The Chosen Axes... of Hashut!

I got the Chosen Axes Shadespire warband for my birthday.  I've viewed Shadespire warbands as an opportunity to do some wacky conversions on a small scale such that they do not have to be followed up with a full army's worth of the same.  So far, it's been very rewarding and fun with my Bretonnian themed take on Steelheart's Champions, and now a Chaos Dwarf version of the Chosen Axes.

At first, I was planning on giving them all big hats.  I do so love my big Chaos Dwarf hats!  But after looking over them and pondering what they'd look like, I decided to go with a mixed approach with Fyrd-Hashut wearing a big hat, and his underlings wearing more modern Forge World style helms.

The goals of this conversion project were to replace all of the very identifiable Fyreslayer weapons, replace all of the very identifiable Fyreslayer hats, and make sure they had a consistent aesthetic.  To these ends I used chaos weapon heads, homemade helmets, and gave each model horns from the old dwarf plastic kit on their helmets. 

The leader's big hat started off with a copper rod drilled into the top of his head with a skeleton shield glued on top of it.  I then filled out the rest with green-stuff.  His axe comes from the Daemon Prince kit.

When deciding how to convert these guys, I also ended up looking over the cards to figure out how best to portray them.  I swapped Vol Orrukbane's axe out for a flail to retain a 2-handed weapon, but have it be a little less dwarfy (I've always felt Chaos Dwarfs to be a little more interested in flails, morningstars, and other non-axe weapons than Order Dwarfs).  I swapped Mad Maegrim's axes out for matching Marauder Horseman axes (throwing axes 😉).  Because both of them seemed like the pseudo-scrubs of the warband, they ended up with matching helmets sculpted from green-stuff. 

   

Tefk (the cursebearer) on the other hand has 2 non-matching weapons that later become a single attack when he flips.   He's really the only one who could be confused with someone else (Mad Maegrim), and he's got a bit of extra them going on in that he was originally the Flamebearer, although I prefer him to be the Cursebearer.  Tefk ended up with a pretty cool skull mask, a modern "short" big hat, and a head spike.  He makes use of a lot of Blight King bitz as his head spike and both of his weapons come from that set.  I wanted him to have a very distinct somewhat rustier look than the others, but without sacrificing the clean metallic look of the Chaos Dwarves, who I assume generally keep their weapons and armour in excellent condition.

Overall, I'm very happy with how they turned out.  I've been enjoying playing them in Shadespire and they haven't been defeated yet (although Fyrd-Hashut has been slain in nearly every game).  At some point I'm going to play a game with them using a Khorne deck just for Chaos Dwarfy lulz.

Next up (in no particular time-frame as I haven't even started yet) are Garrek's Reavers.  I'm thinking about either turning them into Khorngors, or trying to Dark Age of Sigmar them.