Finished - 3 Obliterators

I finished three Obliterators and you can too! They turned out pretty well. I was working from some busted and incomplete old minis that I got in a trade so reconstructing the arms was difficult. there are a few plastic bits that had to be thrown in to fill all the little slots. 

Most noticeable is the swap of bare heads for Terminator heads. One of the minis that I got was missing a head and had an old metal CSM Terminator head in place. I could have made a stink about this but I actually liked the effect. 

Dee, Dum and BLERG!

I disliked the old heads. I can see what they were trying to achieve with the style of the old heads. They wanted small heads to act to emphasize the largeness of the mini. The melted aspect was to represent the melding caused by the Obliterator Virus of man into machine. I get all that but they are ugly and hard to paint. I am not a fan of the meaty parts of the model and would really rather a mechanical looking tumor than fleshy spiderwebs. 

To further differentiate Oblits from Terminators, I panted their heads gold rather than silver. Other than that, the Oblits are painted in my traditional Iron Warrior colors of silver armor, gold trim and black shoulder pads. I tried to paint the cables in the yellow/black caution stripe but missed a few. 

In terms of upgrades, Oblits can take Marks of Chaos but I did not see the need to throw a magnet in these minis to represent that. If I get hard up, I'll use an IW standard bearer with a mark on him as a stand in. In terms of marks, the only really useful ones are ones that make Oblits harder to kill. Nurgle gives them the old T 5 back and Tzeentch ups their measly 5+ invul save to a nice 4+. It depends on who you are facing and how many AP 1 and 2 weapons they bring as to weather that 4+ invul save is worth it. There is no reason to give marks of Khorne or Slaanesh to an Oblit other than for fluff reasons.

The only other upgrade they can take is Veterans of the Long War which gives them Hatred SM and +1 Ld. Since CSM have taken a hit in their Leadership characteristic, this may be worth it. I wish that Hatred had effects in shooting as if your Oblits are in close combat, you are doing it wrong.