Warhammer Fantasy: Warriors of Chaos Army Blog
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With nearly a full army worth of bad guys, it came down to those who would lead from the front; the heroes of chaos.
Wulfrik, BSB, and Call to Glory
Wulfrik the Wanderer
Wulfrik is a wild sculpt that adds interest to any army. The sculpt is covered in grisly trophies which somehow compliments the laid back pose. My only objection to the sculpt is the head; it's too messy. I realize this comes down to taste, but my preconceptions of a champion of the gods is a shaven and scarred head, much like a space marine. Games Workshop has been doing players a wonderful service in their newer metal models by making the head a separate piece, providing a painless conversion.
Battle Standard Bearer
I knew the banner needed something extra to really make the eight sided star shine. I spent an hour with a sketch pad working out different concepts and ideas. The inverse star inside the normal star was a perfect symbol; weird, complex, chaotic, yet ordered. Once finished, I realized the bright green armor was overshadowing the dark banner. I repainted the entire design as a vibrant transition from red to orange to yellow. It was a pain having to restart a complex freehand from scratch, but the resulting figure was worth it.
Call to Glory
Reading through the spells of Tzeentch gave me the inspiration for this chaos hero. Call to Glory is spell that turns any infantry model into a Chaos Hero. I was enamored of the idea of having someone to represent this amazing transformation. I used the Archaeon model on foot (Limited Games Day Model) to represent the newly minted warrior. An old marauder helmet was glued down to the base as a reminder of his humble roots.
Heroes of the Gods
It made sense to have at least one hero marked for each of the gods; to have friends for the Hero of Khorne who started it all.
The sculpts for the champions of Tzeentch are, for lack of a better word, weird. Although I love the old school style, they clash with the rest of the army. I used a plastic chaos space marine terminator sorcerer lord (say THAT nine times fast). Although you can't see it in this picture, the cape was covered in insane writings on the outside, and pi on the inside... out to 99 digits, with all the 9's written in red instead of black.
The Slaanesh Hero was based on the Gamesday 2009 limited edition model, courtesy of a good friend who is an eBay master I experimented with a method of highlighting black with purple that ended up setting the paint scheme for the Knights of Slaanesh.
The Nurgle paint scheme really says a lot about the artist. It's easy to do a horrible job and claim it was intentional, but it is hard to do justice to decay. Painting clean metal is 3 layers, painting corroded metal can be 10+ layers. Blending the soft and subtle greys and greens leaves little room for error, and there is a constant threat of overworking the piece. If you want to tell how good a painter is, just ask him to paint a plague marine. It will tell you worlds about his skill.
Dark Magicks
I don't like the way most of the fantasy chaos sorcerers look. These physically twisted and decrepit figures do not accurately depict a heavy armor wearing giant man from the north. To add the requisite magic users to the force, I pulled from the chaos sorcerers of Warhammer 40,000. They're physically imposing as well as arcane, wielding impressive weapons and armor. The only modification necessary was subtraction, not addition; the models I selected had power packs, guns, and pipes running everywhere.
Green stuff was an invaluable tool at this stage.
Ahriman (left) had a huge block of metal jutting out of his back where the backpack was supposed to connect, but filing and greenstuff fur made it vanish. I was even able to continue the fur onto the front to cover up another conspicuous pair of pipes. The rest of the sculpt was beautifully ornate and only required a swap from his pistol to a blade that could function as any number of gear choices from the army book.
The other sorcerer (right) only needed to be cleaned up with clippers and file. I didn't want to get to the point where I was seriously modifying (read: butchering) the sculpt, but I did need to change the look and feel of a model that was no longer in the 41st millennium. The hand that was originally holding the pistol was replaced by a plastic bloodletter hand left over from my Khorne Warriors. The fire came from a leftover staff head from the plastic empire wizards box, a great purchase for the bits box.
The armor was a happy accident where, after switching colors midway, I saw how nicely it was blending and decided just to keep it.
After all was said and done, I had a massive army of chaos warriors ready to hit the table. So what did I do with them? I sold them of course! Why should I waste my time playing the game when I could be working on another army? :)
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