Chaotic Restoration - Characters! Project Complete!

 To the end - characters. Ages of these range between my having had them since the mid 90s through to converting one last year.

V nice to just sit and paint out 4 character models of an evening though. Especially, as being in mainly red armour, the undercoat does most of the work!

First up - ye olde Warhammer Quest Chaos Warrior of Massive Axe.

Not a jot of paint for 25 years. 

Ye Obligatory Classic Realm of Chaos Chap. 

Ebay job, from around 2008ish. Back when such could be bought for 99p free post and there was none of this OOP OLDHAMMER RARE fishing happening. Not painting until now, although I suspect he'd been stripped in the past before I purchased.

Ye Properly Used And Loved Model.

This fellow we've seen before, so won't linger.

Ye New Boy

Plastic! Knocked this up as a conversion last summer in a fit of NON KHORNE WEAKNESS, before seeing the error of my ways and embarking on this entire army restore as penance. The idea of a chaos champion of another god crossing the floor to join Khorne is a nice one though, so his background is sorted.

Group shot. Need to think of names for three of them, but time being what it is............

AND WITH THAT..............project complete! I might tidy up my demons at some point as well, but I think thats enough WFB painting for now. 

Next step? FIGHT THEM AGAINST SOMETHING.

Chaotic Restoration - Chariots

 Chariots and what was a Warshrine at the time of building, but will just be a chariot now (6th FTW!)

Enjoyed these, and knocked them out over the course of two evenings........so an hour each, then. 

God knows what I was thinking with the placement of the drivers back in the day, but thats how they were pinned and thats how they remain! Photos don't show it, but Mnsr Halberd is staring straight into the back of Mnsr Whip

Warshrine was an odd one - I woke up one morning with a flash of inspiration, got set to building and within an hour or so, I ended up with a carriage of SKULLS AND HEADS. Its been a bit battered and broken campaigned since then, never saw table use and never got any paint, so its nice to finally see it in a finished state.

Chaotic Restoration - Chaos Warriors

 Not so much a restoration, these, as they are new. I used to have loads of them in the past, but they all got binned. A chaos army needs chaos warriors, however, so hand in pocket (again).

I really really REALLY did not enjoy painting these! I actually like painting and paint every day if I can, but these were just awful. Should have been very easy as pretty simple, but they were just dragging the paint off the brush and killing momentum every time I picked them up..........which is very unusual for me. NEVER AGAIN.

With that, heres the current standing of the force. 

HELLCANNON!

 Its a hellcannon! That beast of an artillery piece that caused much fun on the table, but I never seemed to see (nor own!) a painted one. Perhaps its just intimidating having that much metal sitting there? I had two of these at one point, as well, so no idea where the other one went.

Mandatory "before" shot:

Set about it with gusto and here we are, one chunky cannon that weighs more than my dog.

Not too bad to really do, once getting going. Using oil washes takes an awful lot of the work out of it and makes things nicely grubby and grimy.

Chaotic Restoration - Chaos Knights

 Next up in the restoration of my old chaos army...............the Knights.

Chaos knights, iconic really, aren't they? I certainly always took a unit when this was a regular table force, although being Khorne, they'd often gallop headlong into some absurd position to fight some chaff. Khorne cares not where the blood comes from.............even if its 10 skinks.

So, this is how they looked originally.

Not too shabby on a couple of them - that made a decent base coat, and the horses were in pretty good nick from when I last repainted them around 2008ish, looking at that snow basing. The brown bases? That'll be 1998ish.

Couple of things in here:

1. That metal horse in the middle and its rider. I never built nor assembled that, nor did Roger the Todger who I sourced the items from, Back In The Day. Had a good look at it, thought about what I could do to convert or paint, and decided "nope, this is a duff model and theres a reason its been sitting untouched by three owners for 23ish years". Into the grave he went.

2. The other bare metal and plastics had been stripped by me in the past, so were easy to work with and suss out what should go where and with what. However, I did some repositioning on the 5th edition Knights as, much like the plastic warriors from the time (long binned by me), their heads came out of their chests rather than proudly on their necks, held high and proud, so a minor piece of work to amend that.

3. Banners. I absolutely need to do banners this time around! The thinking used to be "I'll do the army, then do all the banners at the end", but how often did I complete an army? NEVER, thats when. Unlike now, but I did the banners at the same time.

So, after a pair of hours assembling and a couple of hours across two evenings work, here we go with the restored Knights.

Very happy, once again. This lot is going to ruin someones life/village/head/day!

Here they are with Arbaal leading the way...........

Coming along nicely. Next up..............some heavy artillery.

Chaotic Restoration - Arbaal

 Some time ago, I posted about retrieving my old chaos army from a friend who I had donated it to in the past, and subsequently was enough of a gentleman to return it to me.

https://themosquitoonthetenthfloor.blogspot.com/2021/05/chaotic-restoration.html

After a pause in this, I'm finally getting around to making these into the chaos army I always wanted, but wasn't really able to in the past for various reasons (laziness, generally)

First up - Arbaal. THE Khorne bad boy to end them all, Looking thus:

HARDMAN

My Arbaal, however was in a bit more of a sorry state:

I'd already stripped the paint of him around.......2010ish, I think? Around then was when I was more willing to get things stuck into the Dettol. The Hound came like that, and was a classic mid 90s style paint job, painted by someone else, but not too thickly. 

"Fine", thinks I, "can paint straight over the top of that, nay bother".

So, an evenings work later and Arbaal is now ready for his return to the tabletop:

Banner pole is long long gone, but thats no major loss. Obviously, if I had it, I'd be painting a suitable livery for him, but as theres no pole, theres no point and the model looks pretty good without it.

Very happy with this one, very happy indeed.

So, the Khorne army has its general! Now onto the next units that take my fancy.

Scenario - The Wendle Bridge

Following the victory at the Battle of Fenn Wood, the undead army has advanced to the river crossing at Wendle. Crossing this will allow them to quickly advance into Imperial territory and provide a point for the invasion to intensify. 

A small force of local militia and scouts has assembled to hold the bridge, whilst outriders have been sent at all speed to alert the army, who are en route, having been brought in from the Northwestern fiefdoms following the earlier loss of the Southern army. Will they arrive on time to prevent the Undead taking the bridge?

Armies - Undead vs Empire.

Table Size - 6x4, with the long edges designated East and West, the short edges North and South

Rules - Warhammer 7th Edition, using Ravening Hordes army lists

Terrain: A rocky, wooded area, with the Miren river spanning the full stretch of the terrain. Wendle Bridge sits in the middle of the river, with a few buildings nearby for the local milita. The Wendle runs from the Eastern to Western sides of the table, more towards the Southern side. The river is impassable to all foot and cavalry units.

Undead Forces and Deployment:

2000 points of Undead, deployed 12" in from the Southern edge of the table.

Empire Forces and Deployment:

The Empire army is split into two parts, the Milita and the Northwestern Relief. 

Full army size is 2200 point. Army slots for character and unit types are calculated for 2200

Militia - 600 points. May only have a single Hero character assigned to them. This force deploys within 12" of the bridge on the Northern bank. No more than one war machine

Northwestern Relief Force - 1800 points. Arrive on Turn 3 from the Northern table edge with a normal move onto the table (so infantry may move 4" on, Cavalry 7/8" on. No march on this move as they have hurriedly deployed)

Victory Conditions:

Undead - you must take possession of this bridge. Anything else will be a failure

Empire - you must hold the bridge and not allow the undead to cross to the Northern riverbank at any cost.

Undead Reinforcements

 Exhumed some more undead bits and pieces to add to the army, covering some gaps of unit types - skirmishers and flyers. Restoring older models that have been poorly treated in the past is rather pleasing work, I must say.

Wraiths and a Banshee - now I know I had more of these, as I used to run blocks of them back in 4th edition WFB. Who knows where they've gone?

(can't help feeling this would be a better model without the sword)

Ye olde bats of Doom. Not as bad as I remember these sculpts being, really. Getting those flying stands in a stronger grip involved some new drilling and putty work. One drop and those are a goner, I suspect.

Revamped Undead

My first, most abused, and most faithful army is my old Undead. Through many a war, move, campaign and cardboard box, we've been together and I've managed to hang onto them thoughout the years in spite of losing a lot of stuff.

A while ago.............errrrr ten years ago.........I did start to address some of the breakages and such, but my impetus was less then than it is now, when I'm time poor and more divided on other things like work, family and such. How that results in greater productivity, I don't know.

Now, around 18 months ago I documented some of these on this very blog, but finally gotten the army into a playable state with a concerted push of a couple of weeks and the results are below.

Even managed to convince a friend into trying classic WFB, so these have seen field and ALREADY started the invasion of the Empire, who got a spanking a couple of weeks ago.

The full army so far

Feral Vampires

Vampires dressed for dinner

Army standard

Grave Guard

Ye Olde Plague Cart

Ghouls

Grave Guard again

Skeletons

Ye Old Zombies. Still the best ones around 

Varghulf.

Ye olde Wolves of Doom

Marching banners, which I had a go at doing a Stenbock roses style look on, which I could have done better, but didn't come out shit, so I left it.

Leaving that horrendous sentence above as is, as its awful but great.

By the way, if you've never read any Stenbock, then you must. I'm a big fan. Who doesn't love this kind of stuff?

He was said to travel everywhere with a life-sized wooden doll, whom he called “le petit comte” and whom he believed to be his son; he would send constantly for news of his “son” when he was absent.

Theres a good bio here:

https://publicdomainreview.org/essay/eric-count-stenbock-a-catch-of-a-ghost

FIN