Darumog Lizard Priest - Battle Chaos part 10

Following is friend Dark Torgt Hellgrin seen in a previous post, we now have Darumog Lizard priest acompanied by his familiar "Imp 3"

Darumog Lizard priest with famliliar

I painted him to give him an armour made of bone and steel with dirty clothing. The imp in itself is painted in a dark red to fit the iconic satanic look though the photo doesn't show all the contrasts of the skin.
I have to say the imp misses a horn (his right horn) and I still don't knox if it's a casting flaw or if the mini itself is sculpted this way (can't really see on the red catalogue). If anyone knows, feel free to leave the answer below

Death from above - Manticore conversion - Battle Chaos part9

Okey dokey, so now we've had a little view of the general aspect of the army, it's time to make things grow a little bit. Can a decent army only be lead by a guy on foot with regular gear? Naaaah

This mini is a bit special in the fact that it was designed for the army book two editions before the current one. At the time, there was no manticore in the book and the only flyingmount available was the chaos dragon entry. I decided to start with a daemonic steed. One month after that the next army book was realeased and with it, the possibility to mount your Lord on a Manticore. I examined the converted mini and found a pair of wings would fit properly near the elbows. The steed in itself being designed as a mutation, the strange overall feeling wouldn't be a problem.

I started with archaon as a base with the addition of Carnifex legs to make it look more muscular and with the arms of a plastic chaos spawn. I used one of my favourite heads frome the spawn sprue, the one with a human head and what appears to be a cylinder in its mouth. With a little gren stuff here and there and a quick weapon swap, I had my brand new Chaos lord on Manticore :

Chaos lord on manticore

The idea is that the lord here is still Lothar (cf. to my first posts) a few years later, when he has gained power. His mount is meant to be an imperial wizard he has captured and mutated by shutting its mouth with a magical device (the cylinder in its mouth) thus making him incpapable of letting all his magic out in order to accelarate his mutation.

For those who fancy such music, I would add "Mutation of the cadaver" from Cannibal Corpse was a very strong inspiration for this mini (as well as for many of the Chaos and Undead armies) and especially Jack Owen's solo at 2'35...

What sort of songs would be your inspiration ?

Bring out your dead ! Battle Undead part 2

Trying to paint 2 armies at the same time can get tricky. Trying to paint 4 is just a proof you're going insane. Anyway, since painting takes time, i sometimes enjoy converting stuff from another army when I'm in the middle of a big rank-and-file unit, just let my brushes and brains rest a little.

During the painting of my ongoing Chaos army, I had the idea of converting vampire knights, I mean CHEAP VAMPIRE KNIGHTS.
At the time being, the undead seemed very attractive but the latest black riders had'nt been released yet. My idea wad to use skeletton horses with empire army armour with Dark elves cold one riders to have a vampire touch.

The result is quite good enough and sufficiently close to what I was aiming for, the only thing I think is needed is rotten cloak coming from underneath the armour parts of the horses but I guess that would have been easier to do before finising the rest...

I have to say this conversion proved to be reasonably easy for a simple reason :  the old undead horses end the old empire horses are built on the very same design, they have the same poses et their size correspond almost perfectly ! Finding scratch parts on other models is a usual thing but I wouldn't have expected these two batches to match so well...

Oh and I also think sculpting flames coming out form the nose and eyes of the steeds could be quite appropriate, what do you think?

As I had almost finished building up these lads (and ladies), I found a lead creature waiting fo some love : a plague cart.

I converted it just a little to give the rider a face from the new plague cart to link both in my armies. The old version will most likely be inserted in a skeletton unit to add 8 bases at once....(I've seen the trick used and it can either be splendid or stupid)

The other thing I added was a Yoke I sculpted in 2mm plastic card and scrapped with a blade to give it a wooden aspect. All of those who have this miniature know what a pain it is to assemble it and that was my answer to the problem.

By the way, you can see a brilliantly painted version of it here with the use of a lepper mini (I used mine to make a brettonian bowman).

Life is magic ! - Battle Chaos part 8

Because this blog is mainly about painting the old stuff that got me into this hobby (can it still be called a hobby with the time and money spent...), I'll be presenting some magical support from what I got my hands on.

Since collecting is something serious, you don't want to go buying doubles considering the price some minis can reach.

For my "realm of chaos sorceror hunt" here is my progress (I'm more than far from completing this one...)

Amongst these are some I won't even bother to chase like Slargash or Barakast which I consider not worth the price sonce I don't fancy the mini much and the price can be outrageous.

And what can better suit a chaos sorceror than a chaos familiar? 

These ar emore tricky because all of them are appealing and all of them seem like an absolute joy to paint. I don't like familiar for their power as I like them for the pleasure to paint. They are like holidays in a world of knights and barbarians. You can reaaly let yourself go on them and escape a string army theme since they are purely chaotic and so small.

My first couple from this series will be these lads fo which I tried less saturated paint to avoid a flashy vibe. I decided to assign each of my sorceror the familiar which suited best to my opinion and I believe this couple is a perfect match :

The chaos brothers - Battle Chaos part7

After talking about our dear Kaleb, the least of things is to introduce is nemesis : the chaos brothers.

I don't know how on earth these guys came to being a mixture of the blues brothers and roman gladiators to embody khornate thugs but man ! they must have had real parties at the time they came up with that. (If you happen to know the origin o such a concept, I would be more than delighted to hear the story)

To get some good Chaos brothers, you basically add :

 These kind of lads :

And these to guys here

 

You just add a spoon of khorne devotion and you end up with these :

Though I'm not big on gladiators (nor on gladiator films), I'm an absolute fan of "Joliet" Jake and Elwood Blues and since I love Kaleb, I had to give a try to his ennemies.
Findng the minis is not an easy thing, since you often find incomplete sets or complete ones for a ridiculously high price. I currently only have the two "on foot" versions with a mounted Jaek. I'm waiting for a sign of Khorne on Ebay to find my missing mounted Elwud... (or for a pm of a very kind person happening to have doubles...)

My painting of these two is not what you would call a golden daemon winner since I painted them in the middle of a rank and file bash. I chose to stick with the colour with the rest of the army since it's black and that black and only black is what they should wear.

It's 106 miles to Kaleb, we got a full horse, half a pack of cigarettes, it's dark... and we're wearing sunglasses. Hit it.

OH and by the way, my guess is Jaek would be a retarius but what would Elwud be ?...