Chaos startset comming along

Yesterday I watched a video of Duncan at Games Workshop TV painting the Mighty Lord of Khorne, and he recommended keeping the lord and the hound separate for the painting process. If I'd only seen that video one day earlier...
But I will do my best painting it as one piece. There should be enough space to get to all parts of the miniature, even though it might be a little tight in between the two characters. But I am not going for the insane level of details that Duncan paints, so I am sure I will manage. I will try to use a few of the techniques he showed in the video though, as I think it will increase my level of painting quite significantly if I manage.
Watching that video I found the third color I've been on the lookout for to use on the Migthy Skullcrushers (and other minis where I need more than two colors), so next time I am at Games Workshop Oslo I will pick up a pot and be on my way. The third color will be Eshin Gray, it is a dark gray layer paint, and in the video it went nicely with the Khorne Red that is the main color, especially with a Nuln Oil wash.

I have been able to assemble more of the models from the startset, and progress is coming along nicely. I am rather busy the rest of the evenings this week, so I don't think I will finish everything until some time next week though.
The only thing that's not assembled now are the Bloodreavers, and that's twenty miniatures. They don't have more than two or three parts to glue together for each miniature, but it takes a little time cutting them off the sprues and removing moldlines (although the casting is quite good so there are not too much moldlines on them).

I have assembled the Mighty Lord as mentioned above, one Bloodsecrator, one Bloodstoker, five Blood Warriors and Khorgorath (Is it just me or are there a lot of blood in the names for this product line...)

Khorgorath is worth an extra mention here, as he is the AoS version of the 40K Hellbrute. I like the mini in general, but I feel there is something terribly wrong with his head. I don't feel that it matches the rest of the mini really. But it's not that easy to modify either, as the model comes in a pre-arranged pose and without spares. I would love if Games Workshop came with a Khorgorath model in a single box that could be posed and detailed like the builder would like (and with different head options), as it could be cool to have a group of these advancing over the battlefield.

In addition to the startset I have one box each of Bloodreavers and Blood Warriors. I'm not sure how to set up the units of the Blood Warriors yet, but I am thinking of having two units as one unit of fifteen might be too unbalanced in a game. I'll most likely use one unit of five and one of ten. The reason for this, is that there are some weapon options you only get to use in a unit of ten or more, and I would really like to be able to use what I can. The five man unit will be without command, while the ten man unit will have a command group with a standard bearer and a champion (doesn't seem to be an option for a musician for this unit).

The Bloodreavers will be two units of twenty each, Their stats say they are units of ten or more, so if I have to I can split them down to four ten man units, but then only two of the units will have command. I will build each twenty man unit with a command group with a Chieftain, musician (hornblower) and icon bearer. Hopefully there is a choice of icons so the units can have different ones.
The Bloodreavers really seems to me to be the Khorne version of the old Chaos Marauders, so I will try and keep that in mind when painting them up.

For both the Bloodwarriors and Blood Reavers, I plan to mix minis from the startset and the separate boxes in each unit, to make the units as dynamic as possible.

Had a productive day yesterday

I decided I wanted to take a short break from painting, and do some more building instead.
I am thinking of what to use as a third color for the beasts that the Mighty Skullcrushers of Khorne ride to war on. I 'm working on the first one now and so far I have painted it all Khorne Red. I know I will use a lot of Retributor Armour gold as well, but I think it will look nice with a third color for some areas. While I'm thinking on this, I thought I could add some more minis to the army so I found some of the single miniatures I had laying around.
So yesterday I assembled four characters for the army:
I assembled the Slaughterpriest with the two handed axe, the Slaughterpriest with hackblade and wrath-hammer, a Skullgrinder and the Exalted Deathbringer with the head that has big horns and who look a lot like a barbarian.

I also assembled the first of my minis from the Age of Sigmar starter set. I have decided to sell off all my Stormcast Eternals, so I thought if I managed to assemble all the Chaos figures from the box before I sold it, then I could give the buyer the complete assembly guide, instead of having to rip it in half to get what I need to assemble the Chaos force.
I plan to assemble much of this force during the week, as it looks like many of the figures are just two or three pieces that needs to be glued together. I will still need to clean them up before I get to the assembly part though...

I started with the leader, a Mighty Lord of Khorne with his pet hound, sort of the chaos version of Skarsnik and Gobbla. Getting to fix the Lord and his hound on the base was the most difficult part, as they had to line up exactly right in order to get the leash to fit right.Took a few attempts, but I think it worked quite well in the end though.

And speaking of Skarsnik (or Turnip as he is named in my Greenskin army), I've assembled three Goblin fanatics. I just love those crazy poses, so when I found a box of them laying around I had to build them right away. I tried out a new head that I haven't used before, a head with mushrooms growing on top of it. I hope I can paint it up to give it justice. The box left me with a few spare parts that I will try to use on other goblin figures to make them stand out a little bit from the standard one piece figures that I have so many of. There are some nice spare heads, a small Squig and some base things like a pot of mushroom stew and some mushrooms.

I was at Games Workshop in Oslo on Saturday, and collected my miniatures from The Fang, so in a few days I will post the before promised pics of the entries.

more characters added to the chaos army

Two new characters have been assembled this week, and more will follow...

I managed to sit for a few hours on Monday, and built the Chaos Lord that holds a big spear and looks like he is standing on high ground and looking out over the battlefield. He will be painted up in the traditional black and gold, and be a leader for the Warriros that is not dedicated to a special God.

The other character that I assembled was Gutrot Spume, who will lead the Putrid Blightkings in to battle. They are followers of Nurgle, but have decayed a lot more than the Nurgle warriors, so I will use more rust effects on their weapons, and generally make them seem more sick.
The Warriors doesn't show any skin at all, so I will do a little experimentation to see how I can produce a skintone that looks Nurgly. The armor plates will be painted like the Warriors, but will probably get some rust effects and dirt, as this will fit the look of the figures better than a clean paintjob. Then I will use the same skintones on the sorcerer as well.

I wasn't too happy with the bases on my Khorne Warriors that I entered in the Fang, so I have started to see if I can find a new way to base the army. I will make all Khorne warriors with the same base for consistency, but then I will try to make other bases for the rest of the army. I did a sample with Armageddon Dust, and I already use Lustrian Undergrowth for my Nurgle Deamons. As I make the remaining twenty bases for the Khorne warriors, I might get better with the bases, and if I get the cracked effect I want, the bases will be really cool, but if I don't learn to get that effect then there is better to use a technical paint to cover the base.

Status on the Chaos project so far

I have finished ten of my Khorne Warriors. They were entered in the painting competition "The Fang" at Games Workshop in Oslo as an Age of Sigmar unit entry, but did not end in the top three.
I will take pictures of them and pose them here, as soon as I get the minis home from the store. It will be some time next week probably.

I also entered Grim Burloksson, who in the current edition of Age of Sigmar has been reduced to a "Cogsmith". In my army he will be a character, the crazy engineer and inventor of the Badyear Blimp and several other wild inventions. Age of Sigmar have divided the Dwarfs in to two factions now, where the Cogsmith, cannon, organ gun, Gyrocopter and Gyrobomber has been put in a faction along with the Empire Steam Tank and cannons. The faction is called "Ironweld Arsenal". The rest of the Dwarfs that still exist in the game is called "Dispossessed". Stupid name if you ask me, it sounds more like someone that has been under a curse or something and manged to get rid of it. So in this blog, and in my mind I will keep calling all my Dwarfs for Dwarfs. I will field an army consisting of a lot of stuff that is end of sale, as I will use all the Dwarf units I have in my possession (pun intended) in my army. Might think a bit on what to do for the Armies on Parade though, as that might demand current issue minis. Grim entered in the Aos Single miniature category, and I did not believe he would stand a chance of a top three placement, and he didn't. The winner was an Empire general who was insanely painted with small and intricate freehand work (a worthy winner).

For the Aos Monster category I entered my Giant, or Aleguzzler Gargant as the AoS books now call him. The Giant (lets call him what he really is, so everybody knows what we're talking about) was painted and based a long time ago, but he recently got a new wash on all the skin parts. He didn't reach the top three in his category either, but I like him a lot anyway. It's sort of insane to see how big he is compared to an Ogre, who are the biggest minis I usually work with. I will take a pic to compare when I get him back from the store.

In the Open category, I entered my first Ogre unit (or Ogors as AoS like to call them, from the Gutbusters faction). They received their new base not too long ago, and I painted the trim of the bases to match just before entering them in to The Fang. They didn't reach the top three either, but I can only speculate that they might have done better than my Chaos warriors if I had entered them in the AoS Unit category instead. But with only one entry allowed for each category I had to choose...

As for the chaos army I have now primed all assembled minis. I will start to paint up some of the bigger ones alongside my chaos warriors in the near future, as they take up a lot of space on my table.

Ï have done a lot of the paint on the Sorcerer Lord, but I need to decide on how to paint some of the details before I go on.
I have also started on my Rotbringers Sorcerer for the Nurgle part of thee army.