Marauder Horsemen Chieftain

Been working on my Chaos Marauder Horsemen unit. Most pieces are painted besides the horses themselves and heads of the marauders (for some reason I always leave the heads to the last). Went into tunnel-vision mode and finished painting the assembling the Marauder Horsemen Chieftain first so I could enjoy the partial fruit of my efforts. These are the first horse-based minis I’ve painted and it was pretty fun working on the horse. This mini hasn’t been sealed yet (took the picture and posted as soon as the parts were glued together), hence the shininess.

Chaos Warriors

“A Chaos Warrior needs not food, drink or sleep, for he is nourished by the carnage that he wreaks. His home is under the cold, uncaring skies. His bride is his blade. He is no longer human — rather he is a living weapon.”

Always wanted to play Warhammer ever since I knew it existed, but never had mustered up the resolve to put down the money and paint the masses of soldiers.

I heard an interview with a Press Ganger in August who mentioned that the Privateer Press studio Epic Eyriss was painted masterfully in 6 hours. It gave me tremendous motivation to start painting minis again. Also I played my first Warhammer Fantasy game with Phil’s Empire and Orcs, and liked it a lot for the formations and their tactical implications. Definitely different from all the mini games I’ve played. Finally I was convinced by my Waterloo game group in September and decided to start a Warhammer Fantasy army. Obviously I chose the heavy-hitting and heavily armored Warriors of Chaos, who in my opinion looks the best, with Dark Elves and the new Skavens closely behind (the new Beasts of Chaos might be pretty cool too) (Daemons of Chaos are cool too).

Bought the Warriors of Chaos battalion box, which includes 12 Chaos Warriors, 20 Chaos Marauders, 5 Chaos Knights, and 5 Chaos Warhounds. Opened it excitedly and for the past almost a month and a half I’ve been working on the 12 Chaos Warriors, meanwhile trying to improve my overall painting time. In the end, I totaled 78.5 hours at the completion of the whole unit. Breakdown of the hours is as follows:

Preparation 8.5h
Assembly 3h
Basing 2h
Painting 65h

78.5 hours might seem like a long time, but this is with 12 models, from cutting the first piece off the spruce to basing the painted and assembled models. My previous time records (averaging 30 hours for the Warmachine minis) only included painting, so this means on each Warhammer model I spent 5.41 hours on painting in contrast to 30 hours on the Warmachine models. Granted I definitely glossed over some details during painting, but they still seem pretty good in these photos.

Next up: 5 Marauder Horsemen. I really love the look of the Chaos Knights and can’t wait to start working on them, but I want to get as much practice as possible on the lesser units. Never painted horses, this will be interesting.

Manhunter

“Blood is the coin of this realm now, and she is the paymaster.”
— Kommander Sorscha Kratikoff

A few funny things happened after I said to myself “I think I’ll start on one of the Iron Fangs after seeing drab greens!” I did start assembling the Iron Fangs, and the process was tedious with lots of drilling and waiting for glue/epoxy to dry. I came up with the brilliant idea that I would start painting the second Widowmaker while the Iron Fangs are being prepared. So 24 hours later I had my second Widowmaker basecoated, right around the time I played my first Warmachine game at Dueling Grounds, and realizing that at the speed I'm going, I will finish my army sometime in 2012. Heeding my first opponent’s advice, I turned my focus away from mass troops and onto solo model units (an unit that has only one model, essentially a more elite unit) to reduce the time needed to ready a complete unit. That’s when I looked to the pile of pewter from my crazy Boxing Day 2008 shopping and picked out the Manhunter.

Long story short, 23 hours later (and many weeks later in real-time) I have my Manhunter painted and based. So as this story comes to a close, I’m reminded of another funny thing: I picked up Alten Ashley the Monster Hunter after playing against a Hordes army in my first Warmachine game. Alten is like a sniper that will shoot a warbeast dead. So, putting everything in my pile aside, I will start Alten Ashely next!

Widowmaker Sniper

“Those who would betray us must be shot down like dogs. It is only the enemies of Khador who must fear the Widowmakers, whether foreign-born or hiding in our ranks” — Orsus Zoktavir, The Butcher of Khardov

Finished painting and assembling one of the Khador Widowmaker snipers. They are elite sharpshooters that can pluck out high value enemy targets from a distance while camouflaged behind covers. I chose a green/brown colour scheme and avoided entirely the Khador faction colour (red) because I wanted to stress the unit’s preference of operating independently from the main army and ambushing the enemy from dense forests or other natural features. Making the mulch and dead leaves on the base was quite fun too.

On boxing day I picked up a unit of Khador Demolition Corps, two more Khador Iron Fang Pikemen (on top of my unit of 6 Iron Fang Pikemen), Iron Fang Kapitan and Standard Bearer, Khador Manhunter, and... Eiryss (DUN DUN DUN)!!! I think I’ll start on one of the Iron Fangs after seeing drab greens for... 30 hours.