Nicolas' Chaos Army of Tzeentch - Rank and file Month #2 (450pts)

 Equilibrium

The dad I am needs to be more like a chaos warrior on disk. You know, finding proper balance to fully embrace speed of things passing by.  (Im an engineer, not a psychiatrist)

So here they are, the first 5 chaos warriors of Tzeentch on disks for 450pts.

Painting them made me realize I had not painted armor else then boltgun metal + agrax eartshade in over a year.  Finding the middle between edge armor and the muted colors of the disks was tricky, but in the end, I thought achieving a contrast in texture was the way to go, really emphasing on the separation of the disk and warrior on top.

Definitly Keith Flint - Prodigy Singer

As for assembly, all of warriors were first pined to the disks, which were pined to there base with paper clips, the tip coiled into a ball stuck into the original plastic peg hole. As is, it is wobbly, but adding clay and sticky material with super glue to hide the steel wire also stabilize the hole miniature.

Nathan’s leader month (1415 points plus a friend)

April was spent painting up my leader which is a greater daemon of Tzeentch. To that I added a disc/screamer of tzeentch. I also managed to finish off my greater daemon of slaanesh to go with the genestealer suit army I painted a number of years ago. I must admit that I found all three figures difficult to paint - not because the sculpts are a problem (they are great IMHO) but they have lots of difficult to access areas. But I got there in the end and I’m happy how these ended up. Here they are:

The Lord of change and disc add up to 1415 points. The Keeper of Secrets will be another 900 points to my slaaneshi forces. Onto May and my pink horrors.

  

Nathan’s last lot of blue horrors - March rank and file number 3 - 795 points

The title says it all really. At one point I was looking to do my command figures but I ended up holding those over till April. For March I did nine more blue horrors and a champion on a flying disc. Here they are:

Bit tricky working out the points values for these as in third edition blue horrors had no points value. A pink horror is worth 140 points so maybe one could say a blue horror is worth 70 points each. 9 of them would be 630 points which does seem to be a bit too high. The champion is equally hard to work out a points value for because your points value in the original Realm of Chaos books came down to how many rewards you had. I’ll give him 6 rewards which is worth 150 points. Finally the disc is easy to value - those are 15 points each for a very rough total of 795 points.  

My plan for April is a couple of Lord of Change figures and a few other odds and ends. Time will tell if I get those done.

Nicolas' Chaos Army of Tzeentch - Monster Month

 After a staggering amount of hours for one miniature, I offer you my Tzeentch Hydra, the Spectral Dragon II from Grenadier, also known as Tiamat, the lawful evil goddess of greed, the queen of the chromatic dragons, for the more D&D versed companions!

War hydra - 200pts

That miniature was insane to get through to the level I had invisionned, and although I would still burn 4 more hours to refine the body and base, I am more than pleased with the actual result!

It all started with this beautiful kit I got my hands on during this OWAC planing. A lucky find, brand new, part of a "hobby shelve clearing lot", hidden in a closet for over 3 decades. It struck me, its called a dragon... but its anatomically a wyvern, and an epic lead scultp on top of that. A creature off-putting and unatural, clearly soaked in magic, perfect match for a Tzeentch army.

I attacked this project like a one of a kind, sort of stagging every step to realy feel the milestones passing by. 

First, assembly, not a beginners kit at all, parts are heavy and the alloy shrinkage makes the 2 huge body parts leaving a huge crevasse on the back along the spine, or the belly, depending on where you apply pressure. Obviously I went for the back fit.

The mixed plastic and clay base was also an interesting build, which allowed me to easily deal with the miss alignment and mostly hide this flaw.

Building the structure of the base... terrain from the Warcry Catacomb box, I better make proper use of these! Plus these old movement trays are such great massive base!

The plastic sprues I glued at the bottom of the base help minimizing the displacement of the clay when it dries up, so it cracked along the weaker points I left on purpose and the contact line with the model remains intact. Now that the exposed parts have cured some 20 hours with the model in place, i can remove it for the inner part to cure... and the model will sit back in place properly afterward... mixing clay plastic and metal is tricky but I love the process.

The original plan was to paint it exactly in my flamers color scheme, I even considered changing the heads for bird like demons... but that would have been butchery! 

I finaly started the base colors like my flamers but went for the standard 5 colors.  I aimed to bring up as highlight/accent the yellow on the blue, the red and the green heads as well as on the back spikes... then use blue highlight on the black and use green as shadow on the white... and the front and back carapace bleached bones on green.  I even kept my wet palette since January so that should go smoothly!

Which got me to the point of the actual painting, each head felt like painting an idependant miniature. It was very challenging, but after hours of grinding, it is done!  Overall, I enjoyed the process as much as the result.  Special mention to that lichen harvest I did in the forest behind one of the campsite I vesited last summer. My wife was delighted. 🤣

And a family photo of the "horde" so far;

Which makes me realize... I realy need a new background! 😅

Nathan’s rank and file month 1 - Blue Horrors of Tzeentch (1,400 pts)

The title says it all really - month one (and the plan is also months two and three) has had me painting blue horrors. The original Kev Adam’s horrors are great figures that ooze character which makes then great fun to paint. Here are the ten I got done in January:

So there we have it - ten mean, nasty little buggers that only arise when you “kill” a pink horror. Which is quite cool, even if it was (at least partly) designed to help GW sell more figures! Thankfully they can also be used on their own in the latest version of Warhammer which is how I plan to use them. But in units of nine of course as that is Tzeentch’s number. And last but not least here is a pic of my pledge figure which will be heading off to the US shortly:

So onto painting some more blue horrors I go…

James WRR's Rank & File 1: Knights in not-so-shining armour

Hector grimaced as the grill-faced servitor aimed its ultrasonic scrubber at his bruised ribcage. Caked blood and grime of a dozen different hues fell away from his pale skin, away from the sockets that would connect him to his holy power armour. Another servitor slaved away attending to this discarded silver shell not far away. 

“And then, get this,” laughed Brother Donovan as a serf tightened knee bolts on his mechanical leg, “the thing started weeping. Can you believe it? Actual tears.”

“Haven’t seen tears for a quarter century.” said Brother Kristos, urging the other Knight to continue. “Not up close, at least.”

“It was saying ‘no, no, we’re not the enemy.' The wretch!” Donovan clapped the serf around the shoulder, forcing him to crumple slightly under the weight of one monstrous hand. “‘All the beasts are slain’, says it. Aye, ‘sure thing, witch’, I say to it.”

“Then what, brother?” Kristos asked.

“Well. We torched the lot of em. Put the survivors to the sword.”

“Mightily well fought, brother. No quarter for the unclean.”

Brother Hector beckoned the servitor to leave his side. “Clean enough”, he thought, his nail-beds still stained red with gore. He sat heavily on a pew, the metal creaking under his weight, and put his head in his hands.

“I grow weary,” he said, “of the wailing.”

Brother Donovan and Brother Kristos paused in their laughter and caught one another’s gaze. In a moment, the two demi-psykers had sniffed out an off spoor, communicated like wordless predators, and felt their righteous anger return. Donovan felt for the butcher’s blade still dripping on his hip.

“Servants, begone from us. We have knightly matters to discuss with Brother Hector.” 

_____________________

Squad Heliod, in the flesh(world)

The first month of Old World Army Challenge IX has come and gone like a flash. In that time, the world has changed fast, grown mightily scary and very real brutal forces have made horrifying manoeuvres.

Maybe a trip to the grim darkness of the far future is needed in the grim darkness of 2026. And so here are my first suitably grim Grey Knights. 

Squad Heliod is my first ever unit of RTB-01 Marines, from a revered plastic kit I’ve wanted to play with as long as I’ve known they existed.

Working with these models was… interesting to say the least. Most of these second-hand Marines came painted as Blood Angels to a pretty neat standard. Apart from some horrific mould lines to scrape off, all I had to do was give them a nice blast of Leadbelcher to update their livery. 

The real challenge was the fellow armed with the missile launcher who was, let’s just say, not exactly built or painted with the greatest of attention to detail. I had to strip him right down to bare, creamy plastic, fully disassemble him then rebuild with plenty of gap filling. The original Marine kit might have been a landmark of design, but they don’t exactly glide together like today’s plastics!

But hey, awkward posing and mismatched parts are the price you pay for versatility and weapon options. 

Special weapon troopers

The two metal models are gorgeous and grungy, perfect examples of very early Citadel sculpting, when they were still trying to find a standard. One of them is half naked, for crying out loud. You wouldn’t see that today.

Painting up the Grey Knights is proving quick and fun. I simply had to wash down the Leadbelcher with black, then build back up with drybrushed metallics until I finished off with pure silver highlights and battle damage. A bit of orange Contrast paint for rust and job's a good 'un. 

The real challenge was how to differentiate metals. Pure metallic armies are always tricky, but I found that simply hitting things like Bolters and powerpack vents with Agrax Earthshade was enough to make them appear made of a much grimier, more functional metal than the shining armour. 

Brother Donovan, real bastard

I knew I wanted these guys to look suitably mean and grimdark, so I took a few cues from Blanche by adding flames, checks and brutal litanies wherever I could. Breaking up the big flat panels this way really helped to liven them up, I feel.

Another detail setting these guys apart from modern Grey Knights (apart from, you know, everything) is their iconography. I very consciously wanted to stay clear of both Rogue Trader-era Grey Knights iconography (an aquila holding an axe and a staff) and the modern equivalent (a book pierced by a sword). Both of these are complex, time-consuming designs. But I didn’t avoid them purely out of laziness. 

Rather, I’ve gone with a big white Inquisitorial seal to suggest these guys truly are nothing but an appendage of a despotic Ordo Malleus Inquisitor. They’re branded, living weapons, not holy knights. It also gives me more flex to put them on the table as generic Space Marines in later edition games in which Grey Knights no longer fielded regular Tactical Squads. 

Squad markings and iconography on display

A final note this month is on the bases. I went in knowing I wanted these Grey Knights to exist on a field of Mars-like red. I thought this would make a nice contrast to the silver armour and white details. I sculpted a few fleshy blobs on these bases, as well, to give the idea that they’re battling through a daemon world.

I wasn’t super sold on my painting of these bases at first, having simply drybrushed up from dark, cool red to a fleshy colour. But as soon as I hit the sculpted detail with Blood for the Blood God, it all came together. The organic looking bits suddenly came alive. Horrible! Gross! Wonderful!

Graffitied armour — it was the style at the time

And so, that’s month one of my second challenge in the bag. I’ve also, of course, painted and sent our friend Jaakko the customary entrance-fee model: my second version of the infamous “big-armed administratum clerk” with some suspiciously Genestealer-shaped tattoos… where could this fellow show up, I wonder?

Possible cultist heading to Finland

Finally, it’s not lost on me that I’ve dedicated myself to painting a group of violent, oppressive thugs in an environment where we’re now seeing more and more of them on the march in our real world. I’m currently rethinking some approaches and model choices as I go to avoid inadvertently valorising any such characters. I want to bring out that classic Rogue Trader/2,000 AD punk spirit, instead — channeling that righteous anarchy to paint these monstrous soldiers in as ridiculous of a light as possible.

Because the grimdark should stay in the far, fictional future. 

_____________________

Army list as of January

Squad Heliod

Tactical Squad

Sergeant with Bioscanner and Power Glove

1 Marine with Missile Launcher

1 Marine with Flamer

275 points

Suffer not the Daemon: James WRR’s introduction

G’day! It’s me, your local Chaos enthusiast back again for my second OWAC challenge attempt. This time round, I thought I’d do something unthinkable … Paint an Imperial army.

Look, the way I see it, I need some kind of foe for my Emperor’s Children to face. And what better foe for my debauched, daemon-loving psycho killers than an army of ruthless, holier-than-thou psycho killers?

For this challenge, I’m heading back to the hallowed pages of Realm of Chaos: Slaves to Darkness and picking out a rather obscure army list: The Ordo Malleus. The goal is to summon an army of psychic Space Marines, corrupt space coppers and expendable levy troops led by some of the most horrid bastards in the galaxy.

And the great work has already begun.

Do not adjust your television sets. This is not a black-and-white photo.

The Inquisition has always been one of my favourite aspects of Warhammer 40,000. The faction is key to the grimdarkness of it all, the pinnacle of the brutal repression that is somewhat (and quite horrifically) justified in the 40K universe. Inquisitors and their lackeys can also be just as weird and wonderful and terrifying as any Chaos army, employing everything from mind-wiped super soldiers to screaming daemonhosts and even alien orangutans.

Something I’m very keen to capture in this army is the fact that the Inquisition, and the Imperium as a whole, are not the good guys. There’s been far too much revisionism in modern 40K—too much “Marvelisation”—to the point that many have come to see the Space Marines as gleaming heroes, led by charismatic, demigod-like personalities.

And that’s not the way it should be. A Space Marine should be an absolute monstrosity to witness. I mean, if you were approached by an 8-foot-tall, roided-up child soldier with a gun the size of a Triumph Bonneville and tubes sticking out of their face, you wouldn’t exactly see them as an avenging angel. No, I see “real” Space Marines as the awful living weapons of a collapsing theocratic regime. The Grey Knights of the Ordo Malleus are just the super-specialised version of these weapons, pointed at the gribblies crawling from the Warp. Any glorified version of them you might see depicted in art and stories is nothing but Imperial propaganda.

The inspiration.

Like my fellow OWAC challengers, I’ve also picked out an artwork to be the “inspiration” for my army this year, and it’s this piece above that I feel most accurately captures the overall vibe I’m going for. It’s from the Rogue Trader rulebook (by, I believe, Will Rees, though I'm happy to be corrected) and is one of many glorious depictions of body-horror Space Marines within those pages.

There’s just something so evocative here, and true to the Oldhammer spirit. Sure, the proportions are out of whack. Neither of the characters are as defined as they would later become. But it’s just so wonderfully gruesome and provocative. You can really feel the anger coming off it—largely thanks to the “KILL” and “HATE” armour markings that were the style at the time—but also the sense that this is all just a bit silly. It’s perfect. Peak 40K.

While this’ll be my main inspiration for my own wacky, out-of-proportion mean marines, I’ve also got a few other works in my back pocket that further inform the styling and vibe I want to achieve with this army including those by the inimitable John Blanche.

In terms of models, this year I’ve been collecting a host of era-appropriate Marine bits from various online sources. The thrill of the chase has always been a big part of the Oldhammer appeal for me, and it has definitely been fun to hunt down these models and let fate somewhat shape the army. I’ve ended up with a horde of plastic RTB-01 marines that will form the bulk of the force (and the start of a future marine army), as well as enough big metal guns to make up a whole Devastator squad.

The big-ticket item this year is the squad of Grey Knight Terminators and the two leaders in Terminator Armour. I’m absolutely blown away by how detailed and crisp these venerable models are for their time, especially in comparison to the slightly blobbier Chaos Terminators and practically gooey metal power-armoured Marines that came out around the same time. I can’t wait to get started on them.

The aftermath of the Great Stripping.

As it stands in December, my Ordo Malleus force looks something like:

• Daemonhunter in Terminator Armour
• Grey Knights Captain in Terminator Armour
• Techmarine on Bike 
• Dreadnought
• 5x Grey Knights Terminators
• 10x Grey Knights Tactical Marines
• Rhino Armoured Transport
• 10x Grey Knights Devastators
• 6x Adeptus Arbites

And so it begins! It’s been a high-pressure start already to get to this point, as I’ve moved house recently and have been painting walls instead of minis. But I’m looking forward to hitting the hobby table hard over the coming months to bring this army of zealous monster-men to life. The fact that my chosen colour scheme is mostly just spray-painted silver should help with that.

Keep watching this space, citizen. Don’t let the Inquisition find your obedience lacking …

The elite of the elite, daemon-killers all.

Some superhuman scumbags ready to take on the supernatural powers of the Warp.