There is something about Knights that seems to attract the more ambitious hobbyists – these giant death-dealers are just perfect canvases for in-depth painting and conversion efforts. Frank – from the Warhammer Community social team – has been collecting Imperial Knights for as long as they’ve been available, and twisting them into the warped armours of House Makabius. He’s now given us an exclusive look at his terrifying force.
Frank: When the first plastic Imperial Knight kit was released back in the day I knew right away that I wanted to start an army. As a faithful follower of the Dark Gods however, with my main focus on Nurgle, I wanted a force that had betrayed their vows and become a traitor house. I loved the paint scheme of House Makabius, and came up with my own version that is a little more on the dark and grimy side.
My initial idea was to get an army with minimal conversions going to show how these titanic engines were corrupted bit by bit, and add more corrupted versions later, but I still wanted to add some customisations to most of them.
This Knight armour is called Sword of Purity, a name that once stood for knightly chivalry and honour in battle. Now this name is a mockery of that heritage, and it mows down its enemies with a modified dual-barreled despoiler gatling cannon converted using parts from the Forgefiend kit.
House Makabius served under the Warmaster Horus, and so the Eye of Horus is still proudly displayed on all of their Knights. They later joined Mortarion’s dreadfleet which ties in nicely with another 40k chaos army I collect, the Death Guard. They share the same base style and look great as allies on the battlefield. My Knight Tempus Fugit is adorned with Death Guard Legion livery and armed with two warpstrike claws to tear apart its enemies.
The warpstrike claw of the Chaos Knight kit was used for the right arm and a loyalist thunderstrike gauntlet upgraded with some of the spiky finger joints from the Chaos Knight kit was used for the left claw.
The Chaos Knight that is furthest along the path of corruption carries a Noctilith Crown into battle, powered by its reactor core. Its energy is distributed by cables that twitch and move as if alive with energies of the warp. It is named Magnum Opus and is piloted by an unknown scion sealed into its hull.
I use it as a Knight Abominant in games and I see it as the centrepiece of my collection…. at least until it is replaced by something even more corrupt.
Over the years I have built and painted 23 Wardogs. Most of them are grouped in packs of three and share some identification marks like stripes in lighter colours, and decals on their left shoulder plates.
After adding the lighter pattern with Karak Stone on one these three wardogs I noticed that it looked like a squid head and I had to go back and convert their heads up with some tentacles from the Talos Pain Engine and Forgefiend kit – and thus battle group Calmar was born!
My only dreadblade Metraxas sports two Basilisk earthshaker cannons on its back and glows with demonic energies from within. I painted this terror in a marathon 14-hour painting session on a Sunday, probably possessed by some warp entity, and the silver of its trim is a nice contrast to all the gold in my army.
Receiving the call for this article gave me the motivation to finally finish the weathering on my Acastus Knight Porphyrion Baroness. This kit was absolutely amazing to build and paint but I didn’t convert it much apart from the scroll and the symbol above its head. I plan to add an Acastus Knight Asterius in the future that will be heavily converted.
I’ve been working on this army for more than seven years now and have slowly amassed over 10,000 points of painted Chaos Knights. It is a ton of fun to add more corrupted steeds to the army and I’m already working on a Cerastus Knight Lancer, with four more Abhorrent-class Knights in various stages.
I’m also very excited to pre-order a Cerastus Knight Castigator and Acheron tomorrow and see what wicked conversion I can come up with!
