Friday 4 January 2013

Slaves to Darkness 25th Anniversary Plans

Now this is art. Sibbick's work still resonates with dark power and makes a mockery of more recent 'Chaos' artwork.

Did you know that Slaves to Darkness is going to be 25 years old in August? Well, if you didn't, you know now! And I feel that we need to celebrate this iconic (and seminal) British fantasy release here in the Oldhammer world, for I doubt that the book will get much attention from GW like Rogue Trader did. 

So, how does Orlygg suggest that we go about celebrating such an important release?

Well, I suggest that you select a force from the book and set about building something small using the original figures. The warbands are particularly useful for this, as they can be as random or as planned as you want them to be (roll off or just choose, does its matter?) and then paint them up in 'Old School Colours'. 

That is if you want to...

You could just continue to support this blog as I go about exlporing all things Slaves to Darkness. If you recall a recent post, I discussed my new year resolutions, and one of those resolutions was to get a daemonic army or two finished this year... Well that fits in perfectly with the daemonic legions published in Slaves to Darkness. 

Here are my ideas for the coming months...

Plans for the Anniversary Year

1. Models

The following is the list of armies that I want to have collected and painted by the end of the year, with a particular focus on getting enough done to have a good series of games during August, Slaves to Darkness original release month. 

Warhammer Third Edition Forces 

This will be my main focus, after all this blog has a Warhammer Third Edition focus. I intend to be able to field every force from the book. Here are a few mad jottings about the current state of affairs. 

Warband of Slaanesh - achieved (could do with a few more models though!)
Warband of Khorne - again achieved (add some different units other than beastmen)
Daemonic Legion of Slaanesh and Legion of Khorne  - purely daemon armies, I am pretty sure I have all the models required
Army of Khorne and Army of Slaanesh - I have a fair few models (and I can include many from the warbands) but a little investment is going to be required here.

Dark, morbid and twisted. The baroque designs of Ian Miller.
Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader: Dark Millennium

Warband of Slaanesh - nil
Warband of Khorne - nil
World Eaters Force -nil
Emperor's Children Force -nil
Black Legion Force -nil
The Ordo Malleus -nil

Oh dear, not much Rogue Trader love going on... I may have one or two old chaos marines kicking around but that is it. So, I intend to build a Rogue Trader Khorne and Slaanesh warband. I have plenty of models that could easily be used for a champion and the random structure of the followers chart should keep things interesting. I'll cover this part of the celebration on my Rogue Trader blog.

2. Gaming

Regular readers will recall how another one of my resolutions was to use the Oldhammer Opponent Finder to locate other enthusiasts and play against them... Well what better to take with me but Khorne and Slaanesh warbands for both WFB3 and RT? I could certainly get some embryonic games going with what I have painted at the moment and in the future I hope to be able to play complex daemonic games too!

Any one fancy a game?

3. Research

I hope to be able to continue my 'Acceptable in the '80s' articles into the release of Slaves to Darkness so others can have reference to this classic material, and perhaps make judgement 25 years later. Secondly to this, I hope to contact and interview some of the individuals involved behind the Realms of Chaos project so we can learn a little more about the conception and creation of this classic Warhammer resource. So if you know anyone who was involved (or were actually involved someway yourself)  or if you know any juicy details please contact me!

Is it me, or has the rarest of things been hiding in plain sight all these years? A sorcerer  of Khorne  in yellow a black stripes?

Who's along for the ride then?

Orlygg.



9 comments:

  1. I hope to find a reasonable priced copy of Slaves to Darkness before August.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Orylgg,

    I will follow this effort with great interest. I am almost done with my own 3E chaos army of 1000pts With about 500pts of that made up of old hammer figures so I do have a small warband ready to go.

    If you don't find an opponent we could try something like Thantsants, Dreamfish, Gaj and I are doing.

    I'm looking forward to the post about the WD realm of chaos. This year I have managed to gain issues 93-98 but the early 100's have been sniped away on ebay. Ugh!

    Cheers and looking forward to the next post!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Excited ,as always, to follow your progress. checking this blog has firmly become part of my daily routine and it helps to keep my Oldhammer enthusiasm levels high against the intrusions of life! :-)

    Found links where both books can be obtained through torrent:

    http://kat.ph/warhammer-realms-of-chaos-slaves-to-darkness-pdf-t703789.html

    http://kat.ph/warhammer-realms-of-chaos-the-lost-and-the-damned-t1418388.html

    Keep up the fantastic work!

    ReplyDelete
  4. I owe my current Dark elf and Beastman armies to rolling up six dark elf followers and two groups of beastmen for my Slaanesh champion back in the day. I still have the figures from back them but most have been stripped down and either repainted or are still in the primer. I might not be able to go completely old school with the models but I have more than enough to play some games.

    ColKG

    ReplyDelete
  5. I had no idea that Slaves would be 25 in August, so thanks for the heads up! I'm lucky enough to own good copies of both Slaves and Lost and the Damned, and they're still awesome books to flick through and read. I feel like I'm absorbing inspiration and ideas when I'm reading through them and gazing at the pictures!

    I actually used the Realms of Chaos books to run a short series of games in conjunction with my Rogue Trader rules. I made up three warbands of Chaos Space Marines (1 Khorne, 1 Nurgle and 1 Tzeentch), which each consisted of 5-6 marines with various weapons and mutations, plus a motley bunch of followers (thugs, beastmen, chaos warriors, etc).

    I converted every single one of the marines from my RTB01 beakies, adding mutations, archaic weapons and 'chaosy' looking bits onto them (shoulder pads, horns, backpacks, etc). It was great fun playing games with these guys when 'proper' 40k games were too much of a faff to play (we mostly didn't have enough models between us for that in any case).

    I still have those chaos renegade warbands on a shelf somewhere!

    ReplyDelete
  6. Right, I'm up for this. Orlygg, what sort of Warbands have be using for the Realm of Chaos games? Exalted? The reason I'm asking is that I plan to roll up a suitable Nurgle warband, buy it, assemble it and then challenge you to a game at some point this year.

    ReplyDelete
  7. perhaps it would be in the realms of possibility to choose a suitably central location to all interested parties and then arrange a day/weekend event later in the year? E.g. a mini narrative driven campaign based around modest sized chaos warbands??

    This could be very awesome if we could find a suitable location and venue in which to conduct it... A wargames club ideally i guess though if everyone brought a little terrain with them, another public venue (church hall??) might do..

    what do people think?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I think it would be a great idea. Warhammer World might be a good choice: it's a central location and it already supports similar small scale events for Inquisitor and the like.

      Delete
  8. I would like to attend but I am on the other side of the pond.

    ColKG

    ReplyDelete