Blood Warriors!

I'm currently assembling the core of my Khorne warband, the Blood Warriors! I have been proxying Chaos Warriors and the starter set mono-pose Blood Warriors up until now. Though I could've saved a bunch of cash ebaying more of the starter set Blood Warriors, they only come in the gore fist variety. They do have more or less the same amount of detail, and I'd would say they are a smidge more "natural" in their poses since they were modeled intentionally in their poses, I still decided to get the actual kits. Besides the kits have the command options too and cool helms. I do like "Mouthy" and "Beardo" a lot from the mono-pose group:

Beardo!

Mouthy!

The kit's bits and pieces are highly detailed, and kit allows for a lot of mix and matching of arms, weapons, torsos and helms. However, this meant that each model had many pieces (about 9 per model) which made it take longer to clean up than the starter set mono-pose Blood Warriors. 

There are a few extra bits (a few heads, an extra front torso). Due to the details and intricacies of the the helm/weapon designs, I found these to be the tedious bits to clean the mould lines off. Trying to scrap little areas between rivets, spikes, and fitting my hobby knife into awkward nooks and openings were a test of patience! Sometimes the plastic dust/shavings would obscure a small rivet and i'd accidentally scrap a portion off!! grrr...

Damn nooks and crannies!

On the other hand, the lower bodies, calves, and torsos were relatively a cinch; mostly just scrapping off the sprue contact point "nubs".

In the pic below you can see that I started by cleaning and gluing the sub-assemblies:

- Torso front and back

- Arms with pauldrons

- Lower body with calf

Lotta pieces

I also noticed that the the fitment of the half pauldron bits left some gaps. I'm adding an extra dab of glue for those small gaps as a filler.

Rear view of pauldron gap

Front view of the pauldron gap

There are options to create 2 Blood Warrior versions: 2 axes, or axe and gorefist. The gorefists look really cool and unique, but I opted to go with the 2 axe option since that is what I typically run them as when gaming. However, the arms with shoulder armor (aka pauldron) are 2 pieces (the arm and weapon, and the other half of the pauldron). The kit only provides enough of these half-pauldron bits to build one of the options. This means the left over bits (in my case the gorefist arms) are looking kinda funny missing half the pauldron; though I'm sure one can find the pauldron bits if you search online).

Poor left over Gorefists!

I also like the full "Bunny-Ears" Khorne helms over the 2 bare-heads with topknots option as I felt they looked more menacing! Though for variety, I may find some alternate head for at least 1-2 of the models. I also like how the heads are the classic "ball and socket" joint; that means I have the option to swap in other heads from other kits (i.e. Bloodcrushers, Marauder Horsemen, etc.)

Bunny Ears!

Meh, why does GW keep making heads with topknots?

More to come!