Sep 18, 2023

Warhammer 40,000: Gold Gold Gold

In August 2023, I discovered the band Wargasm, and became a little bit obsessed with them. The Youtube algorithm reasoned that I might like Do It So Good, and I did. Hey, we listened to a lot of Prodigy when I was a teen, so I immediately liked what I heard.

Clearly I needed to hear more. Spit. is pretty great, but the song that really hit me was Gold Gold Gold.


Something I've done with several of my Warhammer models is that I've written song lyrics onto them in Daedric. Since I was quite obsessed with a song that actually includes the line "blood for the blood god", it was fairly obvious I needed to build something Khornate and golden. And it just so happens that I've got a Chaos Knight box right here.

I'd decided earlier to name my Chaos Knights after Daedra Lords. Since I already figured out how the Daedric Princes correspond to the Warhammer Chaos gods, it follows that I'll be building Knight Rampager Malacath. And painting it gold.

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I'm mostly going to be building this Knight out of the box, but obviously I have to add some personal touches. Like a tail. In old Epic times, Chaos Titans could have tails that gave them a close assault factor bonus, and I've always associated tails with big Chaos walkers and close combat since. Also imagine being a Titan princeps, say in the Legio Venefica, and seeing a Khornate Knight Rampager. It's going to be like an eager little puppy. So obviously there has to be a tail. I made it out of one of the pieces of the Abominant's electroscourge.


I stuck some Wargame Exclusive skulls and a couple of Bad Squiddo mushrooms on the base, as well as a Genestealer arm I had hanging around on my table. Since I'd painted a Knight before, I knew I needed to work in several subassemblies. I primed and painted the legs before sticking on the armor plates.


The upper body was also primed in several bits. The base color for most of the body was Gunmetal Grey with a Black Glaze wash.


I decided to stick a magnet under the carapace weapon mount, even though Rampagers can't have carapace weapons, just in case I ever want to use this model in Horus Heresy. Also there's just no reason they can't have carapace weapons anyway.


I even magnetized the heavy stubber, although that choice has also been inexplicably removed from the Rampager. The meltagun would make so much more sense!


I already magnetized my previous Questoris Knight's weapons, and followed the same logic here.


I also decided to magnetize a flaming skull from Anvil's Skeleton Commissar and mount it on the carapace hardpoint, because it was there on my desk, I guess. I also decorated the front of the carapace with a Khorne symbol from the Bloodletter sprue.


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Then it was on to painting. I got started with my Daedric by writing the name of the song on the tail armor plates.


The red color is strongly suggested by the lyrics, and I like it. I started the chorus on the armor plate over the head, and wrote the Knight's name on the shield.


I think I reached my limit for how small I can make my Daedric letters on the chest armor.


The chorus carried all the way to the highest leg plate, and I went on to do the second verse and army badge on the rest of the leg panels.


The weapons are appropriately labeled.


Then it was just a matter of writing the first verse on the carapace.


And moving on to the shoulder plates.


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So here he is: Knight Rampager Malacath!


I'm very happy with this!


He is very large and golden, and this is good. I have to admit, all this gold is making me think about the Custodes again... But this was a fun little project to do. I really like building and painting big models, and sometimes I think I should focus all my 28mm energies on the chonkers. We'll see.

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