The Death Knights - Ode to my youth...

Warning : What you're about to see is a selection of poorly painted models from between 1996 to 2006...

I don't know why but seeing those models I painted in my early years got me to dig in the boxes to let some old friends get some fresh air and light.

Between 15 and 26 years old I had this monomaniac obsession to build a chaos army for 40k. This was greatly due to the release of the Chaos codex for the 2nd edition and my previous intoxication with the Realm of Chaos books. Chaos was al I wanted to buy and paint, the eldars and fantasy models from the beginnings were gone (well just in boxes), 40k, chaos final point.

I remember thinking a lot about what colour scheme to use to get the best group effect... For some reason, I thought Khorne and Nurgle were the cool gods and therefore I wanted to give them a good place in my army. Oh and I wanted them to have white helmets to make them look like skulls. Oh and  they had to have snakebite leather gloves as well because gloves are made of leather right, so they have to be leather brown or something ?

Yes, I know starting with a 4 colours colour scheme is probably not the greatest of ideas, that's 5 if you're adding the metal on all the rims...

Over the years I have bought a metric ton of chaos space marines of all ages, even getting most of the Rogue trader range from the mail order service.

In the picture below you can see some of the 2nd edition marines who have been revisited a few years later with some new arms and weapons. The guy with the heavy bolter is one of the very few who's still in his 97 paintjob (look how clean the paintjob is) 

And here's a champion I converted a few years after that, you can note the use of a classic Jes Goodwin Khorne champion. That's one thing I did very early, I always had to chop my Realm of Chaos champions to give "good bits" to my marines...

Below is a squad of terminators with 2 heavy weapons (rules allowed you that at the time) some of which later received new plastic heads because I thought it was way cooler...

I have to say though I'm a huge Goodwin fan, those terminators are some of the very few of his models I find bad. The 2nd edition teminators in general are not my favourite but the chaos ones just don't look chaotic to me compared to the Rogue trader ones which had this more organic look...

I guess it just shows he's just half a god.

In the middle is Lothar Typhus who has lead this army right from the start. This is the 4th incarnation of him and you can still note the classic Jes goodwin chaos warrior head which has been on all Lothar's models.

For the record I always got silly jokes about his name because Lothar Typhus pronounced with a bad french accent is close to "la tartiflette" a french meal with cheese...

Terminators all around

French Tartiflette (I like that a lot)

Speaking of Lothar, at the release of the first metal demon prince for 40k, I decided to make my trusted leader in elevated form. This implied sculpting the whole head (adding some guitar and bass strings) to echo the original Goodwin head and sculpting a whole gigantic scythe to look cool. The wings were ordered from mail order and are designed for a Lord of Changes.

In all honesty, I think it's still a good model considering it's 15 years old or something. The dead ultramarine was another way to link my creation to the old stuff and it added some drama to the base.

I remember being really enthusiastic when the first plastic Berzerk box was released as it basically meant building tons of convertible Chaos marines. It also enabled me to create this particular unit I had in mind since the Realm of Chaos days when champions could be brought back as undead.

The painting is not great but I remember it looked really cool to me as I took the time to carveevery body to insert a skeleton chest inside. Given time, that's one idea I'd really like to do again with more confirmed skill and technique.

Some of the models I loved most in this army were my 2 chaos dreadnoughts. Though the models aren't very great to begin with (those head always looked stupid te me. I've always loved their sheer weight and the sense of power they have.

Like always, I augmented them with old parts meaning chaos titan tails and a palanquin rider for one of them... (the one below seems to have suffered from a broken claw (only converted myself to pinning late...)

Some of the most silly creations amongst my marines were created from various bits added together :

And as any chaos general will tell you, the champions are the ones you need to take care of.

For the record, I'm usually quite superstitious when it comes to gaming and I only field champions sporting the head of one of their enemies... This means the one on the far left never got to play but the one in the middle already killed a C'tan Nightbringer (as in their first codex) in close combat, if you remember the stats of that beast you 'll understand that this was a miracle !

These must have been my very last marines created for this army before I decided that was enough and that I needed to take a new path for my chaos. I think the conversions work quite well even though the painting is still not very good

I'd have plenty more to show but for some reason I just wanted to keep the best for the end, namely Sodomth my Slaanesh captain...

I hope you'll excuse me for the rather low form of humour displayed here but I thought it was so cool back then (something around 2002) I just had t odo it, and it's made so much people laugh (or grin) I just can't resist offereing you the vision of this poor taste that was mine a few years back

I'm very conscious that I haven't shown you any very nice model here but those have a special place in my hobby life as they were the first army I started. I've spent a good part of my carrer (from 1996 to 2006) with them and I have painted such a vast amount of models for it (those were really just the very tiny tip of the iceberg) that I cannot overlook what they represent. all the errors and mistakes taught me a lot but the one thing I like about them is how I was daring at the time even though my skills were less than adequate...

I really want to find the right mix between the will to do cool stuff like back then and the will to do them well like now.

I'd also really like to see what other projects people learnt with and projects they've spent time on in their earlier days so come on, ive those a chance to see the light of the web !