Converting Blood Pact - Brother Loki

Introduction

I’ve always had a mixed relationship with the forces of chaos in 40k. On the one hand, the endless struggle against chaos is what gives the Imperium much of its identity in the background, while in the game itself, the armies of the arch enemy has historically meant Chaos Space Marines – which for me are not sufficiently different from loyalist marines. I much prefer to think about the vast armies of cultists and traitors, which are described in the fluff but rarely encountered on the battlefield.

The Blood Pact is a warrior-cult featured in the Gaunt’s Ghosts series by Dan Abnett. Unlike many cultists, the Pact fights as a disciplined army, and this is what appeals to me about them. They are described in detail in UK White Dwarf 293. For some time now I’ve been pondering ideas for Blood Pact figures, and the release of the new edition of 40k with the excellent Kill Team and Combat Patrol variants has prompted me to develop a small force.

Eventually, a series of related articles will cover the conversion process. In this Article I will cover the basic Blood Pact troopers, along with the Death Brigades, the cult’s elite assault troops. In the future I hope to do articles detailing a leader for my force, and a Stalk-Tank to provide support.

Blood Pact Infantry

Blood Pact soldiers all wear hideous, bestial masks known as grotesques, but otherwise resemble filthy, blood-soaked Imperial guardsmen. I decided to base my Blood Pact infantry troops on the plastic Cadian guard models due to their versatility, and ease of conversion. The basic troops would simply be Cadians with different heads, and all their imperial insignia removed. In game terms these guys would be traitors, and therefore would have the ability to infiltrate – so I wanted to give them all backpacks and lots of kit to represent the self sufficiency required to operate behind enemy lines. Unlike Imperial troops with the massive resources of the Departmento Munitorum behind them, the Blood pact would expect to operate for long periods without resupply. This also fits with their tactical doctrine of carefully laid ambushes.

I looked around for a suitable head to use. The classic chaos Raptor sergeant head used in the White Dwarf article was one option, but I didn’t want to use the same head for all my models, and I wanted to include helmets on at least some of the figures. I looked around for alternatives and hit upon the Brettonian men-at arms. The plastic boxed set comes with several heads in basin helmets. I thought these would be effective to give the Cadians a slightly lower-tech appearance. I also thought the bodies might come in useful for other conversions later. The Empire free companies set also includes some models with basin style helmets. Now all I needed to do was find a way of giving them masks…

If possible I wanted to avoid having to sculpt the masks, as my green-stuff skills are pretty non-existent. I do have a fairly extensive and varied bitz box however – the result of nearly 20 years of collecting random figures that never made it into armies. This meant that I had plastic heads from a wide variety of ranges – going back as far as the Warhammer Regiments boxed set (60 figures for £10!). I decided to make use of these as the source of my masks. I used goblin, skaven and a few newer beastman heads, plus a couple of other random bits and pieces. If you have a big enough group of players it should be possible to trade for this kind of thing, as most of the plastic boxed sets come with extra heads

Because I just wanted the masks to cover the lower face, I only needed to use the snouts of the various beasties. The first thing to do was to make a diagonal cut from just above the nose sloping backwards to just under the chin. Then a corresponding cut was made on the human head, shaving off the lower part of the face.

The two were then glued together. Some trimming was required to make some of the masks fit better. Paint would do the rest.

Blood pact can have quite a variety of equipment, and I wanted to do so, in order to emphasise their scavenging nature. As well as lasguns and a flamer from the Cadian sprues, I plan to use Necromunda weapons such as autoguns and shotguns, as well as close combat weapons from a variety of different Warhammer ranges.

Death Brigades – The Blood Pact Elite

Another possibility, and on which I have seen done to quite good effect elsewhere on the Web, was to base the models on the new plastic chaos warriors. However, I felt that this would possibly make them look too medieval in comparison to the standard Pact infantry made from Cadians. When reading the Gaunt’s Ghosts novels I had conjured up an image of the Blood Pact as being vaguely reminiscent of World War One era troops, covered in thick layers of blood soaked uniforms and greatcoats.

In the end, I returned to the Brettonians to form the basis of my troops. Their long surcoats could double for studded leather or brigandine assault armour, over the top of their normal uniforms. Cadian arms would be used to tie them in to the rest of the force. Like many of the newer GW kits, the Brettonians have their upper arms moulded to the body. These were cut off vertically so that the Cadian arms could be attached.

This left flattened areas down the sides of the torsos, but these would mostly be hidden by the arms anyway. With the addition of backpacks, ammo pouches and accessories, as well as 40K weapons, the troops would look quite effective as modern – if rather low tech – infantry.

One weapon I definitely wanted to use was the demolition charge, which very few units have access to. I wanted something a bit more characterful than just a satchel however, so I used lengths of brass rod to make sticks of dynamite to adorn the body of my ‘mad bomber’.

Painting

I wanted the models to have a dirty look to them. They received a black undercoat, and the uniforms were base-coated red. This was done in a fairly careless manner, with areas of black showing through. The armour, masks, weapons and other metalwork were painted thinly with bolt-gun metal, and various browns were used for the boots, belts, packs and other leatherwork. The whole models were then given very patchy, watered down washes of brown and black ink. This unified the models and gave them an overall feeling of griminess, as well as making the uniforms closer to the colour of dried blood.

For the skin, I wanted a pale, sickly look and decided to avoid conventional flesh tones. We wouldn’t see much anyway – just the hands and bits of face visible behind the masks. I went for a basecoat of a mixture of shadow grey and snot green. This was then highlighted up with successively lighter shades by adding white to the mix, until a very pale highlight was achieved. This pale, cold colour gives a contrast to the warm, dark reds and browns of the rest of the models.

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