Far Corfe: Widdershins's Corpse Junkies - Gangers in the Mist

Havers, Eyeball and Dobbin try to look tough whilst ignoring the aggravating songs about summer floating around in the background...

It's been a while since I posted, and while I have a lot of stuff on the boil on the hobby side of things, the fact that I've had the flu (which now seems to have turned into full-blown Sinusitis) for the past two weeks has put a drag on what I've been able to get done. But as I'm practically bursting to get something out there, I decided to cobble a post together from whatever scrag-ends that I could scrape out of my camera's memory card.

And if you're after rejects, off-cuts and the scum that just couldn't make it in the bigger-time crews that strut around the ruins of Far Corfe, then you couldn't do better than looking up Widdershins's Corpse Junkies.


I'd bought the ridiculously cheap GW box of five Chaos Cultists (and I'm still wanting to get the others that were included in one of the recent 40K boxed sets, very intently!) and intended to use them as Underhive Scum and the like. But as I got to grips with them, I started to remove some of the more obvious Chaos iconography and fiddle with other aspects of the models, liking the elements that tied them together (such as the corrupted Guardsmen's uniforms visible beneath their hoods, cowls and mantles), and they started to take on an identity of their own.

On a whim I named them "Widdershins's Corpse Junkies", seeing them as a bunch of chancers that would serve as a kind of addendum gang, able to be tagged onto another should the need for greater numbers arise, and from there, they just grew into something in their own right.

Gillespie - he's having a ball, and you're not...

Firstly, I'll apologise for the quality of these shots. I was experimenting with shooting the minis on a background of white paper and I just couldn't seem to get the effect right. But over time, they've grown on me, and I like to imagine them showing the Corpse Junkies emerging from the haze of a polluted fog.

I couldn't help thinking that this guy's mask was harking back to the old 1st edition Cawdor gangers in Necromunda, and I feel a lot of their influence can be seen in these scuplts to a greater or lesser extent.

Eyeball - because immediacy is prized above originality in terms of ganger whit.

While I like the masks on the Cultists, I also wanted to have some variation that would make them feel more like a genuine gang than a bunch of hooded acolytes, and so this guy got a head-swap for one of the random heads that I'd discovered to have been kindly included in an order I placed with Puppets War at the start of the year.

A 1/1 ratio of Miliput and green stuff blended the hood and mantle, with the addition of a Space Wolves blade making Eyeball look different and tooled up enough to serve as a lieutenant or senior thug.

Havers - never one to make up his mind quickly.

I removed the Chaos pendant from this one and sculpted a replacement in the form of a rune-marked token in the style of the ones already present on the Space Wolves accessories I'd been adding, and it just seemed to work.

The back-slung blade and sculpted edge to the hood mean that this was probably one of the most heavily modified of the Cultists, though I'm not sure that's immediately apparent when looking at him.

Dobbin - why the long face?

The only major change that I remember making to Dobbin was the addition of long, scraggly hair spilling out of the back of his gas-mask, as a bald, scabby scalp seemed more evocative of a Chaos Cult than the pollution-bleached mane of a genuine sump ganger.

Widdershins - would-be king of the concrete jungle.

So if these guys were going to be "Widdershins's Corpse Junkies", that begged the question: just who was this Widdershins bloke when he was at home, anyway?

In my quest to never waste anything, ever, I'd started using the left-over WHFB Empire Fanatics that had already formed most of the religious loonies in the Congregation of the God Emperor's Benevolent Tea Service, as bases for what would be (for me at least) more ambitious kit-bashing escapades.

So it was that a fanatic's body got arms from the IG command sprue, a Chaos Warrior cloak and the fighting knife from a Chaos Marauder, as well another rather angry head from Puppets War, with sculpted fur and tunic to tie it all together.

I see Widdershins as a minor figure in the Far Corfe Underworld, and yet one that fancies himself as more than that, wanting to shin up the slippery pole and take on the big boys that swagger around as heads of the more well-established gangs.

I have a couple more members of this gang already completed, but not snapped, including a heavy with the odd name of "Mugwump Mustard", another ganger and a skinny little runt perfect for leaning around from behind the bigger members of the gang and going: "Yerr!"

So as always, let me know what you think in the comments below or on social media.