A Warhammer Bestiary: Zoat

Ah, the zoat! For me, this model had the unfavourable status of 'Citadel's ugliest miniature' and I was really rather reluctant to paint it. In fact, I very nearly didn't have a zoat to paint at all (they are quite expensive you know!) and it was only down to luck I managed to pick this one up for my usual price of 'next to nothing.' 

You see, this is a zoat of two halves. I bought the leg section quite some years previously as a 99p lot on eBay and had to wait until only a couple of months ago to get my hands on the top half for a similar price. It wasn't quite the model I was after, considering that I planned back then to only but one zoat, but the one piece zoat with staff wasn't available. I wouldn't have minded paying a little bit more for that model either. 

Still, I had a complete model and it was on the list to paint, so paint it I did. One thing I knew I didn't want to do when working on this model was use any green. I am feeling a little greened out if truth be told after painting snotlings, orcs and lizardmen of late. So I chose a brown colour for my zoat and to be honest with you, I am really rather pleased with the result. I selected a complimentary yellow shade from the chest area, incorporating a little colour harmony into the process, and used bone to paint up the toenails. 

I used purple to help suggest that the creature's mouth is a little more than just a black hole and highlighted the teeth with more bone shades. The eyes were done with the classic red base and tiny yellow dot, which I feel always brings eyes to life on monsters and creatures such as these. Finally, I painted the funny sphere in the zoat's hand in a kind of electric crackling way that was only partially successful. I am not bothered as it was a first go and its certainly a technique that I would like to do again. 

To conclude, I really enjoyed this paint job and I would be more than willing to have another go at the other fantasy zoat at some time.I hope you like him too!

Orlygg

A Warhammer Bestiary: Snotlings

Despite life throwing everything at us at the moment, I have managed to get a bit of painting in recently. One thing that I have lacked is decent light to take photographs of my efforts. As some of your with know, I prefer to use natural light to capture my work and favour a printed out background to add depth and character to the image.

This morning saw a few rays of sunshine break through the eternal grey of November, so I took advantage of the sudden illumination to take a few snaps of my work. Regular readers will already know about my long term painting project 'A Warhammer Bestiary', in which I try and paint up a model for each entry in the Bestiary section. This model, or should that be models, represent snotlings, a race as 'Warhammer' as can be in my opinion. 

Why? They are rather loony, frankly, and tongue in cheek lunacy is a key element of the earlier editions of Warhammer, and GW generally in the 1980s. Puns, silly ideas and in-jokes abound. Comedy is great foil to horror. 

In researching this paint job I took the time to learn a little bit of background to the snotlings. Obviously, they are the smallest and weakest of the goblinoid races and are perhaps the most cunning and sneaking of their species. They have to be, for they live off the scraps to be found from goblins, orcs and even wild animals. Orcs are even known to farm these small creatures and use them as a food source. When desperate, they even herd them into battle!

Surprisingly, Snotlings are not evil in alignment. They lack the cruel streak to be found in their closest relations and should really be considered more of a nuisance than a threat. Their stats certainly reflect this, though interestingly they are immune to poison, perhaps due to the fungus they grow and use a weapons. 

The miniatures themselves, sculpted by Kev Adams, are great fun. Which is what you would expect from the goblinoid range of the 1980s. They models you can see here were rescued by me from a car boot sale last summer. Its amazing what you can find when the winds of luck blow, isn't it? I would certainly want to collect more of these tiny greenskins in the future as they are varied and amusing to work with. If you don't own any or haven't yet painted any, I really recommend that you do!

Next, a zoat! 

Chivalry

I my last post I made reference to another one of those 'lost' GW games that never quite made it out of the Studio and into gamer's lofts. That game was, of course, Chivalry. A good read of the first page of the article will inform any enthusiast that Chivalry was a game involving battling knights set not in the Warhammer World, but the Fourteenth century and was being developed by Alan & Mike Perry, Dave Andrews and Nigel Stillman. 

Now that is quite a design team, is it not?

Sadly, all we got to see of this game is what I present to you here in this post. A card based system for fighting one on one engagements between two knights. Though with a little conjecture, we could easily suppose that the 'Full Tilt' game published in White Dwarf 215 some seven years later may well have its origins in the Chivalry project.

So what do we have here? In truth, its a fairly simple card game that should resolve a combat quite quickly and if played between to players who are familiar with the system, fairly frantic. Thanks to the enduring images of the knights on the cards themselves, many of which display the zany humour of GW at that time, I could imagine it easy to imagine your models leaping, and slashing and blocking away with gusto. The distract cards are particularly amusing, to me anyway, and remain something I have fond memories of, as are the cleave cards, complete with bloodthirsty depictions of limbs being removed. 

By favourite card has always been the boot card. Classy!

If you don't want to read the article presented in scans I shall give you the quick gist of how the card game works. Players roll a die with the highest scorer being deemed the attacker and the lower, the defender. Each player then selects six cards (attack or defence) from the decks. The attacking player can select one of his cards to represent his first strike, or risk picking the top card on the remaining deck. Once this card has been played its laid down on the table and the defending player checks his cards to find out if he can defend such a strike. If not, the number indicated on the attack card informs the player how many cards he must lose.

Play continues until one player lacks any cards at all. 

This being GW, there are several other 'special rules' to consider that further vary the game and add a little more depth. These rules are linked to the rarer cards in the deck. 

This being White Dwarf, there are suggestions about how the system could be adapted for use in Warhammer. They suggest that the cards are used to help resolve personal challenges on the battlefield and go as far giving you a few pointers how to tweak the system to accommodate it. 

Personally, it looks like a bit of fun and a desire to use it may well encourage players to issue personal challenges just to try out the system. I cannot actually ever remember playing it though, which is a shame, as I played practically everything else GW produced during this era but it is certainly something I hope to try out in the future. 

 

So then? Anyone else remember this card game from way back in 1990? Did any of you readers actually play it? As always, please share your opinions in the comments section below!

Orlygg

Bretonnia, Again!

Hello all! Problems abound once again and explain the fluctuating nature of posts here this month. But at least I can snatch a few moments to share these great old dioramas by the Perry's. Play spot the Bretonnian figure in these 'really rather historical' Citadel set-ups and marvel over the proper old school scenery too. 

The two scenes here are all rather 'too realistic' to be considered Warhammer don't you think? The tone of the the scenery is different in style to much of the stuff scene in the late 1980s and the early 1990s. For years I pondered this strange observation. But in recent times, I have uncovered threads that lead towards a 'yet another' unpublished GW game that would have put the Bretonnian range centre stage. For its seems, for a while anyway, that a knight vs knight wargame was being developed in the famous Design Studio. Sadly, shots like these, the outstanding Bretonnian range and few other sources are all that remain of this project. 

'Eavy Metal Special: White Dwarf 129

Issue 129 of White Dwarf had a great selection of fantasy models in its 'Eavy Metal pages and made a welcome change to the sheer number of orks that had been turning up. Pleasingly, many of the models exhibited were Realm of Chaos inspired pieces, though the majority of them had been seen before. 

The first page (shown above) follows this pattern, with a number of models (the Tzeentch champions and the Bolter Wielding Nurgle chap) having been published before, though there are plenty of new pieces. The Chaos Champion on the Chaos Steed is lovely and contains lots of little quirks worth stealing for your own miniatures. Firstly, this model bears a shield with the chaotic eight pointed star and reminds us that even when painting classic figures you don't have to ally them to any particular god - something that can be rather useful if you want the option of fielding different chaotic forces but don't fancy masses of painting. 

And the black and white chequering has shades of Malal too, don't you think? 

The Champion of Nurgle on the Palanquin also impresses me. But then again, its an impressive model that still demands a high price. I foolishly sold my example some years ago for not much at all and then struggled to get hold of another one for under £50. The Daemons book that was published five years or so by GW reintroduced the Palanquin to the army and increased interest in them I guess. The one shown here is painted in suitably grotty colours and looks to smell absolutely revolting - though its the solitary contrasting yellow Nurgling that I like the most. If you are only going to own one larger Realm of Chaos piece, then this one is definitely one to consider.

The two central Nurgle Champions on foot are also worth considering, if only for the interesting (and really simple) conversion where the model on the left has had its halberd replaced with a sword. The model to the left, armed with a sword and pistol (rather piratical if you ask me) has a rather unusual colour scheme for Nurgle; blue and yellow, but one that is executed well. I love finding little gems like this as they can inspire you to paint up your Nurgle models in colours you wouldn't normally consider. 

This second page of Chaos Champions is almost entirely made up from reprinted material. But one model on this page is worth discussing, not because of its paint job but because of its perceived price. Have a look at the Chaos Champion second down from the left, with the Face of a Plaguebearer and double handed sword. When I first started toying with collecting Old School Models in about 2008, I set out to get my hands on as many of the Jes Goodwin chaos champions as possible. 

I am glad I did, though I still lack one or two, for they can now go for healthy prices being so desirable. 

Well, back then you could easily pick up many of them for about 99p. Not so the model we are discussion, and I regularly saw it selling for £15-£20 even then. I got it for £7.77 if I recall correctly, only as that was my highest offer and the winner of the auction declined to pay the £22 or whatever he originally bid. These days, I have not seen the model sell for anything near this amount which provides some of us with a valuable lesson - the price of miniatures goes up as well as down!

Adrian Wink is a name that some of you may well of heard of. He was a prolific contributor to Golden Demon competitions over a long period and won the Slayer Sword in 1997. Here he shows off some of the earlier work. Back in the day, his plastic skeletons were extremely influential for me because I so wanted to emulate his bow strings on his archers. I can remember raiding my mother's sewing box and using pink thread. Its sufficient to say that the results were not as good as Mr Wink's. 

Its nice to see his Marauder Skeletons painted up so well on this page, especially after our recent discussion about them. Many of us agreed that the pirate skeleton shown above is a particular favourite to this day. 

I shall leave you with this final page. Not Warhammer but definitely Realm of Chaos! The wonderfully twisted, chaotic and nightmarish Chaos Renegades. Warped, utterly!

Hope you enjoyed.

Orlygg.

Acceptable in the '80s: Marauder Beastmen

Issue 129 of White Dwarf came and went following the now familiar pattern of abundant Rogue Trader and Big Box game stuff, including the seminal Space Marine Armour Variants by Rick Priestley. Warhammer Fantasy Battle is relegated to a few painted figures in the 'Eavy Metal section and the now ubiquitous Marauder Miniatures release.

That month, it was chaos beastmen. 

Now I have many, many Citadel beastmen in my collection, including thirty-odd painted up examples, all of which are different, Back in the early '90s, it was much the same, though most of my models were but sad daubings with paint and brush - a bit like today according to some! Still, I really enjoyed the range for its malevolence and diversity. Even the old Ral Partha beastmen were worthy of ranking up alongside the Citadel ones I had, in fact, many of them were even more zany and bizarre as the mid to late '80s ranges. 

The trouble with the Marauder range was that they just were not as good. They just became the generic muscular goated head men that they would remain, largely, until this day. I expect that producing models to a more coherent design philosophy was much much easier than just letting your sculptors run amok with their wild imaginations, and to be far, some of the examples produced between 1985-7 are really rather naff, but there are more than enough diamonds amongst them to make the risk worthwhile. 

Perhaps Marauder lacked the resources or time and these models were all they had time to produce. At the time I was sorely disappointed by this release, and my feelings haven't changed to this day. There are many great models in the Marauder range (Ogres? Chimera?) but these beastmen are not part of that elite group. 

Even today, with all the sculpting technology that companies have at their beck-and-call, most of the ranges I have seen still hark back to this generic model. The goat man. I think this is largely due to the influence of modern plastic Warhammer figures, after all the other companies just ape the biggest fish, but I for one would really like to see a more frightening, mutated, varied range arrive one day!

Hopefully, sculpted by Kev Adams at the Foundry! (;

Bretonnia!

After our recent discussions about the different types of troll that can be found in the Third Edition Warhammer World, I thought it apt to have a quick glance at another range that we haven't really given much love to here at Realm of Chaos 80s. During some recent research, I found these lovely two pages from the 'Eavy Metal section in White Dwarf 129 detailing the new (in 1990) Bretonnian range designed by the prolific Perry Twins - who also did some of the trolls we looked at last time!

This little selection serves a a prelude to what would be released some eight months later, with the full blown range of Bretonnians. I can well remember being absolutely fascinated by this group of miniatures at the time, partly due to the historical nature of the miniatures, but also because of the wonderfully bright and patterned colour schemes they came with. 

Something else worth pointing out is that each of the miniatures is named, though the references are far more historical and less pun-tastic that back in the 1980s phase. 

The article also moves on the showcase the mounted knights and the all new (then) plastic horses to replace the rather chunky plastic originals. Again, they are given quasi-historical names, including the curious 'The Green Knight' who seems completely lacking in that particular colour. Unless the green is suggesting that he not yet tasted battle!?

A truly great range this. I look forwards to exploring it a little more with you in the future.