Showing posts with label Chaos Champions. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Chaos Champions. Show all posts

Saturday, 20 September 2014

Acceptable in the '80s: Marauder Chaos Warriors, Champion on Griffon, Cockatrice and Reiksgard


The next release to document in this history of Warhammer Third edition are presented here for your viewing pleasure. A bit of a mash up this time, with the release schedule moving away from army deals and towards smaller (relatively) miniatures. The MM91 Chaos Warriors are probably the most well known today, and represent the mere handful of chaos warriors that Marauder put out (there were later some mounted versions) and can be found very easily on eBay. They follow on and use many of the motifs we have seen in earlier Citadel chaos warriors over the lifespan of this blog series. Horns, twisted helm-faces, scale-mail, chainmail and so on. 

Looking at the models left to right, the first is rather squat and has obviously rolled 'John Wayne's legs' on the chaos attributes table, or otherwise was sculpted with sitting on a horse in mind. The second model looks rather triumphant, wielding a rather unlikely mace high above his head and all he needs are a collection of severed heads on his base to give him that special psychopath look. The final model is by far my favourite, and plays less on the generic themes of a chaos warrior. This model whiffs positively of the 1980s classic film, 'Labyrinth, and looking at him now I kind of wish there was a David Bowie inspired 'Goblin-King' model (attired with a suitably eye-brow raising high-trousers/codpiece set up) to lurk rather mystically in the background. Probably to twirl his steel balls!

A great, great sculpt. I don't know if anyone else has noticed, but similar to many of the other 'mini-me' miniatures that you get with Marauder, this model has his own doppleganger in the guise of the crewman of the Chaos Dwarf Swivel gun. Perhaps it was his little brother?

Its not mine, no...
The Reiksgard are not as interesting, and I can honestly say I have never noticed them on eBay - not that I was looking, but considering what I know about the amount of models GW were selling at this point there must be many thousands of them out there. Perhaps its the painting. Perhaps it the photography, but I struggle to like them here. Perhaps I should track one done and paint it to see if my judgments are fair?

The MM43 Chaos Champion on War Griffon suffers from a bit of 'static leg syndrome' with the way its claw juts out like the riding beast is a trained gundog and is dutifully indicting its master's quarry. The rest of the body looks okay, but perhaps this month's photography suffered from gremlins and the models came out looking a little worse for wear. I will reserve judgement on this model until I see a better example of it. I am sure you dutiful readers will have your own opinions on him. 

The cockatrice looks like a decent model but suffers from a rather garish paintjob. I cannot recall if Citadel did a cockatrice of their own to compare it with but I expect that I shall be chasing down this model when my Warhammer Bestiary painting challenge reaches the point of monsters.  



Some nice line drawings accompany the models, and we have another glance at the rather bland Marauder minotaurs. I thought I would include it here for completeness sake. 

Orlygg

Sunday, 14 September 2014

Orlygg's Commissions: Chaos Champion (Slambo)



Now that I have got my painter's block well and truly subdued, I have cracked on with another project I have had on the go for a while. That of the commission that Steve 'Citadel Collector' Casey made in return for a rare Alpine Dwarf model - which long term readers will know I have been after for a while. 

He was after a classic Citadel Chaos Warrior and a shield (one of the ogre face jobs that many of my chaos units have) and we spoke about suitable models. Eventually, we settled on Slambo and instead of just doing another shield, I suggested having a go at something I had been wanting to do for a while - painting chaotic little faces on the armour itself! 

Well that project is complete... As you can see here. 


I think Steve is happy with it. Hopefully, over the next few days I shall have a spare moment to wrap him up and send him off.

My next commission is something a bit bigger in scale!

A dragon!!

Orlygg

Wednesday, 24 July 2013

Champions of Chaos and Warhammer Armies Errata


I return to the Realm after a rather frustrating hiatus. If you recall my situation, I had to relocate to, frankly, an unusable location though I managed to get Trigger the horse painted. My collection was inaccessible, which meant that trades, projects and eBay sales all had to be put on hold. As did this blog.

Thankfully, today is the first day of my 6 week summer holiday and also the day I return to my regular modelling room. The builders have completed the wife's new kitchen and completed construction of the extension and in doing so have cleared access. I hope to use my free time to produce plenty of interesting old school articles for 80s Warhammer written in the coming days and begin this new sequence of blogging with the fantastic collection of painted Chaos Champions from inside WD107. I own most of these champions, save three, though none of them are painted. I have always thought that this page would be useful to inform a future painting project where all these models's paint schemes are copied. It's certainly something that others may be interested in doing so I have included the page here.

Also inside WD 107 was some little seen errata produced for Warhammer Armies. I felt that these three pages may be of use to Oldhammer fans as Warhammer Armies is probably the most influential book in the Oldhammern Scene.