The second edition Codex: Chaos introduced us to the Word Bearers with a bright red color scheme and some truly unique accents, such as black armor with molten effects.
For this project we’re rescuing an old 2nd edition plastic Chaos Space Marine. These models are
awful by the way – they’re stunty, have bad details, and only have two poses. Also, they were the only plastic chaos marines you could buy from like, 1995 until the Plastic Berserkers came out in 1998 and everyone started converting those for use as regular CSMs. The greenstuff bands on the model are 14 year-old Rob’s attempts to make the model stand out a bit. They’re not great.
I started by priming the model black, then painted the armor, save a single pauldron and one of the greaves, with
Mephiston Red. Then I highlighted the armor with a 50/50 mix of Mephiston Red and
Evil Sunz Scarlet. On the greave we’re going to do something that you can see a lot of in the 2nd edition codex images for Word Bearers, which is this kind of cracking lava/coals effect. You can replicate it by drawing some lines with
Khorne Red, then highlight the intersection points with Mephiston Red and dot them with white. I use
Reaper Pure White for my white.

Next up is the trim. This gets painted
Leadbelcher along with all the other metal parts of the model, then washed in
Nuln Oil and edge highlighted with
Runefang Steel. The Skulls and horns are
Rakarth Flesh shaded with
Seraphim Sepia. The eyes are
Death Guard Green and
Ogryn Camo. The Word Bearers had blue cables in the 2nd edition ‘Eavy Metal scheme, so those are painted
Kantor Blue, shaded with
Drakenhof Nightshade, then highlighted with Kantor,
the Fang, and
Reaper Snow Shadow. The black parts get a highlight of
Corvus Black and an edge highlight of
Mechanicus Standard Grey while the Red parts get an edge highlight of
Wild Rider Red.
Credit: Robert "TheChirurgeon" Jones
Despite it being a crummy model I’m pretty happy with the overall result. it’s not too bad a paint scheme to do a full army of.