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Awesome. Loving the Chaos models you've been sharing with us recently.

D

Crikey - loving those Barrow Wights Az - They are gorgeous. Beautful palette you went with there. Really really great work

Thanks Januine. I'm still really pleased with how they turned out.

Something a bit different from the norm again today. A few years ago now there was a time before Zombicide and Borderlands 2 when my gaming group spent quite a few evenings playing through those D&D Boargames. I've shown off the odd critter from Ravenloft and Ashardalon here before, but this guy is from the other side. A model purchased to represent one of the player characters. I actually created a huge list of (mostly) Reaper Miniatures to better represent the player characters as I was never particularly enamoured of the PC models that came in the boxes. One such character was the Half-Orc Thief. Needing one of those, I browsed the Reaper online catalogue and saw this guy, a lovely Tre' Manor sculpt. Shortly afterwards, he was mine.

Since I'm no fan of broccoli bases, I had to base him on something plastic and round. A Proxie models 40mm round base was the best and most appropriate thing I had, if a little large, but with his stature and wide-legged stance, this was the smallest thing I could fit him on.



The most important thing was to work out a palette that worked for a rogue, was somewhat realistic (for a fantasy trope) and wasn't completely boring. That means an all-black outfit was out. It might be the "obvious" go-to for a rogue or thief in some ways, but I also thought it's the sort of thing that's very likely to attract lots of attention if he were to be walking down a street or sitting in a tavern. Kinda like a sign saying "YES I AM A THIEF", or a guy in a ninja outfit sitting in your local Starbucks. So I wanted to use some colours. Secondly, this guy is a Half-Orc, not a weedy Elf, so I wanted to go for muted, natural colours instead of rich, opulent colours.



The result was dark grey leggings, a brown leather padded jerkin, and for a spot colour, red-brown gloves and boots. Pouches in dark grey again, and a natural woodland green for his cloak. The sort of thing that would be dark and dull enough to provide some camouflage in a town or out in the bush. His dual-wielded daggers are painted in the Vallejo colour called "Metal Black" (Or Black Metal!) - which is a really dark, true gunmetal colour. No shine, no highlight, no picking out the pommel or crossguard in bronze, or painting the little skulls on them in bone or gold or whatever. They're bloody rogue's daggers!

Anyway, this guy - like so many other figures - sat half-painted and mostly forgotten for a couple of years before I chose him a couple of weeks ago to get done and dusted. Within a day, he was finished. Since we're not playing the D&D games at the moment and haven't played Pathfinder in a year or more, now he goes into a glass cabinet until needed at some point in the future. At least he's done, though!

Heh slightly jealous of your ability to paint at work. Can't really do the same in a random field in the middle of nowhere!

Yes me too - my employers like to see me in constant motion for my pittance.

Lovely muted half orc there. I like his quilted jerkin. Reaper are so good for character models.

He looks really good Azazelx, you can tell he's a d&d miniature he's just got that kind of pose.

Those barrow wights are fantastic. The ethereal bits contrast nicely with the material bits. I especially like the faces, and the fat that they are not ethereal, meaning that when these guys are at rest, they are a pile of armor with some dead guys head on top.

I like the rogue. I think I have that same model in bones plastic and am looking forward to painting him up as the rogue for my 'brute force' themed adventuring party. Great color choices. I'll probably wind up doing something similar for mine but I doubt I'll pick as nice of a palette for him.

 weetyskemian44 wrote:
Yes me too - my employers like to see me in constant motion for my pittance.
Lovely muted half orc there. I like his quilted jerkin. Reaper are so good for character models.

Well, I only get to do it for 15-20mins of my 30min break (due to needing to walk to and back from where I can paint, toilet stop, etc), but it's a nice, if brief de-stressor and something to look forward to. It was a pretty easy figure to finish as well, and not at all unpleasant to paint. Thanks for all the positivity towards the wights as well. Again, they were fun figures to paint. My only real concern is making sure the next three have a matching palette when I get onto painting them...

The wights look nice and I really like the half Orc. I totally agree with you colour choices for him. I always thought if you were walking around in completely black outfits in a city you would stick out badly.

If you are concerned about matching the wights palette you could solve it by choosing a different palette altogether? Kind of sounds crazy, but if they may end up different anyway use it as a feature?

That's a thought, but I might just go for trying to match it, actually. Worst that happens is that it's a similar but not exact colour scheme, but I quite like that deep but luminous greeny-blue that I used, and other colours would be more suggesting of cloth or fire, etc

Two figures with a common origin but different destinies here today. The first is the Nurgle Champion of Chaos with Halberd, a 1990 The Lost and the Damned release of one of Jes Goodwin's, who shares a base sculpt with "Mace" and "Sword 3". Back then, many of the artists and sculptors in Workshop were still that little bit subversive, and liked to sneak in little "inappropriate" things into their artwork. Some were quite subtle, and others much less so. The original runes of the chaos gods had a few variations to them. While many have remained over the decades, some were quietly taken out back and shot. The most obvious one that's been excised being the version of Nurgle's rune/icon that this chap sports on both his breastplate and also atop his head, which featured on quite a few models of the time, as well as internal artwork. I never viewed that one as particularly subtle, but others to this day still somehow deny what their eyes see.



The second model in this update is harder to place with accuracy. The earliest I can find him in the old catalogues is in the 1988 Catalogue, which was the first time that Citadel/GW had really started to properly document and ...catalogue their figures. I suspect that the sculpt was released around 1985, as the model is featured in the '88 catalogue alongside many of the C35 models that were also in the Third Citadel Compendium (1985). I suspect he's from late-'85 to perhaps 86. Probably pre-'87 as the Chaos Warriors featured in those catalogues take another distinct design turn (Slambo and his ilk) before they changed yet again with the release of Realm of Chaos. The C35 era-Chaos Warriors would probably have been called Champions if such things existed in the same distinct way at the time.



As for the painting on these two - The Nurgle Champion always had a slightly ropey paintjob, which I cleaned up while keeping as much of the original paint and feel as possible. His armour had some significant tide marks from early washes which I cleaned up. I also had a play with Ryza Rust and Typhus Corrosion on his armour and toned down his overly-garish pouches.

The Undead Warrior was originally painted a horrid bright red (Khorne, right?) and then never finished, and then stripped a few years ago. I had gotten as far as re-priming him black, and then having him sit annoyingly on my desk for another couple of years. The only way to finally end that annoyingness was to paint and finish him. I decided that I've got plenty enough Chaos Warriors and Champions in my collection and mentally reassigned him to Marouda's Undead Army. I figure he can lead the small and slowly-growing "Oldhammer Skeleton" regiment. As part of the undead army, I had a palette worked out for him quite easily. I went for an aged-bronze look on his armour (ith a tiny bit of turquoise for the glow of the eyes on his helmet, red spot colour for his bright plume, and red-brown for his gloves. Bone was obviously the prefect fit for his shield, to which I added ruby-red for the eyes.



I find it amusing when "Oldhammer purists" wax poetic about the simple beauty plain flat shields and arcane armorials while bemoaning and decrying the more modern tendency towards shields (and models!) with fully sculpted details. How conveniently they forget the Marauder Miniatures sculpted shields, those of the Warhammer Fantasy Regiments and indeed, models like this guy and his peers. Me? I like both. Being able to like both is a thing. I love an excuse for a spot of cool freehand, but also enjoy working on a lovely pre-sculpted and detailed shield, like this one.

I quite like the Chaos Warrior, even with his very strange symbol, I have to tell myself the sculptor was making a joke rather than them truly not realizing what they were doing.

The Skeleton is an interesting model, I like the pose of actually trying to put the shield in front of as much of his body as possible. But I just don't gel with the skulls of the older models.

I like both color choices as well. I think the varying colors on the Nurgle Warrior works well.

My feeling is that they were taking the piss and trying to see how much they could get away with. The studio was a lot less corporate back then and from an artist friend who went over there for awhile who told me a few years later that "Adrian Smith got my spot" - meaning post Slaves to Darkness and pre-Lost and the Damned being published - the corporate office was getting very corporate, while the studio had Blanche still in his biker-in-leathers phase, many in the studio still looking like punks and bikers and metalheads, and ...interesting smells being common. Probably incense.
So that's the environment that models like the Nurgle Champ came from.

I found out some more info in the Skeletal Chaos Warrior - he's actually older than I thought.

The undead champion is an older sculpt than 1988 as you suspect. He was a preslotta model recast as a slotta base when GW converted some of their older models over in 1985. From the back his armour looks like he was sculpted by the Perry Twins and shows similarities to the armour on other early C35 Chaos Warriors and the Men at Arms range circa 1983.
If you look at the Spring 85 Citadel Journal on SoL I think you can see a poorly illustrated side view version of him in the C35 range.

And yeah, I checked there and he's in there. Making him from '84 or earlier, then converted to slotta in '85.

I have never been a fan of Nurgle, but you make his followers look good. The rust effects are remarkably realistic. I have that skeleton guy-- he' s in the queue for repainting. I hope to do as well as you did.

That Nurgle warrior is a classic, and a great paintjob

To claim that those symbols represent anything smutty is a phallusey.

I apologise.

I do not recall seeing that Skeleton Warrior before, but great mini and a top paintjob. The Nurgle warrior is great, I especially like the rust on the halberd.

 Thraxas Of Turai wrote:
To claim that those symbols represent anything smutty is a phallusey.

I apologise.

I do not recall seeing that Skeleton Warrior before, but great mini and a top paintjob. The Nurgle warrior is great, I especially like the rust on the halberd.

Lol! I think you were looking for fallacy not phallusey there fella

 angelofvengeance wrote:

 Thraxas Of Turai wrote:
To claim that those symbols represent anything smutty is a phallusey.

I apologise.

I do not recall seeing that Skeleton Warrior before, but great mini and a top paintjob. The Nurgle warrior is great, I especially like the rust on the halberd.

Lol! I think you were looking for fallacy not phallusey there fella

Phallic symbols aside, that Nurgle guy actually has a pretty cool design. The chainmail mask over the helmet isn't something you ser too often among Chaos these days. I like the wider variety in armor the old stuff had over the more uniform looking guys they have today.

I actually deliberately brought a bunch of the old Marauder plastic shields for the more intricate designs a couple of months ago!

More oldies/goodies. Great stuff.

Had a hell of a week. Back to work, a heatwave, daylight savings and then on Monday night I found out that Mum had been taken to hospital that morning for respiratory problems and being unable to walk. It was lung disease, emphysema, pneumonia, and a lung infection. She's out now, but I didn't have the mentality to post in this thread or browse other people's painting. Just to vent on a couple of other KS threads at things like Mantic's poor choices. Anyway, she's out now, and while there's naturally a lot of followup to go through, she's feeling better and as a consequence I'm starting to as well.

Llamahead - those Marauder shields are great, aren't they? I've got as fair few, I just wish I had more so I could build whole units with them.
Barzam - He's a cool model, whether he's got a phallus on his head or not. Goodwin's sculpting somehow surpasses the WTF elements of that model (and the others that he did). I agree that the variety of armour was a good thing. I do like the current look of Chaos Warriors, which is pretty much a throwback to the range that just preceded the RoC books (Slambo and his ilk) but variety is always a good thing.
Josh - Thanks, I'm looking forward to seeing your take on him. I'm thinking of digging out his peers from the same vintage, but I should concentrate on getting started stuff finished first.

Here's some more models to look at.

A few more of my old Beastmen from the Realm of Chaos era. This time, a foursome of Khorngor - Beastmen of Khorne. Distinguished by their visages being of dogs, which was a distinctive Khorne thing back then, but has pretty much faded away over time.



I had two of this sculpt, and as always when I ended up with duplicates in the past - particularly for more individual models such as Chaos ones, I wanted to distinguish them. I did so with both their fur and flesh colours as well as their shields. Military green loincloths provided both some contrast and a way for them to occasionally be part of a Traitor Imperial Guard regiment.



Very distinct shields provide a couple of quite different takes on the Rune of Khorne. One influenced by Ian Miller's work, and the other being a little more abstract, but still recognisable. Shaving the rims off those old plastic shields was (and still is) a simple matter that gives a bit more real estate to play with while giving those shields quite a different look and feel. These two were both painted in the 1990's and required relatively little work to update. Cleaning up and re-brightening the metal and some of the lacquered red armour, as well as rebasing.



These next two aren't duplicate sculpts, but they're close. They clearly share the same base sculpt, most likely the one on our left as the one with chainmail and tentacle feels more like a conversion. Again I've trimmed the rim off the shield to give more space. The skull is freehand, as is the smaller rune of Khorne on its forehead. Once again, these two needed just a little cleaning up in spots redoing the belt on one and the axe on the other - and following the same general colour notes as the previous two models.

Awesome beastmen. I love the sheer variety of models from the RoC days and before. Newer models may be technically well-executed, they lack the personality of these older guys. I really like the abstract Khorne rune.

Great news your mum is on the mend. Unfortunately the universe decided that I needed to be exposed to family tragedy early on and frequently since (wonder who I wronged in a past life) so I can very much sympathize with your situation.

I absolutely love the beastmen, they have such a chaotic feel to them, almost hybrid dog and human rather than a distinct species as the Beastmen have become.

 JoshInJapan wrote:
Awesome beastmen. I love the sheer variety of models from the RoC days and before. Newer models may be technically well-executed, they lack the personality of these older guys. I really like the abstract Khorne rune.

Nothing a few snips, bitz and green stuff won't fix

I love this blog! it's truly wonderful to have such an educated guide, guide us through the history of Citadel/GW mini's and provide brilliant examples of painted miniatures and history of them all through the many years! thanks AZ :-)

One hell of a combination of things that your Mum was suffering from, no small wonder that you lost your posting mojo. Hopefully she is feeling a lot better now Az.

Top Chaos Beastmen, as ever your shields and the freehand on them is top notch.

Lovely dog-men! And I see what you mean about the nurgle thingy.

Nothing wrong with a bit of incense. Aids the concentration... Kids today would probably do a modafinil.

Best wishes - Hope your mum recovers quickly.

Good luck to your mum loving the evil bulldogs!