Marauders of Mayhem

Today I'm sharing 3 rather lovely miniatures I bought on Etsy a few weeks ago. These guys are the latest completed additions to my Slaves to Darkness warband: Wintry warriors of Chaos who follow Gshtaad, a dark god of my own creation.*

They're from the seller BrakaonBitz and aren't made by Games Workshop, but are instead part of a range called Realms of Mayhem by Beholder Miniatures. The design and print of these guys was so good that within a week of them arriving, I had pretty much finished painting them. Something that anyone who has ever glanced at this blog knows never happens with me.

They are available in various scales, so I went for the 28mm versions, thinking that not all warriors have to be massive, muscled, murder-machines, and regular-sized people could join the fight too – but the sculpts are so perfect, I wish I'd gone with the larger 32mm size to give them a bit of extra 'stage presence'.

Sitting on 25mm diameter bases, they will be joining the existing ranks of my Thugs and Marauders.** If you're a veteran hobbyist of Games Workshop and Citadel Miniatures you may remember Chaos Thugs from the late 80s and early 90s. You can see some of them here and here on The Stuff of Legends. I always felt these (often less well armed and armoured) hooligans formed the first step on the Chaos career path, graduating to Marauders next (some early examples of which you can see here), followed by Warriors, then Chosen and perhaps finally Possessed or Spawn or some other kind of ascended/descended demon thing. Later editions of Warhammer did away with the Thugs, but I figured it would be nice to mix in a few home-grown conversions with my Marauders and bring back some of that crazy variation.

*We all have our demons, right?
**Darkoath Marauders these days tend to come on 28.5mm bases, but I'm really not ready to rebase an entire army for a second time, and I like to have squads and units on consistent bases.

A break from the green

I've made a bit of progress with my Ork Armoured Brigade recently, so a few weeks ago I decided to take a break from painting all that green. Unfortunately I figured it would be good to add a few more gribbly Nurgle types to my Chaos Warrior Winter Warband, and, what with these guys being dedicated to all things rotten, they, of course, tend to be painted in various verdant, putrid or bilious shades of green.

Luckily, however, that's not at all what I had in mind.

I wanted them to fit in with my other Slaves to Darkness warriors – worshippers of my homegrown deity, Gshtaad, (a kind of mash-up between Khorne, the Blood God and the aforementioned Nurgle, Lord of Decay). These guys tend to be clad in rough leather and dark, badly-maintained armour, with pallid skin, on crisp, snowy bases.

To achieve the look I was after, I made some minor adjustments to the Putrid Blightkings' suggested build. Instead of following the instructions in the box, I used as much armour and as many helmets as I could, opted to keep overtly Nurglish symbols to a minimum, and to only have a few mutations on show. As a result there was a little green stuff work involved to blend together disparate components, or remove the odd mutation*, but not enough deviation from the box versions to warrant me recording it. Therefore there is no "Behold raw Chaos in all its glory!" photo today.

But here are some (admittedly slightly out-of-focus) close-ups of the finished characters.**

*To be fair, most Chaos mutations look pretty odd.

**The Lord of Plagues, in the middle of the third image, was painted a while ago and has only been included here for completeness. This is actually the third time he has appeared on this blog. Only fitting for such a great sculpt.

The cold, dark days of Winter

During the last few weeks, my warband of Chaos Warriors has received a handful of reinforcements. I've added the above twenty troops to their wintry ranks.

These guys are followers of Gshtaad, a Chaos god (or perhaps daemon) of my own devising, who is said to somehow be the offspring of Khorne the Lord of Skulls (god of blood, war and murder) and Nurgle the Plague Lord (god of disease, decay and despair). As such I like his worshippers to include a mix of models not just from Games Workshop's basic Chaos Undivided range, but also their Khornate and Nurglish lines.

You may also notice that a few of the miniatures shown here are not from any of the current Games Workshop Chaos ranges. This is because, over the years, I've drawn on a number of diverse sources for this collection, including Heresy Miniatures, Avatars of War, Rackham's Confrontation and older, now out-of-print, Citadel lines. In fact some of the older Citadel models are from my earliest purchases back in the 1980s, converted, or at least repurposed, to find a home here.

I usually try to blend these disparate sources together a little, in an attempt to develop some level of unity within the army, swapping helmets and weapons, and sculpting fur out of green stuff.

Wood, bone, leather, flesh and rusty metal also feature heavily, as do various shades of the colours green and red.

Some of the miniatures here, on the smaller bases, represent Marauders, rather than fully-fledged Warriors. In my mind Marauders are not just lighter-armed Chaos troops, but also less capable. So as well as big, brawny fighters, the likes of which are found in the Citadel Chaos Marauders box, their ranks might also include younger characters, or less enthusiastic conscripts, forced to fight: scrawny cannon-fodder who likely won't last through their first conflict.

Once finished I popped these on the shelf with their kinsfolk and took a quick snap. It's not a great picture, so I'll try to do some better ones when I can, but at least for now it starts to hint at the growing extent of my little Chaos warband.

Lost and found

A very short post today. Just over a year ago, I completed my Addiction Challenge with five final models that took me over the line. But in my haste to publish the article, I forgot I'd taken a few work-in-progress shots of two of the more complicated models.

The other day, while starting to put together a longer post, I stumbled across the below...

... three photos that show some of the cut-up and glued-together scraps of rubbish, that I seem to find so exciting.

Here are the completed models again:

Fast forward 12 months

It's been almost exactly a year since my last post. That's a huge gap, but the good news (at least for me) is that, although this blog has been dormant, my hobby activity has not, and I have plenty of bits and pieces to share over the next few posts.

But firstly, let's start with why. Why have I been quiet for so long? Well, the main reason is that this time last year, my wife and I began to undertake some fairly extensive work on our family home. Work that saw us completely pack away all my models, tools and paint, that saw us remove most of the top section of our house, that saw at least one ceiling fall in, and two people fall through them (neither were injured), that had rain water pouring down internal walls, a bedroom completely open to the elements for several days, and that ended up taking more than twice as long as originally estimated. But after everything was over, and finally complete, work that gave us a whole new floor on our house. I'm talking, of course, about a loft conversion, but after the painful, drawn-out process that we went through, it feels like so much more than just those simple words.

When we first started the work, I had no idea that I'd be putting this blog into such a long slumber, even though the building work had been planned many months in advance. I just never put two and two together and realised quite how disruptive it would be. I hadn't accounted for some of the intense mental anguish that would occur, while watching one's home being quite literally torn apart.

But it's done now and the upshot of the process, as far as this blog is concerned, is that instead of a dingy space, in among the rafters of a dusty roof, I now have a properly appointed office for all my work and hobby pursuits.

When fitting out the room we ensured there was plenty of shelf, desk and storage space. Me so that I could fit everything in and it would still be neat and functional, and my wife so that she could guarantee there wouldn't be any of my toys elsewhere in the house.

One of the biggest boons of this, and of being forced to organise everything from scratch, is that when placing finished models on shelves, I was able to set them up as little displays – almost like dioramas. 

Chaos troops man the ramparts of a town they have taken...

... in defence against the approaching Undead horde

Dredd style Arbites Enforcers bring riot suppression weaponry to bear

An Ork armoured brigade starts to amass in preparation for their next Waaagh.

The streets of Kruenta are alive with all manner of Imperial citizenry

There was a lot more to the last 12 months than just the moments I've touched on above, and there's a fair bit more to my office than just these images, but I think it's probably best to leave it here for now, to ward against the dreaded approach of boring and excruciating detail.

What's that? Too late?

Objective complete

It's a major celebration. A few days ago I finished painting five more miniatures, which took me over the finish line on my Addiction Challenge –  and the whole country erupted in fireworks.

For anyone not familiar with British customs, I should point out, however, that the two occurrences were not related. The former was conducted at home, alone, over a number of days, and the latter was Guy Fawkes Night (also known as Bonfire Night or Fireworks Night) celebrated in the UK on November 5th, come rain or shine or Covid 19.

But even though the fireworks were not for me, it doesn't take anything away from the fact that I've finally completed my Addiction Challenge. This was a self-imposed ban on buying any new models until I'd completed 100 existing ones. It's taken nearly three and a half years to do, but it was definitely worth it. It upped my motivation to find hobby time, got me focussing on painting instead of just constructing and converting, and curbed my incessant desire to buy the next new shiny thing, before completing the last.

These latest five models are a return to my fantasy (or Age of Sigmar) Chaos Warrior army, with the first three below representing a suite of related objective markers for my warriors to fight over. They are made up entirely of spare scraps from my bag of Chaos bits, that I couldn't find a home for elsewhere, so I'm pretty pleased I was able to do something constructive with them.

The other two models could be objective markers too, but could also be more like freelancers, similar to the models from this post, that can be attached to any army or terrain piece to add a bit of character or firepower. Like the first three models, they too are made from unused bits that were lying around waiting for a purpose.

So now that these are all finished, and I've completed my Addiction Challenge, I need to find another way to keep my motivation up for future projects. Another little challenge to undertake, or objective to head towards. But more importantly, before I do that, you'll have to excuse me while I nip out and buy a truck load of brand new miniatures.

ADDICTION CHALLENGE:

COMPLETE

The axemen cometh

My little band of winter warriors is growing slowly. I've just completed these next five troops, all of whom came from the Chaos Chosen set. The only thing I did to them, prior to throwing on the pigment, was adjust their helmets a little – either with head swaps, or by cutting down the amount of extra stuff mounted on their existing lids.

This is in keeping with the rest of my warband, where I'm trying to keep the level of ornamentation to a minimum (at least on most models), preferring instead to play up the simple textures like iron, wood, bone, fur, skin, leather and maybe a bit of brass.

My feeling is that this will give my followers of Gshtaad a more earthy and rugged appearance, suitable for warriors who are in it for the fight, living off the land, preferring deeds over ostentation to mark them out. And besides, I think all those natural textures and colours look really nice set against the snow on their bases.

I've also finally got around to finishing my original, metal Lord of the Rings Cave Troll. At the time of his release, before the ubiquity of multi-part plastic sets, this guy was a hulking brute of a miniature, striding across the Mines of Moria, swinging a mighty hammer*. He was one of my favourite miniatures from The Fellowship of the Ring range, released by Citadel shortly after Peter Jackson's movie. I switched the hammer for a scratch built cleaver, and added a bunch of scaly spikes growing out of his back to signify the corrupting influence of the dark gods. Of course these days he looks tiny next to some of the creatures out there, but I still prefer his look to that of the standard Warhammer trolls.

And finally, next to him are two really old tiger models that I tried to adapt many years ago. They came from an old Orc chariot kit, that was produced by one of the other companies operating back in the 1980s. I forget who it was. I never really liked the model (no idea why it ended up in my possession), so I did everything I could to attempt to salvage it. I was going to ignore the tigers completely this time around, but eventually figured what the heck, it might not take too long to rebase them as part of this batch. The only image I've been able to find of their original appearance was this one, of a heavy version of the original chariot, that currently appears to be part of Magister Militum's range of miniatures.

So six of the above miniatures are freshly completed, meaning I have a new Addiction Challenge score to share, which in turn means I'm at last approaching that final straight. Can I cross the finishing line before the end of the year**?

ADDICTION CHALLENGE

REMAINING: 14

*As far as I can tell, Games Workshop's official Cave Troll miniature has now been replaced by this one.
**Let's face it, if you've ever read this blog before, you're probably as aware as I am, that this is pretty unlikely. As the saying goes, my chances are between Slim and None... and Slim's outta town.

Old dogs, new tricks

The last few weeks have posed an interesting challenge for me: trying to update all my existing Chaos Warriors to fit in with the new look I'm after, without entirely repainting them.

My previous approach to Chaos Warriors was to work on them one at a time with their own colours and markings, and make them look as individual as possible. You can see a bunch of them in their previous conditions in this post.

However this time around, as the force is starting to grow, I want them to look more cohesive, more like some of the groups of warriors and knights shown in the films I mentioned here.

Therefore it was never going to be a case of simply re-basing them on the larger, round Age of Sigmar bases, and adding a bit of snow flock. I was also going to need to darken them down, make their armour look metallic, perhaps even rusty, mute most of their colours, and even, in extreme cases, repose them and replace their heads or helmets.

But obviously I didn't want to spend ages doing all this to old models when I could be doing it to new ones, so the further challenge was to do it quickly and simply, and without adding so much extra paint that more detail would be lost, or worse, taking the models to such a bad place that I'd be forced to strip the paint off them completely and start again.

It made sense to add a couple of unpainted models to the batch, just to check everything was progressing in the right direction. The two models on the left, in the above picture, are new ones that had never been completed before. And while I'm going on about this, the warrior on the right is one of the old models that I gave a new head as part of his refresher.

So, although 21 models have been given new paint jobs, only two of them count towards my Addiction Challenge score. This means I'm down to the final fifth, but have still got further to go before I can get out there on a massive, toy-soldier-based spending spree.

ADDICTION CHALLENGE
REMAINING: 20

Riders on the storm

It's another classic-rock-inspired blog title today, because I've been furiously at work digging out, chopping up and putting together all my Chaos cavalry. And I'm pretty sure if Chaos dudes listened to any kind of music, it would, of course, be rock.

When searching them out I was slightly surprised to find there was a grand total of 22 unpainted horsemen in this collection, representing quite the mass of spikey, fast-moving, armoured killers.*

The first three are probably my favourite of this batch. Incredible metal models, that were an awful struggle to glue together – my fingers are pocked, pierced and sore, and possibly even suffering from some kind of lead poisoning – but their fearsomeness to construct is more than made up for by the fearsomeness of their appearance. Especially when you factor in that Archaon, the middle one, is roughly 18 years old now.

Then there are these guys (above). They're the contents of the plastic boxset released around 2008, where the knights all seemed a little too big, and which (some might say, inexplicably) replaced the not-long released metal boxset below (from around 2003).

Then these four miniatures above are all old, unpainted conversions of mine, that were based on classic metal Chaos Knights, released around the early to mid 90s. As such they're probably not as cool as some of the other models here, but I think it's still worth painting them.

And then these guys have all been constructed using the contents of the Chaos Marauder Horsemen boxset. A fantastic kit that gives you a tonne of good-looking options. I borrowed one of their original horses for one of my metal knights, so that's been replaced by a repaired metal horse from an earlier release.

So that's all the cavalry that I'll be adding to my collection. But there's actually a few more models that I'll be removing. These are some of the very first Chaos Warrior miniatures that I owned – probably released about the same time as the first instalment of Kaleb Daark that I showed in the the previous post. The miniatures originally included both foot and mounted versions of the characters, and had simple names like Chaos Champion, Chaos Knight and Chaos General. I think I've repainted them about 5 times since my original effort, and judging from the lack of visible sculpted detail on their present condition, it's clear I've never bothered to strip their previous paint jobs. And, its too late now anyway, as these fellas have been well and truly consigned to my hall of fame.

There are no newly finished miniatures here, so my Addiction Challenge score remains the same. Coincidentally there are 22 miniatures left to paint in the challenge, and I just happen to have exactly the same number of unpainted miniatures here. If this weren't all about Chaos that would sound very much like the beginning of a plan.

ADDICTION CHALLENGE
REMAINING: 22

*In fact you could say 'killers on the road', to further borrow from The Doors song referenced in the title.**
**According to Wikipedia, psychedelic rock song, Riders on the Storm (released in 1971) had portions of its lyrics allegedly inspired by real-life killer Billy Cook, who murdered six people during a 22 day rampage while hitchhiking to California in the early 1950s. It may also have been the last song Jim Morrison recorded before his death.***
***These probably aren't suitable subjects to discuss while talking about children's toy soldiers.

Black and white, and Daark all over

I'm going to keep my comments brief on this one. That's because I want to share, in full, one of the other reasons for my fascination with Chaos Warriors. As a result there are quite a few images to get through. 

Back in the mid eighties the first Games Workshop publication I ever picked up was The Third Citadel Compendium. Not only was this magazine full of pictures of the most inspiring toys I had ever seen, but the final ten pages had something my young self was particularly blown away by.

It was a specially commissioned story, by some of the top creative talent from the galaxy's greatest comic: 2000AD (home of Judge Dredd, ABC Warriors, Rogue Trooper and a tonne of other fantastic science-fiction stories, too numerous to mention).

Writers John Wagner and Alan Grant had taken Games Workshop's fantasy Warhammer setting and infused it with everything that made 2000AD so popular: action, comedy, anarchy, a spot of vulgarity and even a lone antihero (in the style of early Dredd strips). And the whole package was beautifully, masterfully, illustrated by Brett Ewins and Jim McCarthy, working as a team to create some of the very best pages of their already high-quality, signature art style. Even Steve Potter's lettering perfectly captured the tone of the piece.

Sadly, due to a dispute over ownership rights, the story was never finished and has therefore never been reprinted or collected. So, partly as a reference for my Chaos Warrior project, and partly as the act of an adoring fan, I've decided to put all the pages together in one place.

If you were involved with this, and have a claim on the ownership, please don't sue me, it's a wonderful body of work and deserves not to be lost.

For everyone else, read on to see The Quest Of Kaleb Daark.