A Year in Miniatures 2: Knight Desecrater
The Knight Desecrater is a truly imposing model, towering over pretty much everything else in my collection. She is also notable for just how long I’ve spent not finishing her - she’s been in some state of WIP for just under 18 months! Hilariously, once I’d resolved to finish, it took less than a day to take the final step from WIP to done (much of the rest of my hobby time this week has been dedicated to another project, but you’ll have to wait until next week to see him). Unfortunately for my completed model count, Gimli’s rules apply: “That still only counts as one!”.
None of the canonical Chaos Knight houses quite appealed to me, so I’d initially planned to run this knight as a Dreadblade, but the draw of devising the lore and backstory for an entire knightly house was just too great. Therefore I’d like to introduce you to Corvix Valka, the Crow of War, piloted by Lady Badb of House Morrigan.
You may have noticed a few differences from the baseline Chaos Knight model. The most obvious are the carapace-mounted missile pod, and the cockpit interior, both of which are from Wargame Exclusive (specifically this and this respectively), and the former of which I believe technically makes this a Knight Despoiler. However, there’s probably not a single part on the model that hasn’t been modified to some degree. I built out mountings for the internal lights using milliput, restructured the left shoulder to conceal a battery pack and switch, drilled holes through the torso to feed the wires, drilled out the engine grill, kitbashed a mess of pipes and engine pieces to go beneath, and magnetised everything. Seriously, I went entirely overboard on the magnets - every armour piece with the exception of the carapace is removable, as are the shoulders, arm weapons, void shield, heavy stubber, head, the wrist-joint of the thunderstrike gauntlet, and the waist joint. If Valka gets knocked over, bits go everywhere! Pretty much the only thing that isn’t magnetised is the missile pod, which is actually attached to a toothpick that slots into the mounting point and down into the torso.
“Their moment of respite is short lived, however, as the bespiked war machine smashes through their camp, barely seeming to notice the scurrying figures even as she slaughters them”
I often find it difficult in photographs to grasp the physical size of Knights, there isn’t a lot on them that lends a sense of the human scale. The skulls on the chaos variants help a bit, but Warhammer is so bedecked with skulls that they tend to fade into the background a lot of the time. Instead, I decided to add some doomed imperial guardsmen to the base, turning this into a mini diorama. I spent a bit of time coming up with the story I wanted to tell, eventually landing on depicting the final moments of a small group of guardsmen fighting a losing battle in a city long overrun by the forces of chaos. Taking shelter amidst ruined buildings bedecked in heretical graffiti, they pause long enough to bury a fallen comrade, constructing an impromptu headstone from his gun and helmet. Their moment of respite is short lived, however, as the bespiked war machine smashes through their camp, barely seeming to notice the scurrying figures even as she slaughters them.
I’m planning on adding a few War Dogs (read: heavily converted Armiger Warglaives) to the house, and eventually two more knights to finish out the Badb-Macha-Nemain triptych (although I’ll probably try them out in Adeptus Titanicus scale before spending the big bucks on the big models), and I intend to keep the tableau going across all of the bases.
I used to be a bit of a purist when it came to painting - believing that anything that wasn’t brushing paint onto the model by hand wasn’t ‘real’ painting. As such I eschewed pretty much all washes, transfers, airbrushing, and anything else I saw as ‘artificial’. These days I’m much less judgemental when it comes to techniques, focussing a lot more on using whatever tools are available to achieve the desired result. Corvix Valka is somewhat emblematic of that shift, comprising pretty much every trick and approach I know how to use. Her armour panels are built up in layered airbrush stencils (I cannot recommend Fallout Hobbies enough to anyone looking to do fancy things with airbrushes), with transfers where the stencils wouldn’t work and freehand where the transfers wouldn’t work. Her superstructure and trim is a hodge-podge of drybrushing and washes, with a lot of care given to switching up colours and finishes to add visual interest while keeping the same overall values so that it looks cohesive. Her banner is a particular point of pride - much though I would love to claim it as freehand it’s actually a single giant waterslide transfer, with careful brushwork over the top to emphasise the shadows and highlights. Finding out how easy it is to simply print transfers at home, and how magically efficient microset and microsol are at getting the damn things to actually do what you want, has opened up a huge range of exciting options! This is actually how I did the cloth elements on my Abaddon.
I would have loved to come up with my own Imperial Guard regiment as well, but since they’re not the main focus and I didn’t want them distracting from the knight herself, I prioritised something that would read very clearly to the viewer. As such, Cadian shock troops was the only real choice - they’re the posterchild for the IG is the same way that the Ultramarines are for the Astartes, making them the most instantly recognisable and familiar. It also helps that their desaturated green and khaki ties them nicely into the gravel and grass of the base while contrasting the red of the knoght herself.
I’m genuinely so happy to have this one finished and shared, and honestly really proud of the end result. Next week: something smaller!
14/01/22
Weeks Elapsed: 2
Miniatures Finished: 3
