Chaos Mutilators Land On The Hobby Desk

This Tuesday I celebrated my 24th birthday; Since my mom is not a fan of ordering things online and most things I tend to wish for are acquired online I got a handful of money to treat myself. And treat myself I did, after the traditional birthday family dinner(we had vietnamese) I hopped on a second hand tabletop store online and filled my cart with things. What things you may ask? Oh there was a choice selection of Age Of Sigmar books from first edition and the miniatures featured in today's post: The Chaos Marine Mutilators!

I always had half an eye on these guys, I remember they were released alongside the Heldrake, Forgefiend and the first plastic Warptalons back in 2013; Fast forward to 2017 when I returned to the hobby and I saw them again, this time on the local GW's 'going out of store soon' shelf next to some resin plague marines(still so mad I did not pick them up). I always wanted them but got sidetracked by other kits, now with the first plastic Mutilators on the horizon I find myself returning to these guys. Do not get me wrong, I am not one to hate on when GW overhauls designs with new minis, but the new Mutilators are just such a downgrade in my opinion.

Unlike the new obliterators, they just look so intentionally engineered, the older designs looked so messed up and warped, flesh stretching over their weapons, nothing looked like it should belong. Anyways, now that I have vented my frustration with the new models you might understand why I wanted some of the old ones and finally pushed myself to buy them. They arrived surprisingly fast only a day later and here they were:

I bought them used for about as much as they cost back in the day and they were in pretty good shape, the store even had the sense to stick a package puff on each claw and horn! I spent about an hour disassembling and cleaning them, removing the little triangles of hell, which were surprisingly rare. I know these guys were never released in metal, but their bodies were, so to see metal models adapted to Finecast not suffer from the horrendously bad casting and triangles of doom was quite the joy. 

Since my Chaos Marines are part of my Ordos & Heretics collection I had to make some Cobblestone bases for these guys to sit on, as always its an hour long process with lots of swearing and mismeasuring the amount of Miliput I need; As you can see I ended up with enough Miliput for two 32mm and two 25mm bases, so I guess I can skip this step for the next four minis I do for this collection.

After the bases were prepped and drying I began the long task of pinning the mutilators, the heads had a fixed position, so I added a pin to reinforce the bond, I also had to clean under their chins for them to fit flush into their terminator torsos. The arms took the longest time as I hummed and hawed over the position, I originally intended to follow the poses on the studio models, since that seemed like the easiest way to get decent looking poses out of these guys; Not to say that they were great poses as the arms still conflicted with their legs and knees. I ended up settling for some more dynamic poses working arm by arm.

The first guy was done by the book so to speak, but with slightly wider stance as I felt he deserved to be a bit more open, the left arm on this guy came in two pieces(shoulderpad and arm) which allowed for a slight posability, I pinned the arm and shoulder to each other first to have a bit of free range motion to see what fits. The other arm was bog standard as seen in the studio photos. Truth be told this is the least interesting model out of the unit since he has the least interesting arms and there are two copies of his body and head in the unit.

The next guy was the most fun to pose, he has a mid walk body which already makes him more dynamic than the others too. I followed the studio miniatures again roughly for pose references, but I decided to modify his right arm, it is the same one as seen on the first guy, but I wanted this guy to have a more sweeping motion like he is prowling for prey, his arm outstretched. I ended up slightly overextending the arm, sculpting a bit to transition the overhang into the shoulder pad. I think this guy turned out great in terms of pose, but after spray priming I realised he would have actually profited from a bit of paint stripping, since his face got a more concentrated blast of spray primer, but oh well, nothing a bit of detail painting cannot fix, right?

The last guy took the longest for me to figure out to be honest, given how very static his arms looked I figured I could add some dynamism by giving him a mid swing pose. The next fifteen minutes were spent figuring out how to do that with the limited posability; The first decision was to use some hot water and curl his fingers to make him look more agitated and less relaxed. I know hot water or air is great for dealing with warped resin, but I implore you to try and slightly adjust poses and give minis a whole new look in some cases. 

Anyways back to the Mutilator, with the first arm settled I was unsure what to do with the other arm; I originally thought I could give him a Hulk-like pose with both arms lifted up to strike. In the end I settled for a counter balancing pose. I think this worked in favor of the whole pose as it gives the pose the slight sidewards angle it needs to sell the striking pose.

Anyways that is all three Mutilators refurbished and assembled, sadly I noticed I was missing two spike bitz and decided to miliput over the gaps. A quick two tone zentihal and they are ready for some paint!

I am really looking forward to painting these guys; Thank you for taking the time and reading up on my progress, have a great night, day whichever applies!