Showcasing My Realm of Chaos Armies for the Oldhammer Weekend

With the packing complete, all I have left to do is write up the armylists Stuart and I will be using in our Realm of Chaos game. I am planning on including as many models as possible, but it will ultimately depend on balance. I don't want one force more powerful than the other so we have a fair game. Personally, unbalanced games are neither thrilling nor rewarding to play. Though, of course, balance isn't really the point of a RoC game. As you can see, my new wargames table is just the right size to accommodate forces of this size, though its plain to see why next year's board will need to be twice this size! 

In preparing these shots, its was the first time I had actually fielded everything from the Khorne and Slaanesh armies at once and the sight was indeed satisfying. One questions I get asked a lot is 'how long did  it take to collect and paint two old school armies'? Well, I worked on the two armies here and there over period of about three years. At the basis of both armies are the small warbands that Dan and I used during our Realm of Chaos campaign in 2010-11. Back then, we had about twelve models a side. Now, the armies consist of much larger numbers. The Khorne army has about sixty models in it while the Slaanesh one has about forty. 

I am so pleased with the 'look' of my board that I shall be using exactly the same method and resources to build by larger table next year. With this in mind, I shall at some point start adding flock and grass to my miniature bases to help things blend in a little better. Not that its a huge problem, as you can see the old school style of basing I use fits in perfectly with the board at the moment. 

One thing I am in two mind about is the use of gradients on a wargaming table. The slight hills I build using polystyrene and plaster look great but can be a bit annoying when it come to ranking up models. I will have to play a few games before deciding whether or not to include such things next year. 

Onwards anyway, this blog is not about my wonderful new wargaming table but about the models themselves. What will follow is a comprehensive look at each of the units I intend to use in the game tomorrow. Let's start off with Slaanesh shall we!

Slake-Sin's Throng of Exquisite Pleasure

Slake-Sin and his honour guard. His seer, Jesterspite, can be seen to the left. 

Slake-Sin lie span twists back before the founding of the Empire. Born an elf, he found himself loathing the subtle ways of his people and found joy in the hedonistic pleasure cults that existed openly in Elven culture in those days. Eventually, his desire for sensation lead him to the Northern Wastes were he learnt to serve a new master, Slaanesh. Serving in the Court of the Twisted Sodomite for millennia, Slake-Sin fought in the aeon long struggles that rage in the Realm of Chaos, caring little for the candleflame lives of mortals in the world to the South. This has changed in recent years, with his patron concerned about the influence a major rival of his is having over the Khornate champion, Ulthur Deathfist. Slake-Sin has been ordered south in pursuit of the Deathfist, and to end his reign of slaughter. 

Slake-Sin is armed with a flail and is a level 20 sorcerer to boot. He is fielded alongside 9 of his most decadent Chaos warriors and marches beneath his magical banner. 

To his left can be seen one of his chaos sorcerers, the level 15 sorcerer, Jesterspite, Slake-Sin's personal valet and seer. 

Bullnip the Wailing leads his centaur followers. These troops act as Slake-Sin's advance guard and scouts, bringing his information about his enemies. They ride ahead and torture those they find in the most depraved and hideous fashion. 

Veteran of his Realm of Chaos campaigns, these centaur have followed Slake-Sin for many years. Originally a great herb, but endless combat has whithered their numbers to a mere five. Insane and violent, these creatures exist solely to destroy their hated foe - followers of Khorne! They are lead by their champion, Bullnip the Wailing. 

Susak Lee's Slaves to Sensation- a chaos thug unit ten strong.

Susak Lee began life in Cathay. After a long career as a pirate around the Oriental coasts he fell beneath the sway of Slaanesh. Converting his crew to view his inhuman delights as the only true way of serving any god, they set sail to the North and found themselves involved in the skirmishing that rages between warbands around the boarders of the Realm of Chaos. Not long in the service of Slake-Sin, Susak Lee's original champion was Slain by Jesterspite during a small battle in Troll country. With the champion dead the carnage ceased, and Slake-Sin's seer offered Susak and his followers a position in their force. Armed with a magical weapon, Susak is a Level 10 champion.

To the left, Balndidir can be seen. She has worked tirelessly as Slake-Sin's agent among the people and lands of Empire, and his been instrumental in located the Deathfist. She lost a large part of his warband during a recent skirmish with Grimgrunt, the Deathfist's second in command, and has subsequently slipped down the rankings. She is still a powerful sorcerer, though somewhere inside her soul she suspects that she is on the slow decline of spawnhood. This is something he hopes to chaneg in the coming battle. If Slake-Sin won't notice here, then she will make sure her patron will! 

Much of Slake-Sin's force is made of of beastmen, most of which have marched with him from the Realm of Chaos. Slitherlimb, one of Slake-Sin's lesser champions, has been rewarded with charge of their lustful filthy ways. 

Sliktherlimb is one of those champions content to serve another, happy to accept the scraps or treasures that are passed down to loyal followers. He leads the large beastmen unit of 15 souls against the enemies of Slake-Sin. Level 15 and armed with a magical weapon, he sings of the joy of killing the hated foe. The unit is armed with a magical banner. 

Throgg the troll, lurks to the right of this unit. A longstanding follower of Slake-Sin and a member of his force since the very early days. Utter and totally stupid, but devoted to his master and the pleasures he offers. 

Jaketh. Sorcerer for pay. He delights in gathering chaos items and exploiting them for his own advancement. 

Jaketh is a level 20 sorcerer and in pay of Slake-Sin. Though devoted to the power that chaos can provide, Jaketh worships chaos as a whole and cares little for the whims of individual powers. He is happy to serve all, as long as the price is right, and brings with him considerable knowledge of the monsters that lurk in the dark forests. he has gone as far as to bewitch one of the giant spiders that live in the Forest of Shadows to serve his paymaster's needs. 

Grubshat. The ensorcelled giant spider. 

Grubshat is a giant spider. Jesterspite discovered this beast wounded near the Old Forest Road after it had been hunted by goblins. Healing it with perverse magic, the spider now blindly followers it master, chittering happily when ever there is flesh to be rendered from bone.

Gluttonspoor and his minotaurs. Fickle in their allegiance, these beasts could easily end up on either side. For now, they serve Slake-Sin, as long a fresh meat is provided daily. 

Finally, Guttonspoor and his minotaur killers. Like Jaketh, this beast of chaos fight for money and do not care which God they align themselves too. Having fought for and against all the major powers over these years, this terrifying beasts could even switch sides mid battle to best suit their depraved needs. 

The Host of Ulthur Deathfist

The Deathfist and his chaos retinue. Level 25 and armed with a chaos weapon and a magical axe that can destroy undead, he is a fearsome sight. Expect to see this unit in the thick of the action. 

The Deathfist is feared across the forests and scrublands of the Old World. The most successful chaos leader in one hundred years is slowly building his influence, having spent the best part of three years fighting against rivals within the chaotic community. Shamed by his defeat by the undead, Ulthar hates all undead creatures with a passion, though his hate of the feeble minded followers of Slaanesh runs deeper still. Ulthur has little interest in reaving souls amongst the weak mortal humans and elves that live around his area of operations, preferring the challenge of his own kind. He plans to crush Slke-Sin once and for all, before marching north to carve himself a kingdom in the Chaos Wastes. 

Chaos marauders and Chaos thugs. The units are unnamed but are lead by Ulthur's up and coming champions. Axelicker the Bound leads the thugs, while Jon Flamehaired leads the marauders. Both are dangerous fighters. and level 15.

Following a strict heirarchy, the youngest warriors must serve amongst the thug units in his retinue. Once they have proved their worth they move up into the heavily armoured ranks of the Marauders. The lifespan of these fighters is often short and brutal, but the glory in violence which they aspire to is welcome reward. Ulthur hopes to expand on this units in future and is always on the look out for magical artefacts to construct banners for his followers. 

Brune, a level 15 champion, and a veteran of many skirmishes. 

Few beastmen remain in the Deathfist's ranks. The psychopathic rage these creatures display is almost suicidal and they live only to bath themselves in the blood of their enemies in the service of Khorne. Their leader, Brune, is the sole remaining beastman from Blandidir's host. 

Ubba Axesplit in his chariot, a gift from his brother. Borak Splinteraxe looms on the right. His orders are to maintain the chariot and preserve the missile units.

Borak Splinteraxe is a successful chaos champion in his own right, but like all dwarfs seek a lord to serve. Borak brings with him ranks of missile weapons and maintains the chaos chariot bequeathed to Ulthur's brother, the vile Ubba Axesplit. He has his own retinue of chaos warriors. More thoughtful than meany of his companions, the dwarfs serve Ulthur to serve themselves. One day a stronger more successful lord may arise, and on that day Borak will depart and make a new contract in chaos. 

Ulthur is no fool and knows from experience that the magical fire his forces take needs to be countered. Hence he has employed a unit of dwarf projectile weapons. Their targets will be lightly armoured throops and wizards. The bazooka team also specialises in taking down gigantic creatures. 

Borak's Meatmanglers are a crack unit of projectile specialists. They prefer to kill at a distance and delight in the carnage they can create. Two small a unit to make a difference in the battle line, this troops have often been battlewinners for Ulthur. If faced by overwhelming odds, Borak will retreat. In his view, Khorne can be better served by fighting another day than dying needlessly. 

The World Famous mange is lead to battle by Ogpog from the East.

Finally, Ogpog of Mourngal, Ulthur's beastmaster. he is in charge of the chaos hounds, including Ulthur's beloved hound, Mange. This hobgoblin from the far east, specialises in finding gaps in the enemy line for his dogs to exploit. Creeping around the enemy's flanks is another favourite of this creature. 

Well, there you have it....

I am off to finish off my armylists and ensure that Stuart and I have everything that we need for tomorrow. If you have a chaos warband and you want to join the fight, please side either with the Deathfist or Slake-Sin.

See you at BOYL!

Orlygg

Chaos Centaurs of Slaanesh: More re-enforcements for BOYL

Well, all the miniatures I need for BOYL are now painted and packed. I had my unit of Centaurs to finish for the Slaanesh army and took advantage of the fact that my wife and kids were out today to just crack on and get he models done. With some hardcore painting (no food, no water, no toilet breaks) over a five hour period I got them completed. 

And here they are! One of the models (far left) will be familiar to many. I painted it as part of my Warhammer Bestiary project and used it as a basis for this unit. 

This was the first model I completed, though it was painted alongside the next model down the list. I followed on with the colour scheme I used when painting the Slaanesh thug regiment - plenty of pink and green worked up using white. I maintained the white pony patters for the horse body that I had used previously too, largely due to a lack of inspiration. Most of this miniature was completed yesterday, and I just had to paint the chainmail and armour today, oh and add the eyes. 

More of the same here as the model above. Painted mostly yesterday with a few finishing touches here and there done today. I was feeling pretty weary at this point and still had two models to complete so decided to abandon the colour scheme and just go experimental and see what came out. 

Despite not spending the same amount of time on this model as I did the other three, I feel that this one has come out really well. A great mix of tones on the horse body and the highlights came out beautifully. I am particularly pleased with the blue hair and the way it lifts the face of the miniature. Completed today. 

The final model I painted for the unit. Completed today. Again, I was really pleased with how this model came out considering how little time I spent on it. I feel its the best of the five and so made it the unit leader, though this photo doesn't do the painting justice in my opinion. Still, I am glad all the models are finished and I am ready to get packing for the Oldhammer Weekend. 

Better get the army-lists written up now! 

Orlygg

Slaaneshi Re-enforcements for the Oldhammer Weekend (BOYL) 2014

I have been hard at work trying to get my Slaaneshi forces finished before the weekend. Most of this work is being done in the evenings and I hope to get the remaining for miniatures finished over the next couple of nights. As you can see from the photograph above, the majority of the work has been done. Two units for the army are now complete; chaos thug and warrior respectively. As many of you will know, I love BIG old school banners and Slaanesh gives you plenty of scope for some glorious freehand designs. 

This standard bearer took some work. I only use damaged figures for conversions and this model was in really bad condition when he fell into my hands. Originally a chaos marauder, he had somehow lost his head and hand over the last twenty five years so I had to replace both. I am sure that many of you will recognise the distinctive head I used, and I am pleased with the result. A heavily armoured elf isn't something you come across everyday, but it makes sense in the context of this warband. 

The figure was really easy to paint. he was basecoated in blue and then washed with dark blue ink. Once dry, it was simply a case of working back up to the original colour and adding a few layers of extreme highlights, created by adding white to the base colour. The books I painted shocking pink, just to help the model fit in with others of its ilk, and also because the colour is indeed shocking - just what you would expect the pleasure god's underlings to wear when they are crushing the testicles (or should that be tenticles?) of foul Khornate followers. The banner took a little longer, but no longer than an evenings work to finish. I used paper as the basis of the banner and drew the design in pencil. The whole lot them got a green basecoat with thinned paint that just covered the design. Beginning with the hair, I painted each part of the design until I was happy with what I had achieved. The Slake-Sin name was a later addition as I felt without it the banner was rather top heavy. 

This was the final model I painted for the chaos thug regiment. I had trouble with the green on the shield and it took several attempts to get it looking right. I don't really like painting units or under any pressure. I much prefer to just waft from each project to the next with a huge amount of time pressure. Still, I got the model finished after a few night's work and even added a shield following my latest trend of adapting the Slaanesh symbol. 

I traded this model with Stuart the other week, and he was the only one of the models I took from him that made it into the army! I wanted to have another practise at black armour and took this opportunity to do so. I messed around with the inks in my collection when painting the horns and skin of the warrior. Its curious how bright and luminous you can get basecolours by adding a few drops of the stuff. In the far future, I will paint a Tzeentch army and hope to make good use of these skills. 

And finally, this old warrior was part of a really (pre-Oldhammer) eBay win. I must admit I hated the model when I first saw it and it has resided in a bag ever since. But there was something about him that just said 'Slaaneshi' to me so he went in. The gold armour was incredibly easy to achieve. Basecoat of gold followed by the chestnut ink was. The edges of the models to picked out with some silvera dn that was pretty much that, apart from a  little purple here and there to help tie the model in to the loose themes of the army. 

Chaos Thug Re-enforcements for the Oldhammer Weekend

Like many Oldhammerers, I am in the teaching profession. Subsequently, I have just started the long six week holiday that is our reward for putting up with 'experts' in our field like Michael Gove telling us how we should be doing our job. With just under three weeks until the Oldhammer Weekend kicks off painting in the Orlygg household is starting to build towards an industrial scale. I plan to get a large part of the Slanneshi army I have been planning for sometime completed, and this involves finishing off a thug regiment, a chaos warrior regiment and a unit of mounted chaos warriors all of whom will serve the pleasure god.

The image above shows off my latest banner, painted for the thug regiment I mentioned before. Its a simple printer paper job attached with flaps to a wire frame. Things were a little different with this one, as the actual banner pole had to be extended as I cut it too short. I used brass wire to create two coil ties to hold the pieces together before running superglue down inside the joins. The result is really rather strong. The banner is different in style form my previous efforts as I attempted to show a figure rather than a face or geometric symbols. To this end, I did a little research into tapestries used by Christian groups here in the UK as well as the USA. Their work was often stylized and out of proportion but it run a cord with what I was wanting to achieve, after all, these followers would be intelligent and worshipful, despite being depraved, and would no doubt want to reflect their god well. I just copied the design I found and merged ideas from John Blanche's drawing of Slannesh from Slaves to Darkness. 

The actual model is a quick conversion of the chaos thug with two pistols. I simply cut away one of the arms and replaced it with a tentacle with the wire pole supported through the base and secure with greenstuff underneath. I really went to town on the skin as I felt that I wasn't really going far enough with the 'chaotic' element behind this range of models. After all, the original add for Slaves to Darkness said 'chaos thugs any colour you like' or some such.  

These two models are actually quite rare in my collection. Actual models that I owned in the 1980s that survived the two major culls I had to do with my collection to keep myself afloat financially in years gone past. They have sat at the bottom of my chaos thug collection bag ever since and I was pleased to get them finally painted up for my modern forces. They must have both been painted and stripped three or four times over the years. They also served as warm up models as I haven't had much time for miniature painting over the last few hectic weeks of school. I am always surprised about how quickly techniques fall away if you don't remain in constant practice, so perhaps one day these two will see the paint stripper once again and be met with a fresh coat of paint. 

I finished these three models last night and I must say I really enjoyed painting them, though I must admit to finding some of the effects I created challenging at the time. Still, I am quite happy with the overall look of this little group, especially when I had finished the varied shield designs. The miniature in the centre if worthy of note as it was bought for me by my HLTA at school (that's my classroom teaching assistant for those of you not in the know) after learning about my blog. He was badly damaged when he arrived in my possession and needed quite a bit of repair work as both his horns and shield spike had been badly cut away. Patient repair work with greenstuff restored him to new and here he is ready for service. I haven't had a chance to show him to her yet but I plan to take the miniature into school next term. 

For the shield designs I wanted to move away from just doing variants of the ogre face design. So, I explored a little bit into symbols used by other painters when dealing with Slannesh. All contain work on a theme, the Slannesh symbol, and follow the set of colours I had been using to bring coherency to force, namely pastel pink, green and blue. 

Right, back to the painting desk for me. I need to finish off the champion model for this unit (as well as sprucing up some of the older thug models in my collection for their paint jobs are in need of a bit of TLC in places) as well as finishing off the test piece for the unit of mounted chaos warriors. Hopefully, you will see an update soon! 

Orlygg.

A Slaaneshi Champion, Three Chaos Warriors and a Chaos Hound

Yesterday, I spoke about it being half-term for me. I have been rather swamped by work, life and illnesses and the following ten days of holiday are very much welcome. My painting station has done little but collect dust since the New Year, with a number of unfinished miniatures propping it up. So after an episode of Birds of a Feather (ITV) and a glorious hour with the BBC's new Musketeers drama series with the wife, I settled down amongst the clutter in my corner and got to work. A slow and leisurely morning also helped me get these on the shelf too. 

Firstly, I got this classic Jes Goodwin champion completed. Originally, this was just going to be a touch up job as this figure was one of the first I knocked out when I went 'Old School' in 2011. Obviously, my painting skill and colour palette has changed some what since then and I felt that this model was looking rather out of place. Long term readers may recognise this model as the one I used to represent Slakesin the Fondler during my RoC campaign. Eventually, my quick brush and touch up ended up with a total repaint and I added lots of pastel pinks and greens to help it fit alongside some of my more recent Slaanesh stuff. I am rather pleased with the result, those I don't like the sword as much as the original scheme but you cannot have everything. 

Next to finish was this Chaos Warrior, also by Jes Goodwin, and a variant on Slambo it seems. I was fairly familiar with much of this model (and the boots are almost exactly them same as the first Old School model I painted) so the paint went on easily. I used purple for the chainmail because I was tired of just doing green or metallic shades. I used a little gold though, on the rim around the helmet, to tie in the minimal touch of gold that many of the other Slaanesh models I have finished have. Two cheeky pink pieces of armour were the finishing touches. They almost look like chaos boobs do they not?

I wasn't in the mood for intricate work, so knocked out a quick twenty minute shield for this warrior. Instead of just using the face, I experimented with the Slaanesh symbol on the forward of the leering visage and used pink washes to try and make it appear as if the symbol is branded on to the head of the image. Not sure how successful it was, but the colours certainly help tie everything together. 

By the time I blocked out the colours for this figure, I had settled on a hotch-potch of green, pink, purple, blue and black, chased with a little gold for the armour. I continued to use gold in tiny places, like the collar around the model's neck and the inserts of the shoulder armour. I spent a little longer on the face, highlight ing flesh up to white to get that pale and perverse look (see me in the winter) and used a nice shade of black to add depth to the eyes and tongue. I rather like using yellow and black for eyes at the moment, perhaps due to teaching my Year 2 class all about Aztec masks this term, and added them to this model. I particularly like the face on this one, again another classic by Jes Goodwin, and enjoyed painting it. 

Strange pose alert! This model, and I am not sure who the sculptor was, has one of those '80s strange poses that you only seem to get from Citadel. I followed up on my hotch-potch colour scheme here, but added a lot more black. It took me a while to get the face finished, though to be honest, by this point I was cutting corners as I wanted to get on with the shield and close the project. I added a red wash to the yellow eye thing that I have going on at the moment, and this resulted in a far more angrier finish for the face, which I liked. I opted for a totally black sword with a grey edge highlight as I am sick of metallic weapons on chaos warriors at the moment. 

The shield on this model was stuck on my a previous owner in the depths of history with some pretty nasty two part resin glue by the looks of things. So rather than cut away the shield, I just painted it in situ. Inspired by eye shields of yesterday I just had a play around with a few colours and had this after about fifteen minutes. Not brilliant by a long way, and rather cartoony, but I learnt a bit about doing 'eye shield' designs and will probably return to them some time in the future when I am willing to commit more time to a design. 

Finally, a chaos hound. I painted this one quite a while ago for my Khorne army, but the green came out differently than I'd intended, making this canine more suited to the pleasure god. I added the dots to the scorpion tail and the patches on the animal's fur last night as I felt it helped break up the green coat. I like the result, and I hope you do too. The idea for the way the pattern spreads was inspired by my mother-in-law's Jack Russell dogs. 

Right, with these models finished its time for 'something completely different'... Actually, not just yet, as I have my scenery project to finish too. Well, I have nothing really planned for this afternoon so I hope to share with you the first stage tomorrow. 

Orlygg.

Slaaneshi Beastman and two Chaos Warriors

I am sure that like many of you the family commitments are beginning to ease now that Great Aunt Agatha has been popped on a bus/train/aeroplane and things begin to settle down once more after Christmas. My household is no exception. Being back at home, I lost little time in getting the next batch of Slaaneshi miniatures painted up, though finding decent natural light to work by (and take photographs with) is proving to be difficult.

I have painted this model before so it too on a couple of hours to complete. This time the colour scheme very much followed the pattern I have been developing for this force. Salmon pink with pastel blues and greens, supported by blacks and golds. This model was produced to complete the 12 model unit I showed off last time if Adolphus doesn't want to be part of the unit. Otherwise, he will relax in the depth of my case until another 5 Slaaneshi beastmen are painted up into a smaller unit. I want this force to be beastman heavy, so I plan to include centaurs and minotaurs some time in the future. But in the meantime, I have decided that the second unit I paint, following the six member quota of a Slaaneshi force, will be Chaos Warriors. 

And here is the first of those Chaos Warriors. This one is one of the models that were produced to be Slaanesh favoured, complete with single bosom and crab claw. I used this model as a opportunity to experiment with painting pink and I feel that I have been quite successful. If I was to have a second go, I think I would include more white in the mix earlier on and get the tone more milky, but that is for a future model, maybe even one of the other Chaos Warriors. A fun, if a little crude, sculpt that seemed to take days to complete for some reason. 

In contrast with the above mode, this miniature seemed to take no time at all. Purple, gold, black and flesh all seemed to merge together pretty well though I avoided using a pink this time. What d you think?

Orlygg.

Slaangor: Beastmen of the Pleasure God

As Monday night draws to a close I have managed to get some Slaangor (that's Slaaneshi Beastmen to the uninitiated) completed, based and have added their shields. Like Adolphus in the previous post, these models were started quite some time ago and were abandoned as my interest was piqued in other areas so its good to get them finished. As I did with my Khorne army, I attempted to match as many of the tones for these miniatures as those used in Slaves to Darkness; namely pastel hues of green, pink, blue and purple. Black and gold were also added for good measure. 

Here we have the first two Slaangor. I am not sure who sculpted these, but they did a good job, filling the models with lots of additional details that were fun to paint. I used inks to add depth to each of the colours in turn before creating highlights by adding white. The metals were painted in my usual way. I was particularly impressed with how the two shields came out. I had opted to use different shaped shields than those used on the Khorne models. There I favoured the round shields but with the Slaanesh beastmen I chose to use the original chaos shield shapes. I have painted on them before in the past, and several of my Khorne army have got them attached on their shield arms but this was the first time I had used them extensively. A change in shape brought about the need to adapt my 'chaos face' designs. Have a look at how the designs came out- what do you think?

Here's a close up of the first design. This is the first time I have painted a design on this type of shield and I must say I feel its once of my best. I opted to paint a more human face but this time in profile. The addition of the glaring eye and gnashing teeth gave the design enough malign presence to be suitably chaos like. Again, I mixed in purple ink with my purple paint to create the depth and richness of tone before highlighting the detail with white. My son, who is three, told me that this shield was 'too scary' and that I should hide it high up in the cabinet!

This design had a great deal more in common with those I have done in the past, with the addition of a few subtle boils to the 'skin' of the face. I also shaded the eyes in with green to contrast with the light pink of the face itself. This colour was achieved by adding a touch of white to a very bright red. This gave a deep pink that was suitable as a base colour. Over this I shaded with a chestnut ink/red ink mix. I added white to create the highlights in increasing stages. 

Next, the standard bearer. This was a simple conversion. I cut away the old spear that this miniature is armed with and drilled through with a pin vice. It was a simple job to push the wire through and create the banner pole. The banner itself is made of paper, a departure from the tin one I made for the Khorne standard. The method was much the same, with the background created through flicking paint in varying shades against a parchment base colour. The large, purple face was added later and was painted in exactly the same way I do the round chaos shields. I added some plastic shields and an orc head from suitable decoration. 

A closure shot of the beastman and his shield design. I stuck with the colour themes of pink, gold and black with this one as well as purple and green as spot colours. The shield was painted in green to contrast with the orc's head at the top of the banner pole and was just a longer variant of the chaos head. I used red and brown ink to create the weeping lips and eyes which I again highlighted by adding a little of the light green. 

A quick top down view to show of the colours on the banner. The shields were taken from the Gripping Beast plastic viking range and the orc head is, of course, from Warhammer Plastic Regiments.

By adding the new miniatures to those that I painted a couple of years ago for the Realm of Chaos campaign I have my first completed unit for Adolphus' new army. These beastmen will act as his bodyguard and I intend to paint an additional beastman for the unit to ensure that he can be replaced if I decide to field him as an independent character!

So far, so good!

Orlygg.

Slaaneshi Champion: Adolphus Tiberius Lewdflail

With my work done for two weeks and the Christmas holidays beginning today after a rather quiet weekend the festive painting begins in earnest. I have quite a cluttered painting table by any standards, with about ten models in various stages of completion. The theme of the week is Slaanesh. I hope to build a force to take on Ulthur Deathfist in the near future. It is my intention to produce two interesting chaos armies for use at other Oldhammer types' houses. I meet plenty of you that say 'I would really love to play but I have no painted models' so I hope that having two exciting forces, a reasonable table and some scenery would help spread the gospel of Old School Warhammer to those who don't have the resources to put on a good battle. 

This miniature has a rather interesting history. It is, of course, one of Jes Goodwin's Chaos Champion range he produced in the later 1980s. It is my opinion that these models have never been bettered by anyone else due to the varied range, twisted imagination and collectability. What really surprised me was flicking through the latest issue of WD in Tescos the other day, as I do, and I noticed that this Nurgle Champion had been inducted into the Hall of Fame. Now I am not naive enough not to know that miniatures selected for this are more than likely going to have to be available now, and that the Hall of Fame is really just another advert, but come on!. Goodwin's range is vastly superior and consists of a great number of different models for all four gods. The one I selected to paint on is one of the best in my opinion. Quite why they haven't been all re-released in the collectors range is beyond me. 

As I said, this model has a rather interesting personal history. It was originally intended to be my Slakesin character in my Realm of Chaos campaign that inspired this blog. In fact I remember starting painting it while my son was very young and he is now nearly four. I am not sure exactly what it was but something caused me to give up on it. In hindsight, it may have been the complex detail as my painting skills three years ago are not a patch on what they are now. So whatever caused me to cease work on it saw the model abandoned to various storage piles and draws until I came across it a few months ago and returned it to the painting station. I imagined finishing it off at some point. Then the other day I had just mixed up a nice chestnut ink wash for a different model, and having finished the application with plenty to share decided to paint this champion with the leftovers. 

That ink wash really brought out the depth in the model and made it pop. It was pretty easy to apply a couple of layers of highlights here and there to finish the model. And here his is! Ready to lead my Slaaneshi army. All he needed was a suitable name so I chose Adolphus Tiberius Lewdflail. I thought it has a suitably perverted ring to it!

Orlygg.