How To: Customize a Primarch (Magnus the Red)
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So after reading the novel A Thousand Sons by Graham McNeill I felt inspired to create my own version of Magnus the Red to lead a Thousand Sons army to sort of be a departure from my Black Templars.
Now, there is a Magnus the Red model out there. It seems Games Workshop once released a version of each of the four traitor primarchs who were elevated to Demon Prince status, but I hate that model. I don't just hate that model, I loathe it. If I had to field a model of Magnus on the table in a 40K game I'd rather proxy by using a toy Dora the Explorer to represent him than this hideous model.
I'm really not joking. Try searching for "Magnus the Red" in Google images and you'll see what I mean.
Now, Games Workshop, as it happens, has just released a new Demon Prince model that's 100% plastic and has lots of options for customizing it for either Warhammer 40,000 or Warhammer Fantasy. Plastic is good because it's easier to work with than pewter and typically means you have more options for posing or accessories. I decided to start with that as a basis for my version of Magnus the Red. There's a metal version of this model out there and can also be used as a foundation for Magnus, but I don't think it has the same flexibility in customization so if you're going to use that to try your own, be ready for a good bit more work.
For finding out the details of Magnus' appearance I'm using queues from the novel. **Spoilers Incoming** I know that at the end of the novel Magnus is depicted as having a body of light only, suggesting he sacrificed his physical form in the battle against Russ in order to reach this higher level. My interpretation of that is that this was the point at which he became a demon prince, complete with his body of the warp. Since it's the same being (as opposed to having been possessed, as is the case with Fulgrim) I figured that many elements of his appearance would carry over from his former life. I made a few notes to myself on the details of his appearance from the novel and set about the assembly.
First, I assembled the torso using the front piece representing the power armor. I also attached the legs and the feet. At this point I used a small hand drill to drill a hole in one of the feet so I could temporarily pin it to the circular base provided with the model. I haven't decided yet on its final position on the base but it doesn't matter. This is just to hold it upright as paint, glue or green stuff dries.
Next, the tabard. Now usually a tabard is something that also goes over the chest and back but the description in the novel implies that it only hangs from his waist, not any farther up:
"A pale tabard decorated with a blazing sun motif hung at his belt,"
- A Thousand Sons pg. 49
This makes sense, since his armor is described as having large horns coming up from the chest and shoulders, and that would interfere with a full tabard.
The kit comes with the front part of a tabard but I decided I wanted it to be in the front and the back. (A Primarch isn't going to run around the field of battle with a bare behind!) That means green stuff.
Creating the Tabard
Now, before going any further, I should point out that I am not, by any stretch of the imagination, an expert with green stuff, clay, putty, or anything else. I've worked with green stuff before but not really at this scale, so it's definitely a learning experience.
First, I cut off about a quarter of the strip of green stuff and kneaded it until it was fully mixed. At this point the green stuff became very sticky and hard to shape
or handle without it sticking tight to whatever it touched. To combat this, I dipped my fingers in water and rubbed some water over the green stuff after I'd shaped it into a roughly rectangular flat sheet. The length was about the distance from the model's belt to its ankles. With the green stuff slightly wet I was able to lay it flat and trim the edges to make it straighter on the sides and bottom. Bending the sheet the long way created a cloth-like ruffle effect and I carefully pressed the top of the sheet against the model's belt, using the two spikes in the back as a guide to center it. Then, I took some of the green stuff I'd trimmed away and rolled it into a small snake and pressed it to the top of the tabard to simulate the belt, and flattened it with a clay sculpting knife. After smoothing all the edges and cracks and adjusting the way it hangs down, the back part of the tabard was done.
Next I decided to fill in the joints between the plastic parts with putty.
Yes, I should have done this before adding the tabard but live and learn. I didn't want to use the green stuff for that so I used some generic filler putty. The fit is reasonably good between the chest and back pieces, but the design is a bit awkward because the chest piece is molded to look like the chestplate for power armor, yet the back piece is meant to go with both versions of the demon (40k or Fantasy) and it's sculpted to look like bare flesh. That essentially leaves us with the problem of a chest piece just sort of sitting on the front of the demon's body but matching up to nothing in back. Now, I get that in some way the demon and its armor sort of merge and that the line between the two is blurred. I don't like that much, but the alternative is to try and mold the back plate for the armor using green stuff and leave the holes open for wings.
Magnus' Weapon
Magnus is described as wielding a kopesh sword that could extend the handle to become a polearm.
"Sheathed at his side his weapons, a curved sword with an obsidian haft and golden blade,"
- A Thousand Sons pg. 49
"Magnus nodded and lifted his golden khopesh from his belt. A flick of his thumb, and the haft extended with a smooth hiss, transforming the sickle-sword into a long-bladed polearm."
- A Thousand Sons pg. 55
This was an interesting challenge
First, I obtained a piece of .08" thickness sheet styrene and drew the basic shape of the kopesh on it in pencil. My final product wasn't quite the same but this gave me a good basis for cutting the plastic as well as a way to verify the size and scale of it. I used a hobby knife to score a rectangular shape and snapped the block free from the sheet.
To cut the actual shape of the sword I used a jewler's hacksaw. This was a pain. The blade wasn't meant to cut along curves in plastic of that thickness so I wound up cutting it rough and then usingsandpaper to shape it down to the way I wanted it. It's worth noting here that I actually did this twice. The first time I cut a more or less authentic shape kopesh sword and it looked okay, but I later saw an artist's
rendition of Magnus that had a blade that looked cooler, and much more like the polearm shape from a Tomb Kings chariot box. I decided to re-cut the blade using this new shape instead.
The cut was pretty rough but the sheet plastic sands easily and I contoured the blade and sanded an edge in to it with no trouble. Two holes were drilled for the pins and test fitted.
To make the weapon a bit more detailed I created a spike from green stuff to come up from the middle, and I took an accessory bit from the OLD Space Marine box (Rogue Trader, anyone?) and glued it on. The whole assembly was then glued together and given a coat of grey primer.
Magnus' Armor
The most unique aspect of Magnus' armor is the ebon horns that come out from the shoulders and the chest.
"a broad-shouldered giant in exquisite battle-plate of gold, bronze and leather."
"Great ebony horns curled up from his breastplate, matching the two that sprang from his shoulders."
- A Thousand Sons pg. 49
"the plates of his armour beaten gold and hard-baked leather, his mail a fine mesh of blackened adamant."
- A Thousand Sons pg. 54
Some artists have painted Magnus with these overwhelmingly huge black horns that pop out and just seem to get in the way rather than improve the look or make him seem more dangerous. I wanted to do the horns, but in a way that made sense.
Luckily, the answer was right there in the kit. The Demon Prince kit comes with three heads, each of which has two horns on it. As it happens, two of those heads have the perfect horns for the purpose of Magnus' armor. I just cut them off, sanded them flat at the place where they'd connect, and glued them on. The straighter horns went onto the shoulder pads (with a little modification of the pads to provide a flat place to glue the horns on) and the curved ones went to the sides of the chest. They're as described but out of the way.
The Head
For Magnus' head I chose the one that seemed to have the remnant of a Space Marine helmet on it. I'd already cut the horns off for the chest armor horns, and all that remained was to turn this demon into a cyclops. Sources conflict over what the missing eye looks like. Some sources describe a scar, some don't. Some sources (including that original GW model) have Magnus with one single, huge eye at the center of his face and others describe him as having an eye in the usual place, just missing the other. I'm going with the description in the same novel for consistency.
"A golden eye, flecked with iridescent colours without name, blinked and Lemuel saw that the warrior looked out at the word through this eye alone. Where his other eye should have been was smooth and unblemished, as if no eye had ever sat there."
- A Thousand Sons pg. 50
There didn't seem to be an absolute, definitive source for which eye was the one that was missing, so I chose to make it the left. My reason: I'm right-handed. A little green stuff and a quick sanding completed that task.
Next, I wanted to have the red plume coming up out of the helmet as described.
"He wore a golden helmet, plumed with the mane of scarlet hair,"
- A Thousand Sons pg. 50
"The magesterial scarlet plume of his helmet spilled around the curling horns of his armour,"
- A Thousand Sons pg. 54
For the plume I used the tail from an old style Bretonnian warhorse. It was pinned in place.
The Base
I wanted the base to be interesting, not just the flat disc with some basing flock. I took the same .08" plastic sheet material and cut out a disc to the same diameter as the top of the base. I then cut it into three sections and spaced them slightly apart, like the ground cracking. I also added some material underneath two of them to make them uneven. Some white modeling putty filled in the gaps.
Wings:
- A Thousand Sons pg. 555
I used the wings that came with the kit. This left no room for the power armor backpack pieces, but that was ok since Magnus' back isn't represented with armor anyway. The wings are more important.
The Book of Magnus
"A heavy book, bound in thick red hide, was strung about his armour on golden chains... A golden hasp was secured with a lock fashioned from lead."
- A Thousand Sons pg. 49
For the book itself, I decided to use the open book bit from a Dark Angels Land Speeder.
(To be continued)