Unboxing: Stormcast Eternal Lord-Celestant

The first few Stormcast...

Having played a few games of Age of Sigmar while proxying my Dark Angels as Stormcast Eternals, I was really impressed with some of their character models, particularly the rune sword and warhammer-wielding Lord-Celestant.  Despite being geared for close combat, he wears a Sigmarite Warcloak that gives him D6 shooting attacks which have the possibility of causing Mortal wounds.  What makes him truly impressive, however is his command ability (Furious Retribution), that allows himself and any other Stormcast Eternal within 9” to add 1 to all their hit rolls in close combat.  In my first few games of Age of Sigmar, he was able to boost the killing potential of a unit of Retributors, allowing me to tear through pretty much anything my opponent could throw at them.  After having so much fun using the Lord-Celestant in game (I had been proxying an Emperor’s Champion), I decided to get the model itself.

The Lord-Celestant comes on a single sprue, with a nice set of instructions on the included slip of paper.

I quite like the Celestant’s overall design, so I did not want to convert him too much.  His bulky armor looks like a cross between the standard Liberators and the larger Paladins, with broad greaves and gauntlets, and a sweeping shoulderpad that crests his shoulder like a comet (and is fashioned to look like one in part).  His breastplate is molded into a snarling lions head, which is mirrored on his other shoulderpad.  Like all the other Stormcast, he has a facemask of smooth gold forged to look like a wrathful angel, which is framed by a halo of spiked iron.  As is customary for GW character models, he is wearing a sweeping cape.  Instead of being made of a single piece of heavy cloth, his cape is made of many individual strips of leather that each end with a small hammer.  It is very reminiscent to the cloak of Brother Laurenzo, the Blood Angels Terminator Sergeant from Space Hulk.  Finally, he wields a massive runic longsword and an equally large Warhammer.  And while both are well sculpted and designed, they suffer from GW’s tendency to make weapons overly large, distracting from the models holding them.  Because of this, the weapons were the only area I decided to convert.

The smaller weapons put the emphasis on the Celestant rather than his tools of war.

The Lord-Celestant has a lot more depth and definition when seen in person compared to some of the stock images.

By replacing his weapons, I wanted to emphasize that he had chosen a pair of well balanced weapons that he could easily wield in unison, becoming a whirlwind of cuts and savage blows in close combat.  The huge stock weapons belittle this concept, looking cumbersome, and detract from the character himself.  Looking through my bitz box, I came across one of the old Brian Nelson Chaos Knight swords.  The Chaos Knights where some of my favorite Warhammer models of all time, wearing unadorned bulky armor with neat compact weapons.  They were unfortunately discontinued for a vastly inferior plastic kit (overwrought with gaudy “Chaos” detail and overdone weapon designs), but I digress.  With a little trimming, I was able to remove most of the Chaos elements and smooth out the knicks in the blade.  I then pinned the blade to the Celestant’s fist and used green stuff to fill in any gaps, including those on the blade itself.  Being a much shorter blade now, I shortened the haft of the weapon as well. Games Workshop is notorious for making ridiculously large heads on all of their hammers (looking at you thunder hammer…).  After a lot of searching I realized the stylized hammer head on the old metal Valten model would work quite well.  The conversion was as simple as snipping the head off and pinning it to the haft of the Celestant’s hammer, and doing a little green stuff work (And don’t worry, I replaced Valten’s hammer with a smaller Empire warhammer, as not to ruin an excellent model).  With the weapons changed, I am a lot more satisfied with the Celestant.  The smaller size of them really highlights how large and imposing the Lord-Celestant is.
The rest of the model was just assembled as per the instructions.  The moldlines on the various pieces of the model where located in somewhat odd areas, making the trimming quite time consuming, but I think the effort was worth it.  The pieces went together smoothly, although there were a fair amount of small gaps and seams created that needed to be filled with green stuff.  I am still looking for a suitable base to put him on; it will probably end up being some manner of Dragon Forge base, but we will see (I only really have Teck-deck ones at the moment, ha ha).

I assembled the free Liberator that came in the one White Dwarf so that the Celestant could have a friend.

Valten with at least one reasonably sized hammer!

The Lord-Celestant was a great first Age of Sigmar model to work on.  He has warmed me up to the Stormcast Eternal design aesthetics, and generally excited me about the game as a whole.  I am not sure where I want to go from here, but looking at some of the leaks of the new Celestant-Prime, we are in for some interesting times in the world of Age of Sigmar.

-Eric Wier