Stormy Teacups

Today I pretty much finished my Tzeentchian Warriors of Chaos army for Warhammer Fantasy Battles. There are a few things that may get added some time down the road, but there’s nothing that it’s missing. I have two unpainted Spawn along with a handful of Warriors and Knights that are still on their sprues that I could add and at some point I may work on a Warshrine and maybe convert up some Chaos Ogres if I feel the urge but I’m not in any hurry to do so. My next project is beckoning and I want to draw a line under this one so here’s a look at the army I spent most of the last year building up.

Originally this was part of the 8 armies initiative that I was doing along with some friends from work. The idea was that we would all build up WFB armies together and play against each other as well as enter some of the local tournaments as a group. Progress has been spotty for most of the people involved and, while most people have at least a couple of units painted up each, no-one except me actually has a playable army. I’ve ended up with about 3000 points of Chaos Warriors with a strong Tzeentch theme and visual connection so I’m scoring it as a win. Some of the units have been showcased here already – particularly the Chaos Knights and the Army Standard Bearer but most of the army hasn’t been photographed properly until tonight so here is the rest of it as well as some writeups for the more interesting pieces.

First up is the Chaos Knight Champion. When I painted up the Chaos Knight unit a while ago, I painted each of them individually as I wanted them to stand out. This looked good but it made it hard to determine which of them was the unit champion as they all looked ‘special’. So I decided to convert up a champion figure who would stand out in a unit of individuals. I cut and greenstuffed a Chaos Steed so that it was rearing up, greenstuffed the rider so he was leaning forwards in the saddle and then reversed the grip on his lance so he would be stabbing downwards rather than holding it at parade rest. After that it was time to paint him and I needed the colour scheme to be just as eyecatching as the pose. For this I decided to go back a little to a slightly older version of the Chaos lore and make the champion a corrupted Bretonnian knight who has succumbed to the insidious wiles of Chaos. This reflects the older, more Faustian background rather than the current barbarian-centric version. The idea was that his original armour and barding has fused to him and become his chaos armour and the iconography of Chaos is bleeding through and subsuming the older Bretonnian heraldry. I did a a fairly simple heraldic pattern – per pale azure and argent lozengy gules, in the first two fleur de lys or. This was repeated on the armour plates of the horse barding as well as on the rider himself, his breastplate is in pale to match his arms and his shoulderpads bear the charges, blazons and fields of the appropriate side too.

Next are a brace of Chaos Sorcerors. I have two in the army, both with the Mark of Tzeentch. One is on foot and generally goes in the Warriors unit, the other is on a Disc and hunts alone. The disc-rider is one of the first units I painted for this army but I never got around to photographing him. He’s the limited edition version released to celebrate 10 years of GW Italy and GW Germany and is a really nice figure. I’ve done him with the tentacles fading from purple to pink with a fairly standard blue and yellow scheme for his armour and robes. The Sorceror on foot is likewise in blue and yellow and I’m particularly pleased with the highlighting on the back of his cloak.

10 Marauder Horsemen were another early addition to the army. These were painted fairly fast but came out looking good despite that. I used these guys as test beds for a lot of the techniques I’d use to knock out regular Marauders as quickly as possible later on. I tried not to make them too uniform so the horses are different colours and I’ve used a limited palette on the riders to make them all individual while still keeping them coherent as a unit. They have spears and a full command group which isn’t optimal and they’ve been left on the shelf for the past few games. I’m pessimistic about their effectiveness in 8th edition and they are a low priority for most lists I build these days. I guess they could be decent warmachine hunters but any army with warmachines is likely to have enough missile fire to shred light cavalry with ease. In a similar state of limbo are ten Chaos Warhounds that were added shortly after the horsemen. These are very quick to paint and also don’t seem to have much of a role any more.

The Chaos Knights have already been featured on this blog so I’ll only quickly recap these. I painted them all as individuals to reflect their status as warrior nobles amongst the rest of the army. Each of them has a different theme going on that transfers from the steed to the rider and includes the barding. Generally these ride with the Battle Standard Bearer who has also been featured previously. I run these guys with the Mark of Tzeentch and the Banner of Rage. The Battle Standard usually carries the Blasted Standard and this combination makes the unit pretty terrifying as it is frenzied and has a 4+ ward save vs all missile fire. Because the frenzy applies to the whole unit, it also means the steeds benefit which can be vital when hitting units with a high static combat resolution. Many people seem to have written off heavy cavalry in 8th but these guys are very often the army’s MVPs.

A block of Marauders grew organically over the army’s evolution. Originally there were 15 but as 8th added more benefits for larger blocks of troops they expanded in stages to their current headcount of 30. These have flails and are usually fielded in horde formation. I’ve painted them with a palette of only five or six colours to tie them together and they are definitely fast and dirty as far as quality of finish is concerned. I also have Wulfric the Wanderer and, when playing in a game where special characters are allowed, he joins the Marauders to give them his special deployment rule. In other games he’s either left on the shelf or is fielded as a regular Exalted Champion.

A Warriors of Chaos army of course should have Chaos Warriors in it and mine has 19 in a single unit (the extra spot is usually taken by the Sorceror on foot). As with the Marauders I’ve tried to mix the colours up while sticking to a fairly limited palette. I’ve used four or five different armour colours and three or four different cloak and fur combinations. These were all painted very fast – for some reason every time I played at a tournament I’d discover that my list required more warriors than I actually had ready to go so I’d spend the night before each event speed-painting half a dozen more.

Finally I have my block of Chosen. These are somewhere between the Knights and the Warriors in theme. I’ve made them all different but not to the same extent as the Knights, rather there are repeated colours in the unit but they are in general more individual than the warriors as befits their status. The champion has stone coloured armour, the rest are a mix of dark blue, pale blue, red and purple with one in particoloured blue and red armour.

You can find more images including some work in progress shots on this gallery page.