Those Tzeentch Terminators

Man oh man, I love Tzeentch Terminators. They rock. Make sure to give your aspiring champion both Bolt of Change and Gift of Chaos. There's nothing like a terminator squad that can make more chaos spawn.

Anyway, as promised here are the terminators. Now, as I mentioned before, the best part about Tzeentch is the ability to get two different kinds of terminators (though both count as elite choices). The problem with this is that you will inevitably want to buy miniatures for your army that GW does not sell. There are no Tzeentch Terminators. Moreover, as the Thousand Sons are supposed to be resistant to mutation, you really shouldn't be using the regular terminator model (since they all have horns, tusks, mandibles, etc.). The old Rogue Traitor terminators are your best bet because they look like regular terminators with a different sort of iconography. Instead of imperial symbols they have chaos. The other problem with the terminator miniature is that Tzeentch termies (non-chosen) are all supposed to be using power weapons, and the terminator power weapon is rare.

So, to sum up, your non-chosen terminators are going to require you to use a terminator model that is pretty much without mutation and which is carrying a power weapons. Already, you are going to have to convert. Moreover, if you're already converting you might as well make the head dress.

So, first things first: for this conversion, you will need a clay that hardens in the oven (something like filo), you will need a dremel with a cut off wheel, and finally, you will need to hit Michael's and pick up a pack of random shapes made from thin wood sheets.

About those wooden sheets, first off, they're going to be near the balsa wood. They come in bags of rectangles that are between a 1/2"x1" up to 2"x1", so they're small. They are necessary for this project and absolutely useful in almost every scenery project you are going to undertake as they can quickly create the texture of masonry or plating. They're flat and easilly manageable. Too thick to be cut with a craft knife, they have the resiliency that you need, and combined with the dremel cut off wheel, you can cut or sand them into almost any shape. Use the "cutting" part of the wheel. to cut, and use the top or bottom of the wheel to quickly sand out. In this way, you are not technically "cutting" out the headset shape, but rather sanding it out of the wood.

I'm getting ahead of myself. Before you sand anything out, first draw the basic shape of the head-dress on one of those 1"x1/2" pieces. You may want to look at a regular thousand son head to get the basic proportionso for this.

Good, NOW sand out the shape.

Make an incision along the top of the miniatures head running from side to side with the dremel. You're making a slot in which to fit the wooden piece. Keep grinding at the metal until you can get the flat wood headdress in there snugly. With the piece in place, trace the outline of where the top of the head meets the headress.

Now cover the wood with a thin layer of the filo. smoothing it agains the edges to give it more "stick". Now slice out a little channel halfway across the headdress running up and down. Next, with a toothpick or something equally wide and NOT SHARP make the horizontal stripes of the Thousand Sons head dress. Keep in mind, the point here is not to cut out channels (as it was for the middle of the head dress) as that is likely to tear the filo, but rather to simply make indentations.

By now, you probably have a good idea of where the sillouette line you drew earlier was. Cut away the clay so that it doesn't get in the way of putting the headdress back into the slot.

Finally, put the whole thing in the oven so that the clay bakes, put it together with some glue, and wallah, Thousand Sons Terminators.

As for the body, I already mentioned that the old terminator models are really what you want to use, but barring that you must improvise. As you can see, I've used three different models to make my terminators. The old chaos terminator, the old chaos terminator sergeant, and the old chaos squats in exo armor. The main stay of my force is actually made up of the exo-armor squats. What the hell else am I going to use them for? These other two miniatures are really more for chosen terminators--note for instance the conversion of one terminator so that a skeleton is at the helm. Regardless, your main trick is to get those power fists out of the majority. They are fine for your aspiring champion and for your chosen, but the regular automaton terminators all have power weapons. That's why I find the chaos squats such a great solution to this problem; they're already armed with a hand to hand weapon that could pass for a power weapon and which is very much NOT a power fist.

I have other solutions to this conundrum, including another option for the terminator body, but not on these miniatures. I think I'll save that for next time.