The Mysterious Citadel Chaos Agent

Welcome to 2016. I have to say that I am glad we are getting a little more light now as the days are slowly becoming longer. With my will to paint now quite strong (and I have a number of little projects that I am working on at the moment) and with the need to complete fifteen skeletons by the end of the January, I felt its necessary to get going with brush, water and paint something. I chose this rather unusual model from the depths of my collection. 

He was part of a big job lot I bought a couple of years ago, I knew he was something unusual then, just from having collected these models for years, but I knew very little about him beyond him being some kind of follower of chaos. If your observe the detail on the model - and my photograph is too poor for you to do so here - you will see a tiny Khorne symbol on his chest badge. So he was clearly meant to be a follower of the Blood God in some way. 

I am an advocate of speed painting. It really does help strengthen your skills and can help get a greater number of models complete and on the table, if you can cope with the drop in finish (which I can). I set myself of two hours for this model and set to work. Most of my time was spent on the robe, which was built up in stages using layering. To each layer I added a little bit more yellow to slowly draw out the folds of the material. I spent just under an hour on that part of the model, which meant that I had an hour left for the rest of it!

The rope was simple. A brown base coat and wash (dried with a hairdryer) layered over with my Foundry triad for bone. This took all of five minutes to complete and I really cannot recommend Foundry paint and hairdryers enough! The flesh took a little longer to work out, but I ended up with a purply pink. It was at this point I realised that the face and hands were a little mis-cast and much of the fine detail obscured. I just painted the worse affected areas black and highlighted with a little grey. I don't think it looks too bad. 

With time running out, it was a case of a quick layer of dark silver on the blade and gold on the pommel of the dagger, and a quick highlight before work began on the base. I used my usual high speed retro method for the base and took advantage of what little natural light remained to snap this picture. 

All in all, I am pleased with the result but I was left wondering what range the figure really belonged to. So, I headed straight over to Solegends and the collection of Orclord. By my reckoning, the famed collector (who also goes my the strange moniker of Richard Hale) would have a decent painted version of him and I could find out a little more. I was in luck, as it seems he was originally called a Chaos Agent and was released with two zombies - one of whom was the Vietnam dressed example. This rang a bell with me somewhere, and I recalled fairly certainly that I had seen these figures in Rogue Trader packaging at some point - so perhaps they were part of 40k. 

Now as many of you will know, I am a Warhammer-centric painter and collector, and Rogue Trader doesn't really interest me much at all. The figure is still very useful to me as a character model for my Khorne army mind, and it was with such a purpose he was painted. But what did he have to do with Rogue Trader? I certainly don't recall seeing him in a White Dwarf, nor can I recall any associated rules for chaos agents and their zombies!

Luckily, Orclord has already found the answer to this mystery. It seems that they were produced as an expansion of the Chainsaw Warrior miniatures set, but were ultimately released with 40k packaging. More visual material can be found here if you are interested.

So the Chaos Agent has a bit of a strange pedigree. Designed for Chainsaw Warrior, released under the Rogue Trader banner and now serving as part of my old school Khorne army.

An interesting figure to own and paint.

Orlygg