade axe head off and the handle below the right hand off. Two lengths of shaft were added to both sides from an old "Custodes Halberd" bolter/halberd/force weapon bit. The bottom of the Frost Blade was reattached to the bottom of the weapon shaft, and the power core of the BADCo Thunder Hammer bit.

The trickiest part was the scythe blade, which was made from scratch from plasticard. It took a long while to get the shape right, and even longer to get the blade part smoothed down. Some thin wire and dots of plasticard rod were added for the power weapon "nodes", the power cable from the BADCo Thunder Hammer arm was attached to the back, a top spike from the BA Librarian Dreadnought Force Weapon, two of the BA wing/blood drop icons from the BADCo box and a few purity seals.

All in all, it came out like this:



Be back soon!
-Ian