Creating your own Alpharius (sire of the alpha legion)

 Greetings

so one of the major watershed moments for any alpha legion player in the 31'st millenium is when you get to the point of wanting an Alpharius model. This is right up there with chosing your legion, and figuring out how you want to do your metallic scheme. Now for most Alpha legion players it tends to go like this (i assume)

I) Shit, what legion do i get into
II) f'ck how do i paint my alpha legion 
III) g'dammit, why hasn't forgeworld released my g'damn primarch, i'll go to their homepage and glare contemptuously at their other sculpts....Shit, i'll get model X and probably do a new legion project. 

 Now, Alpharius has had rules as far back as book III extermination, released around three years ago. And it is a running joke that A) Alpharius is EVERY model released and B) he is the last primarch and will be released last. As is proper, scum. (probably hail guilliman or sumthing). Now, as far as i know, Alpharius is the only "old" primarch (excluding book 6 &7 which are fairly new) that does not have a model. We know that Dorn is being worked on due to the sculpt preview done last open day. But for alpharius we have yet to see anything conclusive. There have been "discussions" and "rumours" that he will be released last, and there are open day confirmations that he will be done last. But that is about as much as we know.

Now, there are a couple of options for direct purhcases. The first one you will see whenever a thread pops up is the "hydra knight" from kabuki miniatures. Now with this model you'll have a properly sized and easily reconizable Primarch proxy from day one. Which is nab if you feel your proxy and building skills are a bit on the lax side. You have all the "snake" iconography and if you feel that it's a bit too much ,you can trim it down easily enough. you do however need to do something about the "sword" as Alpharius has a Spear, but that is easily enough done.

The next prime contender in my mind is from Scibor minitatures

This one is a good fit in my opinion, it's called a "spartan veteran"

He already has a freaky looking spear weapon, he has recognizable "sculpted" armor and a cool looking pose. The shield, while not belonging to alpharius, has a "alpha" mark on it, so it can easily be removed and salvaged for future needs. The helmet slipping off is, in my mind, a good way of showing alpharius dramatically unveiling himself

now, if you're good with a knife, and have the stomach for it. The idea will inevitably arise that you can do your own model.

So the question is, what base do we use for the body?

The first easy option is to use the stormcast eternal, they are slightly bigger than marines, they have readily modified "base" structures in regards to torso and legs, and can be easily altered to make it look like power armor

The second one that is "easy" is to use one of the recently released primaris models,

I've used an enlarged image, to get a good point of reference. You will, as opposed to the stormcast, need to remove stuff rather than add here. The Aquila, the excessive skulls, oath of moments and so forth. To fit into a 30k environment you just need to trim it a bit.

The last one is also fairly easy to modify, The praetor "limited" edition model released in 2016. You already have a spear analogue and if you use an alpha legion upgrade sprue head and add a tabard (either from spellcrow or Druchii raiders) you can get far with some easy transfer work in my opinion.

Other models of honorary mentions is, ironically, the model everyone thought WAS alpharius when the picture dropped. I am of course, talking about Armilius dynat. You get a good base model, you can adapt it readily, and it has a cloak, and nuncio vox needed. The arm has a hammer as opposed to a spear, but that arm is readily removed

Now, for me, i chose to use the old chapter master model for the minotaurs.

Asterion moloc 

the model has a gnarly looking spear, and a really dynamic pose, now, he has a shield that you can also use for other shit in the future as well.

All you need to do thereafter is to remove the sculpted minotaur marks on the left leg, the right arm, the spear and the left shoulder.

You are then left with a pretty utilitarian model

i then added a terminator GK hand, and took a plasma blaster from the BoP kit. And started painting. The one thing to keep in mind is of course to keep in theme with the rest of your army, but "upscale" it, this is the leader of your legion, and even Alpharius is said to have armor that "left no doubt as to whom had come to claim them" So i hit him with some black primer, and then some vallejo acryllics.


I then shot the cloak with some silver in a 45 degree angle in the raised areas( it billows so it's easy to see where it should be) and used mortarion green to get the impression of a scale cloak. Now, i kind of kick myself that i have NOT ordered the "scale" stencils from fallout hobby because then i could have just done silver on the stencil, and THEN clear green, which i think could have been a cool effect.


I then hit the spear with some silver from half up, and then did a mix of mortarion green, medium and some highlight of tamiya green.

And of course i did the "standard" way of doing alpharius himself . reasulting in this

After that it was mostly about raising up the details on this beautifull sculpt (beautifull lines of filigree on legs and arms) and using silver to pic out details, and shading my red to give the "slits" in the helmet a dark slightly subdued menacing glow.

Now, as there are bascially nothing to identify him as alpharius i decided to do a lot of decal work.

resulting in this

i used a larger transfer on the cloak. 

 Now for the cloak i used a big transfer, and microsol and microset made it SUPER easy to set. As for which decal to use, i was initially tempted to use the "chained A" which is awesome, but i wanted to avoid the whole "A FOR ALPHARIUS BY YOUR TREACHER COMBINED CAPTAIN SNAKEEEEE" since it would be a bit too.....cartoonish. So i went with an easily recognizable hydra

three decals on the front

 We have a smaller alpha with an omega on the cloak pin, a hydra in the greave, and an unbroken chain on the back greave. thank god for the variation of the decal sheet.

DRAMATIC REVEAL

And there we are. Im fairly happy with this, even though it took some time to get finished.

The one thing i sort of miss is an inbuilt "vox" system as the armor is said to have an advanced com. ssytem integrated, but i sort of assume that the artificer wrought technical miracle can integrate that INTO the suit itself.

So that is my alpharius, anyone else want to show theirs?