Thursday, October 23, 2014

The Host in all it's Glory

As a long time Empire player, I decided to shake things up a bit and try a Warriors of Chaos list.  Here's my Warriors of Mustache - Chaos with an Empire theme



I went with just three characters in this army, all mounted.  First was the Lord (Kurt Helborg), a Battle Standard Bearer (Ludwig Schwarzhelm) and a Sorceror of Chaos (Gamezone Mounted Priest).  The last one I thought fit the bill due to his partial plate = chaos armor.



Both units of Warriors I decided to make as units of 16 and put a mounted character in each. This keeps the unit as 6 x 3.  For the troop models I went with sword and board: basic warrior body, empire knight heads and Bretonnian men-at-arm shields.  The General's unit I gave metallic armor, blue cloaks and a lion heraldry on their shields.  The Battle Standard's unit has blue armor, desert yellow cloaks so it looks like they're wearing lion skins and dragon heraldry on their shields.



As you can see, I didn't settle for the standard plastic banners in these units.  I wanted this army have have very grandiose flags and so converted each standard bearer as such:




The first is a legless veteran being carted around by his man-servant.  He's a Mordheim Reiklander on a wheelbarrow from the trebuchet and his henchman is a Mordheim dreg.  The banner is from Gamezone.  "These colors don't run!"

The second is the Frightened Pageboy, again from Gamezone, holding up a Bretonnion battle standard with a small skull at his feet.

The Champion in the General's unit is a Chaos Champion with a one-eyed, bald, bearded Empire head from the plastic general's kit.  He doesn't have hands yet.   The other Champion is a plate-armored Dwarf with a large axe from Prince Uther's line, I believe - he's just primed black and has a small magnet that the previous owner mounted in his back (?)


I had some extra Warrior figures and painted them up with the blue armor / desert yellow cloaks.  They are missing shields and need some finishing touches.


Next was my Marauders.  I decided to use Bretonnian men-at-arms because I always like the models and hadn't painted them before. I converted each to sword-and-board, using Empire arms and the old lion round shields.  The kettle-helmets look cool and so I gave them to all.
There's 28 - enough for the mounted Sorcerer to join them.  The plastic banner is just temporary and I have a partially painted Grail Knight banner to go with them (red).  The musician still needs his drum and arms.  Two champion-like models need their heads.


  
 For Chaos Knights I used the Karl Franz bodies from the new plastic kit, General body for the champ and all are on the new War Alter horses / General's horse.  They match the character's horses now, which are much beefier than the old Empire knight steeds.  They have lances and shields (to be added - haven't painted them yet).  They also need heads too, which I still have.




For Marauder Horsemen I simply used the old Bretonnian mounted squires and gave them the new pistolier horses.  They count as having spears.



There's two center-piece models for the army - the War Altar (war shrine) and Hell Blaster (hell cannon). 

The War Shrine is the rickety tower from the Skullvane Manse, Sigmar's Griffin statue and wheels from the Warmachine game.  I made a balsa wood frame and greenstuffed the tower on top. There's some details from the plastic war altar as well.   I have the bannister from the altar kit, Volkmar on sprue (to be the shrine master) and the frightened peasant from the Giant kit to go in back and push it from behind.





The Hell Cannon was a bigger project. I built a triangular frame out of balsa and put the griffin-emblem floor piece from the War Altar at it's front. I mounted this on the support struts from the Skull Vane Manse kit and it worked surprisingly well.  Nine Warmachine cannons make up the bulk and I put a resin Rosette of Death (Scibor) at the back.  Remembering that the GW Hell Blaster kit has a skeleton embedded in it's frame, I added one from the Giant kit to mine as well.  Perhaps an unlucky Engineer?  The wheels were from a cart model I found at the hobby store and the axle from a small plastic tube.

For crew I used two Ogre Man Eaters and the Mordheim Ogre - all as Empirey as I could manage.   They could probably go off on their own as their own Chaos Ogre unit if needed, replacing them with some dwarf crewmen or something.





And there you have it!  I ran then Unmarked just to keep in theme, sometimes running the Sorceror as Shadow or Fire as well.