Trying to activate myself

 It´s been too long since myh last posting. I have had very little interest in painting as of lately but now I´m doing my best to get back into action. Basically the only thing I´ve completed since february is this single beastman. And it too ages and is not a good paint job even on my humble standards.

The six mutants I built earlier are now on my painting table and I strongly intent to get them completed during april. So very limited goal but hey - you have to restart somewhere.

Leader for Cult Beastmen

 The Genestealer Cult Army beastmen don´t actually have a squad or platoon leader. They just come in bands whose size depend on the chaos power they are alligned with. As I intend to use my beastmen in WFB too I wanted to have a model that can be clearly distinquished as a unit leader. This Champion of Slaanesh model by Jes Goodwin is perfect for my purposes. A lovely sculpt he´s quite large and very fit to lead the beastmen. 

3142/3 Champion of Slaanesh: Huge Mace and Minotaur head

Funny little detail: a daemonette face groin armor.

A somewhat chaotic 200th posting

Wow! When staring this blog just under five years ago I never thought I´d one day have 200 postings. At first I was thinking about doing something special for the occasion. Perhaps a look into those Oldhammer blogs that led me into becoming an oldhammer enthusiastic. Or once again returning to baggage trains, war altars, animal handlers or some one of those unit types that no longer exist in more modern rules sets.

However this will be an introduction of a new WFB army in building. Some of these models have been shown here before but not all and certainly not together.

So, it´s Slaaneshian Chaos. At the moment 19 beastmen, 3 minotaurs and 2 beastmasters with 6 chaos hounds. The beastmen are on round bases as the are to be used in a genesteraler cult army too. I will get a movement tray for them eventually.

Bird´s eye view. Pastel colors to give that oldschool look. Purple/pink, yellow and black used to tie the army together.

19 beastmen with a starndard. Equipped with light armor and shields that equals 13 points/model. So the cost for the whole unit without a character model to lead it would be 260 points. Not bad for WS4, T4 and W2 rank and file. Planning on adding a musician, champion and three more troopers to make it 24 (4x6) strong.

Two beastmasters and six chaos hounds. With ligh armor the animal handlers are 17 points each for total of 34. Chaos hounds are 23 points/model which means that this unit cost a total of 172 points. Not planning on adding anything to this.

The three minotaurs. With double handed weapons they are 48 points each for total of 144 points. I want to have six minotaurs in the end. In two units of three as their maximum unit size is five.

It´s a humble start. Just 260+172+144 = 576 points of rank & file so far. But throw in some characters and perhaps a bound host and it´s pretty quickly past 1500 total points. And I do have six trolls that could be used but in my opinion trolls aren´t very Slaanesh so I think I´ll stay away from that option.

What I´d really like to add is some chaos thug horse. Perhaps using those pre slotta C34/27 chaos beastman riders. And thugs on foot too. Thinking about some sort of cultist models. A war altar is a must. Just need to find suitable models for that first.

That it for posting number 200. Have a happy Orctober - go paint something green ;)

Big White Bull and his smaller cousin

Suffering from something of a painters block I´ve completed only two models in the last couple of weeks. To be honest I´ve painted a few more minis but been se unsatisfied with them that they´ve been thrown into paint removal pot right away. Hoping to get my mojo back soon with Orctober starting in a few days.

The big bull is a Citadel C25 Minotaus (M1-11) and goes by the name of Gromb in the catalogue. White contrast spray for base. Furry parts are Voluptuous Pink highlighted with white. Skin is Apothechary White. Again highlighted with regular white. Horns and hooves were painted with Iyanden Yellow and highlighted with mixture of that and regular white.

 

The beastman is another Slaangor from the Realm of Chaos 0220 Beastmen range. This one is 02201and sculpted by Jes Goodwin as the rests of the that range too. His/her skin is Shyish Purple, hair Camo Green and horns Iyanden Yellow. All the highlight were done by adding regular white to base coat contrast paint to get that oldschool pastel look. Black is Black Templar straight out of bottle. Based on a round slotta base as I´m going to use this one with my Rogue Trader era GS Cult Army.

Vacation excuse

 Being on a vacation doesn´t seem to mean that one would have more time do hobbying than usually. No, it actually means that your house and garden suddenly turn into something of a labour camp. And eventually, when tou would have time paint models you are so out of steam that you just don´t feel like picking up a brush. So the reason for completing only these three in last two weeks:

Three very slaaneshian beastmen. Unicorn cranhand, masked goathead and

heavily armored goathead with two-handed sword. Mostly contrasts and some regular

paints for metals and additional higlights.

Is this one:

Two weeks of vacation left and most of the ´must do´ things are now done. So hopefully the next posting will be a bit bigger.

Two bands of beastmen for Genestealer Cult

It´s been pretty quite last two weeks on hobby front. Work, visiting parents for midsummer and son´s sports season going on full steam has quite effectively kept me away from the painting table. However today I had the chance to finish the last member of the second beastman band for my Genestealer Cult Army.

This bull headed beastman brings the second band of six to full strenght. 

And here he is with the his/her brother/sisters.

Next on the painting queue are hybrids, mutants and a patriarch. Let´s see what gets done first....

Contrasty Cult Army: Something of a Paint Guide

Realizing my limitations as a painter I´m not trying to educate anyone here. Just wanting to share the way I´ve found for using Citadel Contrast paints to in my opinion satisfactory result with a Genestealer Cult Army.

The colours that tie the different bands of the cult together are black, purple and yellow. Two or all three of those colors appear in almost all models of the cult. Check the earlier entires

 Undercoating with spray. First Grey Seer all over followed by Wraith Bone sprayed just from above.

This gives a bit deeper shades than using just Wraith Bone.

 First colors on. Magos Purple for psykers shirt and  

Talassar Blue for beastman skin.

 Spyker´s pants and beastman´s horns were done with Nazdreg Yellow.

 Guilliman Flesh for hands and face of the psyker.

 Leather parts using Black Templar. 

 I use Leadbelcher for metal parts and treat them with Agrax Earth Shade.

Some Agrax is added to areas of deepers shadows too.

 Wyldwood is used for weapons shafts etc.

Finally I highlight skin and fur parts with mixture of contrast paint and normal white diluted heavily with medium. I try to add several thi layers to make sort of gradual highlights.

For last I traet the base with Snakebite Leather, pva glue and some flock.

Here´s another guide I did for speed painting desert themed Imperial Guard.

Mind and muscles

Cult Army grows with four models: three beastmen and a rogue psyker. The beastmen are all those non-alligned ones that don´t show clear alligiance to one of the chaos powers. But with paint job I´ve tried to both make them look Slaaneshian and to tie them together with the rest of the cult.

 Classic Realm of Chaos beastmen and a psyker.

As with the rest of the cult these are mostly painted with Citadel Contrasts. 

I´ve grown to actually like those. 

The rogue psyker. His head held together with a metal band. Or maybe

that´s some sort of device that amplifies his abilities. The model is quite small

and those plastic arms look pretty big on him.

Something different: How I strip paint from old models

As every Oldhammerer knows every now and them there is a need to strip some models of their old paints. Wether you are not happy with some ancient work of yours, have aquired non-stripped models of eBay or just want to give your army a new look. I wanted to share my way of cleaning models because I felt this could help someone who´s wondering about how to it.

This is the solvent I use. Pensselipesu (litarally brush wash) by a Finnish company Tikkurila.

Not a very sharp picture but that´s the list of contains and dangers. So it contains

alcohol C9-11, ethoxylated. 15-30% non-ionic surfactants and <5% phosphates.

Causes serious eye damage etc.

Bought this chaps the other day and the imp faced guy got to bath first.

I sometimes use this small glass jar when stripping just a couple of minis at the time.

The beastman has now been in the for just over 24h and as you can see the paint

has started to come off.

That paint remover can irritate your skin so I use rubber glover when using it.

What I like about the stuff is that it is virtually odourless. So no problem using it inside.

Most of the paint comes right off when brushed gently.

Add some water and more brushing and it´s starting to look pretty good already.

For the worst parts this clipped down tooth brush with pretty stiff hair work miracles.

And here´s the final product drying on a piece of tissue. Even the plastic shield

survived this time. If kept too long in the medium they can turn soft and brittle.

For that reason I wouldn´t use it on plastic models. Or would try out first with something 

that is not irreplaceable.

This beastman and his fellows will eventually join the ranks on my Genestealer Cult army. 

More cult beastmen

I wasn´t planning on making another beastman band for upcoming Geneatealer cult army. And then I ended up having two extra beastmen both of which are such nice sculpts that I just had to include them. Which means it´s off to ebay again to get me four more to have another group of six. As the Brood Brothers are carrying the the Cults banner I felt that the Beastmen need a flag of their own.

Fish faced banner bearer and single horned goat face. Paited mostly with contrasts.

Yes, that banner is a bit profane but they are old school Slaaneshian you know.

Band of Beastmen

Boosting the ranks of my Genestealer Cult Army is a six strong band of beastmen. Or slaangors as the Slaanesh beastmen are also called. Pastel colors, black leather and some pink/purple to tie the band together.

 The new guys are in the front row. The three in the back were presented here.

Left: CH4 Chaos Beastman Atzel. Middle: C27 Slugman. Right: RoC Slaanesh Beastman 

That Slugman is one bizarre sculpt. It even has a second face in it´s chest. 

Extra head and headless mutations perhaps.

Perhaps some IG next. I have something biggish waiting to be glued together and primed.

Expanding the Cult

Presenting the latest additions to slowly growing Genestealer coven: four brood brothers and three beastmen. All Slaanesh alligned of course. Both groups will eventually be six strong but I lack beastman models at the moment and I need to assemble two guardsmen before finishing the brood brother squad. And I´m thinking of converting one brother into a standard bearer.

First the three beastmen. All bare brested slaanishian hermaphrodites. The much younger me had clipped the weapons of those two on the right ´cause I used them as Blood Bowl players. Both got swords in this new role of theirs. The shields are pretty terrible but that´s the best I can do freehand.

Brood Brothers. Four metal Imperial Guard/Army models. Very quick to paint with contrasts. As the only weapon choise for Brood Brothers in a developed world is stub gun and sword all those las guns etc. are concidered counts as a stub gun.

Everyone in a group picture. 

Animal handlers in 3rd ed. WFB: Chaos Beastmasters

This part of ´Animal handlers in 3rd ed. WFB´ -series of articles is about Chaos Beastmasters. It discusses rules, models, tacktics, pictures, links, pro´s and con´s and everything related to Chaos animal handlers. Please click here to find the other arcticles.

This article is mainly about WFB rulebook and WFB: Armies but I´ve included a shortish look into the Realm of Chaos material too.

WFB and WFB: Armies

At first the chaos beastmasters look like a very simple case - just two types of beasts available. But as one digs deeper there are so many sides to them. And pretty many inconsistencies too. I´ll start with the most obvious - it says beastman animal handler and the profile is normal beastman but the picture is clearly of a chaos warrior or a marauder. And as we see later the handler model produced is surely not a beastman but resembles the picture above. So once again someone within Citadel/GW has changed his mind. The chaos beastmaster model was there before the book but then something happened. Perhaps they felt that a chaos warrior or a marauder is too expensive for a handler with pointsvalues of 74 and 39 respectively.

As we see a chaos army can include 0-8 Beastmasters divided into units each with 1-3 handlers and 2-6 animals / handler. You can choose either chaos hounds or spawns for a pack.

Beastmen with T4 and W2 make chaos beastmaster teams a lot less vulnerable to missile fire than what the other races have to offer. Their biggest weakness on the other hand is the below average psychology profile. Your expensive pack may end up running sooner than you think. But good toughness helps to prevent casualties and using a big pack allows you to take some damage before having to check for panic/rout.

The beastmen units get D6-3 chaos attributes. I would count the beastmaster as a beastman unit roll the attributes. This is clarified in the Slaves to Darkness as we´ll learn later. Some GM concideration could be in place here - just to make sure the game does not get broken by mutations.

 Color add of handlers and chaos hounds. Here we see that the handler 

is infact a chaos warrior/marauder not a beastman.

Casting room miniatured did produce this set but it was

discontinued in 11/2016. There we have a beastman
animal handler.

The Citadel chaos hounds are just great and there are so many to choose from. The chaos warrior handler has a good threatening pose. It´s a very nice set as a whole. But the lack of a beastman handler is obvious. You could always use a normal beastman or a slightly converted one as a beastmaster if you wanted.

Citadel chaos warrior handlers with 2-4 dogs can be obtained from ebay with BIN price of around 40€. In a recent auction a handler and three partly painted hounds sold for 15€.

This is the Marauder MM93 Chaos Beastmaster set. One of the better Marauder sculps in my opinion. Again the handler is clearly a chaos warrior/marauder. The pose suggests that he is just about to motivate the pack with that whip of his. Mixing this set and Citadel produced one you could create a unit of two handlers and twelve chaos hounds with no dublicate models!

Cost of a set of a Marauder handler and two hounds is around 25€ in an auction. BIN prices can be as high as 60€.

The idea of producing a set for chaos spawns is a bit of a paradox. Spawns receive D6+6 chaos attributes when generated and there are tens of possible starting profiles so making a set for something like that is just impossible. I understand that not all players are willing or capable (me for example) of creating such conversions a spawn may require.

But if you want to buy yourself a chaos spawn set there are infact some alternatives to choose from. The grandmother of all chaos spawns has to be Ngaaranh.

A painted example of Ngaaranh: Spawn of chaos
from Rogue heresy blog.

She or it dates back to 1983 when released as limited edition. Ngaaranh appeared in this Compendium one article.

 Exerpt from Compendium one.

 Ngaaranh was sold as a chaos harpy in this add from WD49 (1983).

This one is an unreleased Bob Olley chaos spawn painted by

one Mike McVey. Picture from Eldritch Epistles.

Then it´s all the way to the catalog of 1997. I´ve included

this chaos spawn set as I think it´s quite oldhammeresque.

Lot´s of heads and tails to choose from but still quite limited

as the basic form is what it is. But a good base for conversions perhaps.

The 1997 spawn will cost you about 12€. When writing this there were two Ngaaranhs on ebay for BIN prices of 37€ and 83€.

There are multiple newer set in both 40k and WFB/AOS lines but the afore presented are the most oldhammery ones available if you are not that into converting a chaos spawn from scratch yourself.

Chaos hounds

Rules

 As with dark elf chaos hounds we meet the basing issue. Rules say 25 x 25mm but models are supplied with 25 x 50mm and propably won´t fit a smaller one less rank up at all on those. The profile is strong for close combat. Chaos attributes can be a curse or a blessing. And in any case should be generated as mentined under GM´s supervision. We don´t want to take the fun away from anyone by some lucky/unluncky rolls before the game has even started.

A very large pack of chaos hounds from Steve McCallums collection.

And he has both Citadel and Maraudet handlers too.

Tactics

These dogs are deadly in close combat so you want to get them engaged. They are hard to kill with T4 and W2 and as their handlers are likevise resilient so your hounds are not very likely to be send on their way to wilderness. 

As chaos hounds are pretty valuable I wouldn´t waste them on harrassing skirmishers or war machines. They are a decent alternative for heavy cavalry so a simple staright forward advance followed by a charge should work. But once again - a large pack takes a lot of space.

Chaos hounds are pretty valuable: a pack of ten hounds and two beastman handlers will cost you almost 260 points. A pack with dark elf handlers will cost you even more. And darkies are a lot more vulnerable to missiles.

The chaos attributes might affect the way you use the a hound pack. Most of the dominant chaos attributes (rulebook page 207) are quite helpfull but for example enormously fat chaos hounds would be nearly unusable. GM discretion is definately needed here. Don´t break the game before it starts.

Two packs of six hounds with beastman handlers equipped with shield.

Total of 308 points. Picture from the Tales From the Big Board blog.

Pro´s

Nice models

Look good in large packs

Very powerfull in close combat

Good speed

Strong overall profile

Con´s

High points value

Chaos spawns

Ok, this is where writing this article got pretty tricky. As the WFB: Armies refers to Realm of Chaos -books so I´m using a few exerpts of both The lost and the damned and Slaves to the darkness here.
There are so many different chaos spawn pictures around the net so I just chose to use some iconic ones from WD magazine.

The rules and creating table for a ´instant chaos spawn´ can be found at the Slaves to the Darkness book. You can either choose a starting profile or roll for one. Likewise you can choose nine rewards or D6+6.

The chaos spawns are first mentioned in Slaves to the darkness on page 52 under the title of Fate of champion of chaos - Becoming a chaos spawn. That part is just for chaos champions and does not reflect to games of normal WFB. On page 62 we learn that a creature in a champion´s retinue can become a spawn by rolling that result from follower´s reward table. Then on page 65 we meet the generation table for an ´instant´ chaos spawn. This is the table to be used when generating a spawn to be used in a game of WFB with chaos army list.

Rules

As mentioned before chaos spawn come in almost infinite shapes and profiles. Just this random table gives you 60 different starign profiles including the other part which can be basicly anything. And then you roll for the minimum of seven chaos attributes.

Chaos spawns are subject to stupidity. This means that in the beginning of each of your turn you have to make a stupidity check. As described under thr psychology rules in the rulebook the test is taken vs. unit´s CL. And as per animal handlers rules the unit´s leader´s profile is used for all psychology test. With beastman´s CL 7 you are pretty likely to fail a few of those tests. You could try to help this by taking a hero as a unit leader but the cheapest options to boost your CL is a level 5 wizard that costs 80 points more than a normal beastman.

Spawns and other creatures of chaos by Pete Taylor from WD117.

Here we finally get the points value for a chaos spawn: 100 per model. Depending on how you roll this could be from very cheap to total waste of points. Imagine one legged, obese, coward, bunnyheaded, albino, puny, hunchbacked halfling vs. mechanoid vampire with fire breathing, teleport, scaly skin, weapon mastery, horrible stench etc. If someone is using a chaos spawn I would really suggest that it´s the GM who creates it to make it somehow reseble it´s point value.

I personally don´t like the idea of a unit of chaos spawns with dominant attributes. It´s just against the whole idea of chaos spawns being randomly warped beyond recognition. Like where´s the chaos in having for example four identical spawns? I would take the time and create each spawn in a unit individually. That may give you some strange combinations but once again - serious GMing is recommended.

In my opinion packs of chaos spawns should propably be used only in narrative battles where a GM has created them to suit the setting. There are too much randomness to their creation that can ruins your gaming experience if you just go by the creation tables.

An iconic Pete Taylor chaos spawn from WD119.

Guess they had too many Fimirs just lying around and

had to do something with them.

Tactics

Well - how to tell you how to use a bunch of creatures that can be anything from complete rubbish to almost unstoppable killing machines. The Slaves to the Darkness suggest that spawns can be useful for soaking up enemy charges and overrunning less numerous enemies. But it really depends on what you get. Hopefully you are playing with GM created spawns that should have at least some kind of use in the scenario you are going to play. You just have to figure it out that use.

Pro´s

Nice models if you make them so

Good for narrative battles where they serve some purpose
Chaotic naturel suits a chaos army

Con´s

Randomness
Stupidity

Daemonic Legions and Armies of Chaos

Daemonic Legions

Daemonic legions and Armies of chaos for each power are presented in the RoC books. Daemonic legions can have units of chaos spawns and packs of chaos hounds in their auxiliaries contingent. Chaos spawns must have a pack handler but the hounds can be fielded with one or just by themselves.

In The Slaves to the Darkness book we find units of both Khornate and Slaaneshi spawns. For Khorne you can take 0-3 units of spawn each with 8 monsters and a leader that can be either a bloodletter or a champion of chaos. This means that the value of a unit at it´s lowest is a whopping 860 points. Slaanesh can have 0-4 units each with 6 spawns and a leader. Lowest cost for that is 660 points. For some reason I believe that those points could be much better used elsewhere.

Creatures of chaos from WD109

The idea of daemonic legions having spawn units has been dropped at some point as they do not appear in The Lost and the Damned book. There is however a note that a daemonic legion can invlude troops drawn from the mortal world i.e. from the Armies of Chaos list. That allows fielding beastmasters/handlers too.

Armies of Chaos

Khornate armies of chaos can have beastmaster units each with 2 handlers and 8 chaos hounds or chaos spawns. Here it becomes clear that the handlers too are subject to chaos attributes. And that the spawn is created using a human profile as basic. The unit point value is quite odd. A normal beastman in SttD costs 8 points so a single handler should be 13. And chaos hounds as part of a host are 23 points which is normal. Adding up 2 handlers and 8 hounds gives you 210 points but the points per unit value is given as 120?!?!

And the handler in the picture looks more like chaos thug than a beastman.

What I wrote above about the Khornate army hadlers stands for Slaaneshi handlers too.

Personally I could think about adopting the human-profile-as-starting-point-for-rolling-a-chaos-spawn -principle to using spawns with WFB: Armies Chaos list. But only if there is no GM available to create the spawns and you absolute must have to use them in a game.

Nurgle and Tzeentch armies can have packs of chaos hounds. They are special in that they can either operate independently or be led by chaos champion. If acting independently I believe that they are not bound by the animal handler movement rules. And if they are lead by a chaos champion he is concidered to be an animal handler with all the applying rules for him and the pack.

Nurglesque pack of chaos hounds. As you see the style of the army list 

has changed somewhere between SttD and LatD.  And notice the base size.

Now it matches with the models.

 Tzeentchian chaos hounds unit.

Nurgle and Tzeentch packs differ in size (7 hounds for Nurgle and 9 for Tzeentch) and in number of chaos attributes. Both roll for D6-4 attributes but for Tzeentch the special rules say that: All the chaos hounds in the unit can be given up to the number of attributes rolled - thay can always be given less if you prefer, but must be given at least 1.

As with the hounds, Nurgle and Tzeentch armies can field chaos spawn as an independent pack or with a chaos champion leader. What strikes me is the points cost which is only 25 compared to 100 points in WFB: Armies. And the unit size is unlimited!

Chaos spawn unit of a Nurgle army.

Tzeentchian spawn unit.

A pair of ´eavy metal chaos spawns.

Writing this article was a pretty chaotic process. New things seemed to pop up around every corner and I´am pretty sure I missed something on the way here. Please sound up if you want something included.