Ready for Defiling Cabinet!

On the Island of Sodor, when little engines are really useful, they are rewarded with a fresh coat of paint.

And so for the star player of WoffBoot XII, how could this fat controller do any less?

To remind ourselves of where we started, I acquired this lovely conversion from eBay, so clearly most of the heavy lifting had already been done. But it was a little missile-heavy, with an Ironstorm Missile Pod in the caboose (a proxy havoc launcher?) and some other kind of missile pod in place of the battle cannon. This was going to get confusing for me. I needed more guns.

Also, it was red (boo! Khorne!) and while it did have gold/brass effects in the right places, it wasn't *quite* the same gold as the rest of my army ...

... you see where this is going. My fleeting dreams of a quick touch-up with blue paint were dashed, and I went for the full respray. If it was going to be my paint job, it was going to be all mine.

At least it gave me a rationale to change the skin and tentacles too - since I already have a Mutalith Vortex Beast, I wanted to make this one as different as possible (while still staying within the bounds of the army's colour scheme) - the parchment skin and blood-pink tentacles matches the sorcerer cloaks, so that did the trick.

The battle cannon is a Nova Cannon from a Leman Russ, with some Orruk and Tzaangor icons added onto it. A bit perfunctory, but at least it will remind me to shoot from it.

There was an old WFB shield stuck to the very back of the Defiler. Not one to miss this opportunity to Tzeentch-ify it, I prised it off and added a Tzaangor one there.

Also reinstated was the pie-plate base. The original had some promethium pipes for the Defiler to crawl over, but that looked too cluttered (and made it hard to tell where daemon-machine ended and machine-machine began), so I just went with rocks and snow. I also magnetised three of the claws, which miraculously is sufficient to keep it on the base.

The absence of a secondary gun was something I also needed to fix. Using the Helbrute's Reaper Autocannon (he'll never need it), I put it on the back of the Nova Cannon, with a few extra skulls for decoration and a couple of magnets to give it a swivel mount (so you can move it and make 'pew-pew' noises).

Being magnetised, it can be switched out with any Helbrute weapon, so you could represent the twin lascannons etc (or just find an opponent who's not that fussy).

This project was done over the course of fits and starts, so I'm hazy on the colours used, but it's probably along the lines of:

• Skin: Zandri Dust base, Seraphim Sepia wash, Eldar Flesh drybrush, Terminatus Stone drybrush
• Tentacles: Screamer Pink base, Nuln Oil wash / Daemonette Hide base, Drucii Violet wash, Blood for the Blood God drips.
• Gold trim: Retributor Armour base, Reikland Flashshade wash, Golden Griffon drybrush
• Blue armour: Thousand Sons base, Nuln Oil wash, Thousand Sons layer, Ahriman Blue layer
• Pipes, claws & gun barrels: Leadbelcher base, Nuln Oil wash, Ironbreaker drybrush

I added a face, so the poor wee thing could see where he was going - it's one of the Helbrute's many head options, with greenstuff mechanical tendrils holding it in place. I also added some Helbrute cables leading in and out of the holes in the Mutalith's torso (where the horns usually fit).

For even more firepower, the Defiler can take a combi-weapon, so I used a magnet so one could be underslung in a very particular place.

I believe this is known as the 'ball turret'.

And that's him finally done! Every weapon is now properly represented on the model, and he now fits seamlessly into the carnival that is my Thousand Sons army. I'm going to have to use some restraint, because it's given me a taste for daemon engines!