Inspiration, Inspiration...

 So the Chaos Warriors I started painting in the last post are progressing nicely enough, I thought it might be an idea to post about what made me search through the boxes and cupboard until I dragged them out to work on.

I mentioned that this inspiration came from a really unlikely book for me to have been reading, well...

This is the Eighth edition rulebook for Warhammer Fantasy.

"But Lewis, you're a Wargamer, that's not an unlikely book for you to have been reading" I hear you saying.

Well, I think I only played ONE game of eighth edition fantasy ever (and it didn't end well for me) and hadn't really played fantasy at all since maybe the end of fifth edition (I think that was the one which came with Bretonnian and Lizardmen miniatures?).

Anyway, what with the size of the rulebook, the janky movement, wheeling, formation, charge reaction movement rules (I kid you not, and that's only scratching the surface about how complex this was at times). 

Not to mention how many miniatures they expected you to actually field:

(This is just a standard 2,000 point game!)*

Now I have no idea how I came to own a copy of this book, probably a trade somewhere down the way in a job-lot maybe, who knows?

Now do I actually know why I was flicking through the book whilst eating my dinner the other evening, but at the back of the rules section there is an interesting section about legendary battles...

Or basically it's Apocalypse for Fantasy! Which sounds awesome, until you look at the fantasy rules...

Anyway, they give a run down of a Legendary Battle at the back of the book, in this case 'The Slaughter at Volgonof'.

That's a full page of background text in the run-up to the battle and even give a handy map of the path of the Chaos invasion;

They just really wanted to go further then every other Chaos army which stopped in Kislev didn't they?

There are lots of very pretty pictures which pad the pages (kind of like White Dwarf battle reports, of how we lament you failings), each filled with hundreds, maybe thousands of miniatures the likes of which we mere mortals who do not work for Games Workshop could never hope to own in such quantities:

So big it had to go on a four page pullout!

Each of those big units of knights are 46 models strong...who the hell has that many knights?

That castle seems to fill what would be considered a normal sized gaming board...it is nice though.

Siege towers! Need I say more?

Now the main bit of inspiration comes from the unit guides which they wrote and illustrated (rather than photograph miniatures).

Chaos Invasion Forces, led by Lord Mortkin:

Bits of background info for the various units involed, and then they photographed the damn models:

That is the old Warhammer Fire Dragon which Forge World used to make, personally a much better dragon then the Current One.

That converted two-headed giant is cool as well, but the really awesome conversion is the chaos sorcerer;

Complete with floating chunk of earth!

So from reading this and looking at all the photo's it got me thinking about trying to recreate a battle like this but in a sane way.

Obviously I'm going to use the Age of Sigmar rules, but thinking of organising things more along the lines of the Apocalypse formations and allocating units to certain characters rather then just having them.

Also another point is to keep things on a sane level, I won't be having units of SEVENTY-FIVE Chaos Chosen or three units of fourty warriors. So I'm thinking of making a unit of twenty warriors and then a couple of smaller Chosen/Veteran Chaos Warrior units as the main warband.

I have a bunch of beastmen I can pull out of hiding and get painted up, I love Ul-Ruk the Red from the Volganof game:

I may even attempt the replicate the banner!

The only sticking point I have are mortal troops, for both chaos and order.

The games workshop offerings are very old sculpts and not inspirational, generic bare-chested barbarians with horned helmets and sixteenth century German Landsknect.

So I've been looking at the Oathmark, Fireforge Fantasy and Frostgrave plastic boxes:

Some of the available non-GW plastics available now. Decent quality, decent amount of miniatures per box and decent prices.

They are in scale (roughly) with GW mini's as well so should work. Obviously the Oathmark and Fireforge (not pictured) boxes will be more useful for the Cities of Sigmar soldiery as they have more cohesive looks, where as the Frostgrave boxes have a slightly more ruffian/ragtag look so would be more suited to mercenary and Chaos Marauder replacement models.

I'll post more thoughts about this idea as and when they come to me in the future. Suffice to say that this will be an ongoing project, obviously a long-term undertaking as well.

Briefly I considered Undead Vs Order as I have been collecting the Mortal Realms magazine as and when I can get my hands on it with the Stormcast and Nighthaunt collections contained within. But that leads to many, many conundrums concerning the ghost's.

If they're incorporeal as ghosts, why wouldn't they just float through the walls and attack the garrison?

Why should they be concerned with taking a city in the first place?

Etc, etc.

Also I am enjoying painting the chaos stuff right now, and I have all my Khornate Bloodbound which can be added straight away to boost the invading force's numbers.

And Chaos get some cool stuff, I know that Death armies are getting some new models previewed recently, but I do love a lot more of the chaos gear out of the two ranges.

Well, I think I've rambled enough for now.

Until next time...

 - Lewis

*A joke of course. That's actually a 1,500 point game!