Al Rahem

 The great coats will be lead by Al Rahem (or Alexei Romanov to fit the theme) .   Since he's a special character he's being built up to be, well especially characterful.  First off, I'm using the great-coat legs from the Cadian command squad box.  They fit in with the other WGF great coats while looking a bit more up-scale what with him being an officer and all.

 For the torso, I went with the medals torso -- hey, he's a hero of the Imperium, right?  Al is equipped with a plasma pistol so that was a gimme.



The sword however was different story -- it's a power weapon that causes instant death, so it needed to look a bit out of the ordinary so I looked at the fantasy range, specifically Vampire Counts and Dark Elves to find a blade that would look sinister without looking too Chaos-y.  I ultimately went with the Vamp Counts blade.

  

Finally, Al's head -- I could have gone with one of the pig-iron heads and he would have easily fit in.  But, he is an SC and as such, I didn't feel that the gas mask would work -- characters should have faces.  I looked at a few guard heads from the Cadian command squad sprue, the Baneblade sprue and so on, but none really worked for me. So off to the Empire bits -- and found this one.  This rather rugged looking gent has a lot of character, and should paint up nicely.  The helm gives me a good line to sculpt the fuzzy hat to.

The skull for the cap badge is a greenstuff casting of the skull from the shoulder pad that I'm using on the left shoulder.  To sculpt the hat, I first created the basic shape with greenstuff, and then added the skull to the to the still uncured base.  Next I added a wrap of greenstuff to use to texture into fur. 

 And here he is with all the pieces together,  still need to flock the base then I'll start painting.