Rainbow Warriors Project: Chaplain

“Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.”

When a group of hobbyists decided to build a Space Marine army to promote diversity and inclusiveness in the miniature wargaming community, we wanted to contribute in some way. When it was decided that the army would be a Rainbow Warriors army (circa 1987, Rogue Trader), we decided that we should build a character model for the force. Never being very thrilled with Games Workshop’s newer chaplain models, we decided to try to convert one ourselves using one from the Betrayal at Calth box as a base.

Although the Chaplain conversion started with a character model from the Betrayal at Calth box, I quickly realized the model’s proportions were so awkward, that I needed to do significant conversion work. This included lengthening his torso and completely replacing his legs with Primaris ones, as they fit better with the longer torso.

A comparison between the tiny/short legs from the Betrayal at Calth (left) and the more appropriately size Primaris legs (right). 

Over the years, I have never really been happy with GW’s space marine skull helmets, as they tend to look cartoonish. Instead, I wanted to create one that mirrored Wayne England’s menacing skulls, and ended up splicing together a space marine helmet and the helm of the plastic Eversor assassin. 

To give the model a little more bulk to better fit alongside his legs, I added an extra armor plate to his wrists, taken from some MkIII Iron armor arms.

- Adam Wier