Beasty boy

This one has been in my undercoated pile for a little while, and happens to be one of my fav beastmen of the classic Realm of Chaos era. A classic Jes Goodwin sculpt.

Foundry's forthcoming Kev Adams Beastmen...and some orcs

These have not yet been cast! I wanted to put this disclaimer in right at the start so (hopefully) nobody gets confused and calls Foundry to order a bunch because these have not yet been cast!

I called in on Wargames Foundry yesterday and took the opportunity to see the line of chaos beastmen that Kev Adams is starting to sculpt for Bryan. These will probably be released under the Warmonger Miniatures banner once the time is right, but I'm afraid I don't have information as to when this might be. Bryan is still pondering how to approach the release, and he may go the Kickstarter route; he hasn't decided yet. I don't think the name of the figures themselves is set in stone either: although they are clearly "beast men" they may yet end up with a different title.

Kev has sculpted a bunch of heads, and is now starting with some bodies. As you might expect from Kev the quality of the work is stunning, with bags of character and a "proper chaos" feel. Currently the heads are mainly of the "goat man" type (which he has executed brilliantly I'm sure you'll agree) but he assures me he will also be sculpting mutated beastmen, so there's a right mix to come - exciting stuff!

Jervis Johnson and the random tables of RoC

Despite the fact that my collecting and gaming roots are planted firmly in the 1980's, I still continue to buy White Dwarf to this day, and I occasionally find a nugget of Old Skool. One such nugget appeared in January's White Dwarf in the pontifications of Jervis Johnson. Jervis has a regular column in White Dwarf on gaming, collecting and "The Hobby" at large. In this month's column Jervis tackles the subject of random tables, and makes some interesting observations on the old Realm of Chaos random tables. Here's what he has to say (the juicy stuff comes in paragraph 3):

Now, I have to give a disclaimer at this point which is to say that I haven't played an edition of Warhammer later than 3rd edition, and so my ability to comment on what it's like to play anything later is extremely limited. I know that a number of you who read this blog have not only experienced later editions of Warhammer but were also playing with the Realm of Chaos books, and so I would be interested to read what you think of Jervis's views, in particular:

- Did you, as Jervis suggests, use the RoC tables with little restraint and allowed them to dictate the composition of your warbands and how they should look and be armed? Or did you "take a dim view of this" and just use them as a guide?

- Jervis is of the opinion that players also took a dim view of "being required to convert models in order to be able to play a game." Did you, dear reader, really have such an attitude? Did you abandon plans for a game simply because the prospect of being "required" to convert models proved too much?

- Here comes the best bit: because of the aforementioned points, Jervis states that "those large random tables fell into disfavour, being replaced by the army lists and points values we see today." OK, firstly, army lists and points values were already prevalent at the time the RoC books were published, and secondly, how on earth would that suggested change make things more flexible for the player?!

Now don't get me wrong, I have much respect for Jervis and his contributions to gaming. But what do you think? Is this an accurate reflection of RoC or on this occasion is Jervis talking out of his chaos portal?

Jervis does make some intriguing marks towards the end of his article. The article basically revolves around some random equipment tables he has invented for his campaigns, and he leaves us with this tantalising nugget:

I wonder if this will remain in-house, or will something wider develop from it?

The Dave Perry collection: Realm of Chaos Champions and Renegades

I am delighted that Dave Perry, former resident of Games Workshop's Design Studio/'Eavy Metal team, has allowed me to display photographs of his fantastic painted miniatures on my blog. If you dipped out of the hobby in the 1980s and have only recently returned to it you may have missed Dave's stint at GW, but he's provided a comprehensive and very amusing bio below. Please note these are not my words - I want to emphasise that because I certainly don't agree with the "Never truly great, Dave’s painting was, I suppose, sufficient" comment!

Over the coming weeks I'll be showcasing Dave's work, organised fairly roughly into categories. This week it's the turn of Realm of Chaos era Champions and Chaos Renegades.

Biography

Bryan's cabinets of...Oldhammer!

Bryan Ansell provided a marvellous selection of figures to display at the Oldhammer Weekend at Foundry, all carefully arranged and displayed by his son Marcus. A took quite a few photographs, some of which have appeared previously on this blog, others have not. I'll let the pictures do the talking, but see if you can spot the Blanche-painted Runequest Troll...(hint: it's not in the "Blanche" section).

Undead

Nico's Oldhammer Realm of Chaos army

Over the next few days I'll be making a series of posts about last weekend's Oldhammer event at Foundry, and I couldn't resist by starting with a series of pics of Nico's stunning Realm of Chaos figures. Those of you who follow Oldhammer are probably already aware of Nico's figures and games reports on his Realms of Chaos blog; indeed, many of the figures below have already been seen on his blog and elsewhere. But if you love this guy's work as much as I do you're probably quite happy to see these figures again.

As an aside, you may notice a chaos dwarf juggernaut in this lot - Rick Priestley insists that some rules were produced for this war machine, and were packaged with the machine itself. I've never seen these but if you have, please leave a comment below.

It was great to finally meet Nico in person and to chat about his figures. I make no apologies for the number of pictures that follow, or for my obvious obsession with his mounted units in particular - his conversions are among the best I've ever seen:

Paint schemes for mounted Realm of Chaos warriors

I'm currently painting up a mounted unit of Citadel Miniatures Khornate Chaos warriors for Oldhammer Weekend and I turned to the old Realm of Chaos cavalry in Bryan Ansell's collection for some inspiration on painting the horses. If you're also looking for a little inspiration then take a look at the images below - many of these can be seen in the pages of the two Realms of Chaos books and in the pages of White Dwarf issue 104 (and probably several others from around that time).

Citadel box set scenarios: useful Oldhammer inspiration

Back in the early 1980s Citadel Miniatures produced a number of box sets of figures, several of which came with insert sheets detailing specific scenarios and/or character stats designed for use with the associated boxed figures. This post presents, to my knowledge, all of the inserts together with a review and a discussion of their use in Oldhammer. If you do have any inserts which I have not covered I would love to hear from you.

There are quite a few inserts and it might take a little time to read them all in detail. If you are an Oldhammer devotee and are short for time I would recommend you read the Chaos Marauders insert first, which is a great example of the ethos of what it meant to play Warhammer at that time.

The Oldhammer ethos permeates many of the inserts, which I've tried to highlight in my introduction to each, and I've also picked out some of my favourite features of the various scenarios and character profiles provided. I've been deliberately vague about the details of the various scenarios, in case those reading wish to play them for themselves. The inserts can be seen in detail on a Scribd link I have provided at the end of this post.

(Note that "Toughness"  in early Warhammer was designated by letter, and not number, in case you get confused).

The  inserts are from the following sets (the contents of each box can be see on the excellent Stuff of Legends):

Bryan's cabinets of chaos 5

Today's glance into Bryan Ansell's cabinets of chaos reveals some of Dale Hurst's chaos conversions. Issue 135 of White Dwarf featured an article by Dale on converting and painting some classic (well, contemporary at the time!) chaos figures for a Tzeentch warband. Dale's warband is heavily focussed on beastmen/minotaur/spawn with a solitary chaos champion and his familiar. To date I have managed to locate the beastmen and minotaur/spawn in Bryan's collection but the champion and familiar are yet to be found (sadly they are possibly among the "disappeared" as is often the case with Bryan's figures).

Personally I think Dale's article is a great inspiration for those (such as myself) who are relatively new to converting and painting, and is also a useful model to follow for the forthcoming Realm of Chaos Warband Mega Game in August's Oldhammer Weekend. In summary, simple but creative modelling and colour schemes, and a small number of models. I'll leave it to Dale to set the scene:

Beastmen unit for Oldhammer weekend

Here is my current WIP - a beastman unit for Oldhammer weekend.

I'm putting together a Khorne unit, with 5 Bob Olley "goatmen" and 5 Jes Goodwin "dogmen." The unit champion can be seen front row on the left.

Here is a cloe-up of one of Bob's goatmen, a lovely figure:

I've gone with traditional Khorne colours for this unit. My new best friend for this particular painting exercie is the old Citadel brown ink, which gives a fantastic depth of shade:

I'm currently building up a narrative for my Oldhammer weekend chaos force, built on the stats I rolled, which I'll cover in more detail in a future post.

A visit to the Citadel Miniatures Hall, Games Workshop HQ Nottingham

As I mentioned in a previous post, I recently visited Warhammer World in Nottingham for a Forge World Open Day event, and took the opportunity to snap a few pics in The Citadel Miniatures Hall, which is well worth a visit if you are in the area. I'm writing a separate thread on the dioramas of Mike McVey which are on view in the Hall; in this thread I shall concentrate on some of the other figures I snapped, both vintage and contemporary (including works-in-progress).

The old stuff (mainly 1980's)

Xaxus Chaos-Thrall: a Bryan Ansell/John Blanche chaos conversion from the First Citadel Compendium

So yesterday I commented  that I have something special lined up for my next post. I've already revealed that Ivan Bartleet's Chalice of Doom and War Altar of Nurgle reside in Bryan Ansell's collection, and here's another treasure from that collection. I would like to present to you Xaxus Chaos-Thrall:

Bryan's cabinets of chaos 4

This week's glimpse into Bryan's cabinets focuses on some of the chaotic beasts on display. As usual, there's some well painted treasures together with cool conversions and rarities.

War Altar of Nurgle by Ivan Bartleet

My posting of images of Ivan Bartleet's Chalice of Doom has provoked a number of comments, largely centred on the relief people feel at the thought it is safe and sound, residing in Bryan's collection. Well, another old classic is alive and well at Bryan's....

White Dwarf issues 125 and 128 featured the War Altar of Nurgle, another one of Ivan's, and something I remember clearly and very fondly from my youth. You can imagine my surprise and delight when I discovered it residing at Bryan's. I really do apologise for the quality of the next pic, suffice to say it was taken in haste and without any preparation:

Bryan's cabinets of chaos 3

Time to ramp-up nostalgia to the max and take another peek into Bryan's cabinets. Some more chaosy delights for you today. I still have to pinch myself at times to remind myself that these are the actual figures I used to drool over as a spotty teenager in the likes of White Dwarf and the ROC books.

First up some Khorne, and a front row that again demonstrates how an overall red/black/brass colour scheme can actually be quite varied:

Bryan's cabinets of chaos 2

So the good news is that I've got loads more pics of Bryan Ansell's figures, enough material to keep this blog going for a good few months!

Today's post will be taking a closer look at some of the figures from Bryan's now famous chaos army that appeared in the Warhammer Armies (1988) book. Bryan is currently homing the majority of these figures in his display cabinets, but there are remnants scattered in his figure drawers that have yet to make it to display. By the way, he's hoping to bring this army to the Oldhammer Weekend.

The exact figures from Bryan's army are scattered among other chaos and non-chaos figures from the period. If you are feeling particularly beardy why not get out your copy of Warhammer Armies and see how many figures you can spot?

In this post I'll be showing some pics of the main bulk of the army, the Broo (plus some preslotta beastmen), plus some of the army characters. I've taken pics from slightly different angles: my photography skills aren't great but I hope these pics are good enough for you to get a feel for the oldschool charm of the figures. The Broo figures are derived from the following Citadel ranges: C38 Beastmen; Runequest Broo (loose/blistered figures); Runequest Broo Box 3 (v2) Attack of the Broo; Runequest Broo Box 4 (v1) with separate heads and weapons (a great set for conversion possibilities); and Runequest Broo Box 4 (v2) with fixed heads and weapons.

Bryan's cabinets of chaos

In my last post, private wierd (check out his blog if you want to see some truly inspiring Oldhammer battle scenes) asked if I could post some more pics of Bryan's chaos army from the Warhammer Armies book. I couldn't find any more images from the Armies book on my PC, but I did find pics of some of the chaos units currently on display in Bryan's cabinets, which I'd like to share with you. Bryan's display cabinets - as I'm sure you can imagine - are seriously impressive.

(Incidentally, if you're planning on getting married then you could do a lot worse than hire Stoke Hall as a venue. If you're now wondering, "Where the hell did that comment come from?!" - Stoke Hall is Bryan's home and its where these cabinets are on display, which wedding guests are able to view.)

A couple of shots, mainly of beastmen, to start with. Not all of the figures on display here are Citadel but most are:

Paint your beastman

Over in the B.L.O.O.D. forum and across the bloggosphere, ascendent chaos captains are beginning to nail their colours to the mast for the forthcoming Oldhammer Weekend over at Wargames Foundry. Will it be Khorne? Will it be Slaanesh? Or will you - ahem - swing both ways? In true chaos style you may choose to rebel and align yourself to one of the other Great Powers - some putrescent Nurgle perhaps? Or if you really can't decide then Tzeentch may be the one for you... Whatever chaos god you choose to align with, a staple troop choice of many a chaos warband will be the humble beastman. There's a 30% chance you'll acquire some beastmen each time you roll on the retinue table, if that's the route you decide to take in generating your warband.

OK, let's assume you've decided to stick with convention in this Slaves To Darkness anniversary year and go for Khorne and/or Slaanesh. What will be your colour scheme? According to John Blanche (and let's face it, he's the man in the know):

"A livery mainly composed of the martial colours (red, black and brass) suits the followers of Khorne perfectly, whereas Slaanesh has pale skinned followers bedecked in pastel shades, offset by shiny black leather and studs."

If you decide against these colour schemes, then good for you - your place in the pantheon of chaos will be assured. If, however, you decide to follow tradition and John's suggestions you'll be following in the footsteps of the great and the good. Let's take a look at some of the colour schemes evident in Bryan Ansell's collection.

First up is Khorne:

Kill, kill, kill, kill...