Converting Trueborn and Bloodbrides?

I want my Kabalite Trueborn and Hekatrix Bloodbrides to be more distinctive than just having a fancy paint scheme, and would appreciate reading/seeing what others have done.

Trueborn

For Trueborn, I know a lot of people give them Reaver bubbleheads. Much as I love those, all my Reavers and my pilots will have bubbleheads and my Trueborn should be distinct from them.

I'm strongly considering giving all of my Trueborn helmets with tassels, while Kabalite Warriors will all wear tassel-free helmets. That will help them look a bit fancier and give them a distinct color element, but I want something more.

I've seen some really nice Trueborn modeled with High Elf Phoenix Guard cloaks, which looks great. BUT, I plan to magnetize my Trueborn so that I can remove them from their bases and place the entire squad on their transports, since they will likely only dismount when* the transport gets blown up. So if I give them capes, I want it to be something blowing in the wind. (I stink at sculpting GS, so I gave up on sculpting such cloaks.

Bloodbrides

Beyond making them all-female, the only real idea I've had is giving them all bare feet to visually link them to Lelith Hesperax (usually fielded as a Succubus because her model is awesome but too points-heavy). This is easy enough to with with Hellion and Scourge legs (used in whole or in part), and the talon-like toenails on the Scourge feet are quite appropriate as well.

*If you talk about "when" your transports are destroyed rather than "if" they are destroyed, you might be a Dark Eldar player.

My bloodbrides will be modelled with the visored helmets from the wych box set, and they're all going to carry flails (except for those with wych weapons of course), including the ones from the venom kit, they're also going to have my cult rune painted on the visor so they should be quite distinctive.

Can't help you with trueborn though I'm afraid, I'm not taking any. As an idea though, you could use the sybarite torsos with the paired shoulder blades or something along those lines.

I've thought about getting some Dire Avenger heads for my next batch of Trueborn, whenever I get around of needing another set. The large plumes really would make them stand out, and the more craftworldly design would serve as a good distinguisher from the regular rank and file Kabalite tubeborn scum.

My Trueborn don't wear helmets, while all of my Warriors do. My Warriors all use the old heads, while most of the helmet-less heads I have are new, so the Trueborn tend to have the neck guards as well. Lastly, the highlights on their arm armor are different- Trueborn get bright stripes, Warriors get dull ones. Much like a squad of sergeants having different chevrons

CaptainBalroga wrote:

My Trueborn don't wear helmets, while all of my Warriors do. My Warriors all use the old heads, while most of the helmet-less heads

I do it the same way!

Michael

I'm using dark elf heads on my regular warriors, so I was considering high elf heads for the trueborn. Some kind of head swap anyway is an obvious thing to do. Aside from that (and cloaks) you could go for extra spiky bits and other details/accessories. Ultimately, though, I'm not sure trueborn should be all that different in appearance: their weaponry and an extra-bling paint job ought to suffice I'd say.

I've not really thought about blood brides, or even wyches, myself yet, but I reckon that the same principles apply. In both cases the advantage of not making them stand out too much is that you can also use the models as regular warriors/wyches in any games where you don't want the more elite troops.

My trouborn have the seedragon clock from the dark elves corsairs, and they are all armed with blasters.

My bloodbrides use all those weighted flails from the wych box, and they have more spikes and chains then regular wyches

My trueborn don't have helmets.

My wyches anbd bloodbrides units each have different hair colors, so I can identify them by calling the blonds blodbrides and the bluehaired old ladies wyches.

Brilliant, I can just see the wyches wandering round slightly baffled with a blue rinse in their hair!

My trueborn follow the unwritten 40k rule that important people don't wear helmets. They find themselves very important.
To make them stand out more I give them dark elf corsair cloaks.

I like the shape of the corsair cloaks, not sure about the scales though. I'm going to take a look at the Corsairs on display at my FLGS.

Cloaks and plumed helmets would really amount to all I need while not overloading the Trueborn with bling.

As far as paint schemes for the Wyches/Bloodbrides go, skin and hair color are still up in the air, as I've only settled on the warrior paint scheme and they're all helmeted.

For skin, I'm looking at removing warm tones entirely, giving them chalk-white skin and completely black eyes (with a dab of gloss varnish). Coven units will probably get a blue glaze on top of that.

For hair, I'm obviously not limited to natural colors. I'm considering white hair on everyone, but it's harder to paint convincingly than white skin. If I do go with colored hair, it will probably be electric blue, since that what I'm using for tassels, plumes, and hull symbols.

For my Trueborn unit I went with the Corsair cloaks and no helmets (except the leader) and all have different heads.

For Bloodbrides I am unsure - I was thinking of making up a squad with just the flail weapons to mark them out as Bloodbrides, but I have also been debating on giving them mutations curtiousy of my haemonculi.

Might we have pictures for inspiration?

Allandrel wrote:

For hair, I'm obviously not limited to natural colors. I'm considering white hair on everyone, but it's harder to paint convincingly than white skin.

I painted a few Pro Elves for Blood Bowl with white hair. If you like it, I can try to remember with colors I used. Especially take a look on number 6. The last color wash´t white, so you can go a tone brighter.

Michael

Thanks!

I am going to make bloodbrides as others seem to do it: save up on the wych visorless helmets, and then invert the colour scheme - more black, perhaps more white, I don't know yet, we'll get there when we get there!

Other hints to make them 'elite' are most welcome!

Tiresias wrote:

Other hints to make them 'elite' are most welcome!

Save up on the back pieces intended for flag poles and save up on the bayonets from the Warriors box. For each Trueborn or Bloodbride you will need one back piece and two bayonets. One of the bayonets should be long and single bladed, long enough to go from the back piece to just above the model's head. I think I cut this one from a Splinter Rifle, but it was long and had back facing barbs. The other bayonet you need is the dual bladed one that is not attatched to a rifle.
The dual bladed one should be stuck onto the back of the collar with the grove for the Splinter Rifle attatchment facing behind the model. The other, longer bayonet should then be glued into the slot on the model's back and glued in. To make it stronger I glued it onto the gove in the dual bladed bayonet.
Doing this essentialy makes a frame of blades around the model's head, making them stand out.

Also, be creative. If giving a model an Agoniser then make awesome conversions. I have modelled one in the style of the old Agoniser using the hand from the Talos pain engine kit.

My original Trueborn used the cloaks from the Dark Elf Corsair kit.
My latest Trueborn use the Dragon Prince torsos and Hellion heads.
My other Trueborn are based on FW Corsairs.
I have plans for the Phoenix Guard capes for a third unit in the future.

I don't have any Blood Brides but one of my squads of Wyches is entirely female and only equipped with knives for if I want to use them one time.

That's what I've done, whether that helps is down to you. I'm echoing everyone else, you'll see a lot of people using reaver heads, lots of trophy racks, bare heads, paint them slightly more regal.

My Bloodbrides are all in white where the Wyches are wearing black, to play a bit on the bride aspect. They maintain the same color pallet otherwise.

I anticipate doing the same thing with my Trueborn, using a flashier color and maybe beefing up the standard rifles to look more like shard carbines.

-Shadoweyed

While I can't help you with the trueborn question (I'm aiming for a Wych based army) I've come up with some ideas about making the Bloodbrides stand out as elites.

In my opinion what makes them elite is:
- speed, so I assume they'd need/want less armour
- strenght, so bigger / better / special weapons are a common choice among the Bloodbrides
This is reflected in +1A (treat it either as faster attacks, or more devastating ones) in their profile.

1. Weapon selection:
- as someone has stated already: restrict flails for elites only
- spears (from Lothern Seaguard for example) + spl. pistol / impalers + spl. pistol (I know it's a special weapon, but without the shardnet it's just a cc weapon - who uses s&i anyway?)

2. Dark Elf conversions - Witches are what seems to be the most obvious, yet still very good choice: the Command unit has some intriguing poses, nice looking weapons, less clothes - see below, heads are also worth a consideration

3. Painting schemes / clothing:
- "less is more" it's quite easy to "strip" them a bit - especially the leg clothing (what i mean is cutting/filing off some of their clothes on hips mainly) would be nice to combine it with no. 2.

4. Sexism
- DE are not much of an equal opportunities employer I guess, so all-female elite is a must (fluff compatible)

I like the idea of making them barefoot too.

Sorry if I wrote anything obvious or repeated previous ideas, but I wanted to make it a thorough and complete list (also for myself).

Good idea on the spears! Got enough of them lying around :-)

another thought:

If you feel confident with your conversion skills you can also try to work with even more dynamic poses - I'd try more capoeira-like poses (God, Lelith is perfect for that - she's got an ideal "jinga" pose), including somersaults, roundhouse kicks and tons of others (just watch a few capoeira dance-fights on youtube for example).

actually it just came to me that I will assemble my next wyches squad to capoeira figures - challenging, but I hope it's worth the trouble.

BTW:
you know that capoeiristas are said to be HOLDING razor blades in their TOES and that they were able to cut a throat this way? isn't that just so dark-eldar style?

I am abso-frikkin'-lutely going to use that idea of yours, wilku! Though for my Harlequin count-as, not for my Bloodbrides. Great thinking!

great
I want to see the pictures then

I'm surprised no-one hasn't suggested Dark elf Witches?

otherwise you could always track down some of the old 3rd ed wytches.

Well, I don't use Bloodbrides so no comment there.

As for Trueborn, what I do is subtle, but it works: the regular warriors have red cloth and green eyes while the Trueborn have purple cloth and eyes. Simple but effective.