Conversion Corner: Chaos Cultist

I will never die a silent death.

It has been quite some time since our last Conversion Corner post, which we started years ago to document relatively quick conversions, often focused on making better looking weapons. We have always liked to look at older metal models as a source for conversions, and when going through some models, I found I had a few of Paul Muller’s chaos cultists from the mid to late 90’s. Their conical headdresses and muscular form is quite iconic, but possibly largely forgotten so many years later (although I did see last year some were used for a lovely warband on Magpie and Old Lead). I decided one would be a great subject for a Conversion Corner!

Chaos Cultist sculpted by Paul Muller.

The majority of my efforts were focused on modifying the cultist’s autopistol. Surprisingly the original pistol looked pretty good and was sized better than most GW weapons. The biggest change was replacing the comically oversized barrel on the weapon with a smaller one made from brass tubing. I also added front and rear sights to the weapon and sculpted a larger trigger guard.

I did some minor sculpting work to fill in seams and smooth out mold lines on the sculpt that were difficult to remove with trimming and sanding alone.

In the future I could see making a mold of the model to produce some resin casts. Those casts would make it easier to make additional modifications of the pistol. It is curiously lacking a charging handle and does not have a clear ejection port. I would also consider resculpting the cultist’s trigger finger and have it off the trigger. For this initial conversion I wanted to minimize the changes made to the original sculpt to show how small modifications can have big effects on the overall look and feel of a model.

- Adam Wier