In the past three months I've been forging together a brand new army: Warriors of Chaos! My current collection consists of only Order and Death factions, so this is a welcome change. I found a good deal on the web that got me a whole bunch of units for a very reasonable price, and although all the models had been pretty much assembled and basecoated it was still a golden deal!
Here's a group shot of the northern warriors I've finished thus far:
That's already 64 Wounds worth of models if my calculations are correct. Let me introduce this merry lot!
From left to right
Back Row: "Dolgeram's Doomriders" (Chaos Knights x3), "Aphophas Silvertongue" (Daemon Prince), "The Comet of Doom" (Chaos Chariot)
Middle Row: "Gulbrand's Warband" (Chaos Warriors x10), "Tyr's Fyrd" (Chaos Marauders x10)
Front Row: "Balfrik Steelshanks" (Champion with Battle Standard), "Izazel the Twisted" (Chaos Sorcerer Lord)
After a long and painful thought-process over the four gods of Chaos I finally settled on Tzeentch, mostly because I found a stunning paint scheme for my models! At first I was going for Slaanesh (as Khorne and Nurgle seem to mainstream for me) but when I spotted this selection of colours at Dice and Brush I was sold to Tzeentch... That blue theme just catches my eye more than any other, especially when applied to armour!
Here's the first model on which I practiced before starting on the rest of the army:
I found the Chaos Warriors to be very enjoyable models to paint, as there are lots of plain areas like the cloak and the armour plates but also rough spots like the fur or the chainmail. I never got tired of painting these guys!
A few more Warriors from the "Gulbrand's Warband" unit. The weapon options here are various as the previous owner apparently switched many weapons and shields to those from a box of Zombies. I'm not sure where the shields are from, though, might be Orcs or Beastmen. In terms of gameplay I use them as having a pair of Chaos Handweapons.
All in all I don't find these hand replacements a bad thing as many of them are quite cool-looking. I think it's hilarious that one of them is armed with a severed leg!
I've got ten of these guys painted already, and a further 5 still waiting to be painted.
Gulbrand the Aspiring Champion, leader of the Warrior unit. Waving a big axe and dragging the torso of the former leader around seems to be enough of a recommendation to make you rise into a respected position in this society!
"The Comet of Change", one of the two chariots I got in the deal. I somehow like the sturdiness of this old model, and the overly-huge spikes also get me going. Those sickles on the wheels look nasty!
I'm planning to mount him on a base of some kind so I can texture it to match the rest of the army once I get to the basing phase. This model was pretty straightforward to paint, I did the horses, the charioteers and the chariot itself on their own and glued them together afterwards. I had a bit of trouble trying to fit these two huge armoured guys into the chariot, bu in the end they found their places with no further commotion.
Here are a few Marauders from the "Tyr's Fyrd" unit (a total of 10 painted, 6 waiting). I kept using the same limited palette to make my whole army unified, and I had to give these barbarians blonde hair as there were precious few other parts in them that I could paint with Screaming Skull. This didn't bother me at all as it just makes them look more "Scandinavian" and vikingy.
Painting the armoured parts blue was a real pain in the ass, as well as the shields. I have no idea why, I just hated it!
Instead the muscles were a pleasure to paint, as weird as that may sound... I enjoyed giving them a heavy wash and picking them out one by one to make them distinguishable.
Still, one must not think that I generally like to wash men and pick out their muscles, as this is not the case. Nice try, though.
Balfrik Steelshanks, the Champion with a Battle Standard! I did some minor conversions on this one, as he had a round wooden shield in the other hand and the banner in the other. I wanted him to carry a weapon, but still have something to represent his Chaos Runeshield -ability. So I ended up with an Ogre fist-weapon! This gave me the "shield" and the "weapon" parts I wanted in a compact package, as well as a nice detail: his weapon hand is mutated, having grown two times larger than its original size!
The banner took some time to do, and as I had already used the Tzeentch symbol on the shields and banner of the Chaos Warriors I needed something different on this one... So I ruthlessly copied the "Burning Eye" symbol from Dice and Brush!
It is one of the few freehand banner paintings I've ever done, but I'm happy with the result.
Meet Prince Aphophas Silvertongue! It took quite a lot of time and effort to get him to shape as I always found myself displeased by the result in the end. His chest and shoulders have been re-done quite a few times!
The story of this army is all about finding the right artifacts and performing a ritual to awaken Prince Aphophas, so he's quite an important character. This is why I took the time and patience to continue fixing him until I was satisfied.
Blue, gold, bone and strong highlights were the main features, but I also managed to get some purple on his malefic person (the cloth behind the chainmail) as well as red and orange by fitting them into his Daemonic Axe. Now he's ready to be summoned into the material realms by his devoted followers to wreak havoc!
Last but not least, Sorcerer Izazel the Twisted, leader of the warband! It is his sacred duty to direct the warband in its search of the artifacts and to summon their Daemon overlord from the Realm of Chaos to lead them in a glorious conquest!
Again I used the same palette as with the rest of the army, but used more purple than on any other model to make him stand out of the crowd. As if his badass lava base doesn't do that already.
I'm happy with how the staff and the eye-symbols look, but the horns and his own eyes are terrible, oh so terrible. I fixed both of these later on, yet I still have no pics to prove it. Some day I'll show you the fixed version of him!
I still have a small unit of Forsaken, another Chariot, 13 more Knights, 6 more Marauders, 5 more Warriors and a Chaos Lord to paint before I can add them to the army. There is much to be done, but the models I have ready thus far enabled me to already play a test game with them. Alas, the game was against my brother's brand new Stormcast Eternals and I took a sound beating despite all the preparations I made before the match...
Speaking of the pre-game preparations, I sacrificed my dog in the name of Tzeentch to lend some much-needed luck and surety to my dice rolls:
This proved to be quite effective, as my Knights and Warriors made 90% of their Save rolls (most of them requiring a 5+) during the match! I've never rolled that sweet! In the end I lost the match, yes, but it still doesn't take away the miracle of these save rolls.
Lord Tzeentch is a fickle master, though, and when Prince Aphophas was required to make 7 save rolls on a 3+ to avoid death, I rolled the following results: 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 4.
There is a lot to be learned about the exact effects of pre-game sacrifices, and I only have three dogs left... We'll see where my research takes me before I run out of pets.
Until next time!
PS. In case someone didn't get it by now: my dog is still alive and in very good condition. I have committed no animal sacrifices and I still own four dogs. It was nice to make jokes with you.
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