Death Guard possessed Helbrute / Dreadnaught - Work in progress

A while back I got a £5 eBay voucher on Facebook, so I immediately put it to use and picked up an extra Helbrute for myself. Why not? It was only £2 in the end, plus I thought it might be quite good fun to mess about with and try and convert.

Obviously, with my limited skill set, any conversion work is not going to be ridiculously extensive, but here are some shots of what I've managed so far...

This is the top of the close combat arm. To which I have
decided to add an attempt at the mark of Nurgle using
the heads of some poor unfortunates. 

I was attempting to make them appear to be pushing their
 way out from below the surface of the armour plate.

I've given it this head from the new Plague Bearers kit.
I really like the bizarre rotten proboscis. It looks quite
unpleasant.

This was midway through what I've done so far...

I then started to add a couple of trimmed down trophy racks from the Chaos
Terminators kit. I didn't add them to my terminators as I thought they looked
a bit crap on a terminator size model. Particularly as I'd used the Death Guard
upgrade set that Forge World make. Including the trophy racks would have
made them a bit too busy. As well as crap. 

T'other side.

This is some sort of plague censer from the Skaven Plague Furnace.

Why wouldn't it be vomited forth from a mouth in the
palm of a power claw? That's normal, right? 

Word Bearers Helbrute or Dreadnought

I have to confess, I struggled somewhat with this one.

I glued it together ages ago, and I will readily admit that I wish somebody had suggested binding some bits of  this thing together with rubber bands (or elagi bands if your are that way inclined - the North...) while the glue dried to stop them coming a bit apart.  Luckily though, you can't really tell too much between the crap photography and the amateurish paint job.

One of the pleasing things about this model is that (having put one together and handled it hour after hour while painting it), I think it offers tons of scope for interesting conversions, both major and minor.  Not that I bothered on this one, though.  I do have a second one that I picked up for absolute peanuts (thanks to a £5 off Ebay voucher) which I am intending on doing some conversion work on at some point. When it's done, it'll be painted up in Death Guard colours, though.  Once I've given myself time to block the annoyingness of this one from my mind, at any rate.

Anyway, back to the model.  It took ages to paint, and I'm not really mega happy with how it turned out, to be honest. But I don't think it looks absolute toss either.  I did realise something about myself while I was working on it. And, that ladies and gentlemen, is that I don't seem to enjoy working on larger models. Somehow, I managed to forget how much working on that Death Guard predator ages ago totally pissed me off.  In the grand scale of life, this one was realistically less annoying than the predator, though.

One thing I do know, though is that next time around I may well look at doing the majority of the base coating before it gets glued together... although that may not be so great if I'm going to use rubber bands on it while the glue sets...