The Enduring Legacy of the Realms of Chaos

Remember those amazing illustrations from the original Realms of Chaos books, by artists such as Adrian Smith, Paul Campbell etal, the ones that provoked so many ideas and fleshed out some of the possibilities and potential within 3rd Edition Realms of Chaos? I still love looking at them today and often feel inspired to try and convert my own miniatures based on the characters depicted within them. But I don't have to so much anymore because the Games Workshop of today (which has more recently seemed like quite a different beast as to what I grew up with) has released some models that are so obviously steeped in and inspired by some of those very illustrations I alluded to earlier.

I rarely venture onto the GW website, so I am somewhat behind the times, but I saw someone else had painted this model (Sloppity Bilepiper) and assumed it was a conversion, but no, this is a bonefide GW release that is clearly based upon some illustrations from GW of the 80's, specifically the Realms of Chaos. I just had to buy it (and make a bit of an adjustment to make it fit a bit better with those illustrations and lose the, quite frankly, ridiculous staff);

The musical element, the dynamic, dancing poses (especially the Nurgling) are just so evocative of those early illustrations, especially the Dance of Death. The older Nurgling I added to Sloppity's hand is a reference to that era.

I had forgotten about my scenic photography backdrop, so I dusted it off (I actually had to and was surprised by the versatility of static grass) and used it again here:

 Before converting and painting this modern model, I just had to reach for my Lost and Damned book and look for the specific illustrations that I saw the link to in these sculpts. The two images were by Adrian Smith and Paul Campbell from the Nurgle pages in the Lost and Damned Realm of Chaos Tome, specifically the Dance of Death and Nurgle Calvalcade pages. Have a look:

So, as I was researching some of this post, I discovered that GW is releasing a game called the Realm of Chaos. It's not aimed for me, but it is nicely reassuring that my favourite era and output of model miniatures is seeing something of a revival for a new generation of gamers/painters. I'm looking forward to some new plastic models to paint and then sit alongside my original lead ones and hope they all are happy lined up alongside each other.

Chaos Dwarf Renegades

This is one of my favourite pieces of box art from Games Workshop back in the 80's, by John Blanche of course. The triangular composition gives a imposing height to the Chaos Stunties (what is the Master of Madness standing on at the top?) and the contrasting black armour with warm oranges gives an apocalyptic feel to the image. It feels a bit like a last stand for the Renegades, weapons drawn, back to back facing in different directions as they bid to make their stand against an advancing foe on the battlefield.

I've often wondered about their background and my initial knowledge was scant; I remember that the Old Dwarfs tunnelled deep and further North, until some went too far and were cut off from their brethren. The incursions of Chaos came and those isolated, North Eastern most Dwarfs became tainted by the touch of Chaos. So I've tried to do a bit of research about the Renegades in particular. Are they Renegades because they have turned to Chaos or are they renegades within the Chaos Dwarf community? White Dwarf 79 shows their release which hints at how Dwarfs have previously been seen as incorruptible:

And White Dwarf 80 gives us this more detailed information:

On Norse Dwarfs:

"The power of the Chaos Gods had touched and polluted the minds of the Dwarfs and they had turned to the worship of those foul, unfathomable deities. The other Dwarfs shunned them, but the gods were kind, gifting their more dedicated warriors with untold power, honouring them with the mark of chaos. Today the Chaos Dwarfs honour the gods in turn, shedding blood, pursuing slaughter for it's own sake, spilling libations of blood and burning their captives so that the gods may taste the stuff of life. In the Old World they hire out as mercenaries or join with bands of wandering chaotics, Warriors of Chaos or Beastmen.

Chaos Dwarfs are less swarthy than ordinary Dwarfs, their skin is pallid, greenish or even dead white. Their hair is normally black or very dark. Armour and clothing is black and they dress and behave in a manner similar to other Warriors of Chaos"

The last segment is most precious for me, I enjoy reading, as a painter, about how these characters/miniatures may appear, so when I come to paint I'll have some concept of how Chaos Dwarfs were imagined by the design team. Of course, this is not the be all or end all and I usually go my own way when painting, but I do like the description of "pallid and dead white skin, black armour" (which of course this ties in with the box art again) and inspires me to paint my own collection in this style.

 Finally on the back of the boxed set it says about the Renegades:

The box art illustration of course shows each of the eight Chaos Dwarfs that come in the boxed set and upon further investigation I remembered that each of them was named; Master of Madness, Khazek Doomlord, Foaming Mad Furrikson, Doomaxe the Dreaded, Mad Marik Trollbiter, Drum and Drome Ollsen, Napper Grundrin and Pulper Spikehead. This old habit of naming little miniatures gives them a little bit of extra character as I can imagine how some of them have acquired such titles and of course ties in with some of the Chaos attributes they have been given and sculpted with.

I never owned the boxed set as a kid, even though I always wanted to, but as an adult I have now collected the eight models and have started to paint them with my research in mind. Here are the eight Renegades (note the variation of metal colour - the three brighter ones are obviously much later in release, the duller ones much more likely to be from the 80's castings):

I considered recreating the box art by having the Master of Madness on a palanquin, or even raised on a stony outcrop with his guards less raised either side of him to create the triangular composition, but decided against this is in the end as I wanted to create a unit of them. I couldn't just field 8 Chaos Dwarfs, and because I love the models so much, I ended up collecting a few more to create a unit of 20. The Chaos Ogre was left over from a previous project and seems to fit in quite well with the short ones.

Here you can see how I've started to sculpt some Chaotic shields, using some of the illustrations from the Realms of Chaos books as inspiration. The standard bearer may well carry a banner that pays homage to the original box art by John Blanche..

Painting is underway, you can see some wip in the background of the above shot. Until next time...

The addiction: holiday hobby purchases and how there's just not enough time

I've been away on holiday in Kefalonia for the past two weeks, which means a complete break from converting and painting, but of course not from planning and collecting, which may be the more time consuming part of the hobby anyway... In between reading books around the pool and testing my engineering skills when building sand castles and moats on the beach with the kids (and once without the kids),  and all the other usual family holiday shenanigans, I occasionally logged onto a weak and intermittent wifi connection and accumulated some stuff, ready for my return home to wet England....

And on my return I realised that I bought a whole lot more than I usually would over a fortnight period and that the excesses and addictions of my hobby are never more apparent than when I'm away from the physical models themselves.:

My trove of Oldhammer hobby goodness. I found it harder to keep check of my purchases whilst on holiday (the same goes for the amount of meals we ate out etc), my natural inclination to reign in any superfluous spending just disappears on holiday. The only saving grace is that these were all pretty cheap purchases and I console myself that there will be many future hours of enjoyment from them, even if storage for my hobby is becoming rather tight..

A blast from the past for me here; back in the day I borrowed this from the local library (as I did for most of my reading and I used to use up all of my maximum of eight loans - usually at least one of those would be a fighting fantasy book!) This purchase was entirely inspired by the excellent blogging at Somewhere the tea's getting cold where the narrative of the book have been recreated in a skirmish battle. How fuckin' cool and pure Oldhammer is that!

And even more background reading. The cover art reminds me,; I must try and get hold of that mohawked ogre. The wife's away for a few days next week, so this will be my bedtime reading and I n her absence I won't have to worry about funny comments about my reading material or awkward page turning of a larger book.. Can't wait to get stuck into this though..

Some detailed scenery for my dungeon tile project - these are all from  dark-art-studios and on display here are some sarcophagi, treasure chests/piles, barrels and skull piles. Really looking forward to painting these up and adding some character and narrative to my dungeon.

5" Greek cake pillars obviously. These are also for my dungeon project, I'm intending to use these in the throne room , some of them will probably become ruined by chopping and cutting. I'll likely get some smaller ones too and add models on top to make statues.

A .99p Goblin. It's one that I had leading my Gobbo unit back when I had my original 80's army. Obviously I needed him back, perhaps to lead a warband (which would then obviously lead to me re-purchasing my entire 80's O&G army... must stop my project ideas...)

However I'm also excited by the promise that these purchases provide, there's a whole load of hobby projects just waiting to be worked on here, mostly for my dungeon tiles but also just for some background reading too. Oh, but I'm back at work on Tuesday :( , so I guess they will all be joining the backlogged and lengthening queue then as term time comes around again and my new teaching job starts. Yikes, which distracts from which??