Far Corfe: Old School Chaos Warband

 

One thing I've always had the urge to do is create a bunch of chaotic rabble and unleash them on a gaming table somewhere. I think it comes from having one of the old Realms of Chaos books when I was younger and messing around with the Byzantine charts supposed to enable the reader to roll up a unique warband.

The only problem with that is you have to then go out and find the crazy collection of freaks and mutants that you managed to roll up, or else customise something to fit. So in the end, it just seemed an easier thing to me to make one out of the stuff that I had sitting around in my bits box.

Work in progress...

I started out with the idea of just doing some Chaos Militia based on cultists, leftover parts from Mantic zombies and various sprues that have come free with hobby magazines over the years. But as always, things began to spin out of control. It might have been due to lockdown fever biting me on the ass, but whatever the cause, I was soon churning out far more miniatures than I had planned.

These guys represent the core of the warband, a deliberately motley and mutated bunch of reprobates that could as easily be derelicts from a back-alley as corrupted members of the Imperial Guard. I tried to work in mutations from Slaves to Darkness wherever possible and keep their colours a fairly uniform palette of desaturated tones in order to give some sense of unity to the perpetually disunited.

The basic rule is that if the original mini was a GW cultist, then you chop off his head and replace it with one from a Bolt Action WW2 sprue. And if the mini was from a Bolt Action WW2 sprue, you do the exact opposite.

A friend commented that the scheme put him in mind of Ian Millers original illustrations in ink for the books, which was a nice compliment and helped me to be confident that I was building a force with an identity that would hold together once it was completed.

I added some more irregulars, such as some little guys and a heavy weapon specialist. But my favourite by far turned out to be the big guy in shot above, a converted Guidball mini that I ended up calling "The Jolly Rotter" on account of him reminding me of the happy mascot on the old Little Chef signs you used to see on your travels here in the UK.

I've always wanted to add Beastmen to a 40k force ever since realising that they were classed as a type of abhuman in the rules. But the GW ones are far too expensive (IMHO) and so it was a relief to be able to pick up a couple from Crooked Dice in their sale. I did manage to get one GW beasty and replaced his standard pole with a jezzail, then added a beastmaster in the form of a chaos warrior that had been deprived of his weapons.

Chaos warriors and renegades seem to be getting into the realms of silly prices on eBay too right now, and so ending up with ones that have been abused by their former owners is becoming something of a regular thing. This guy got a hook from one of the AOS Unmade and a shock baton from the AdMec Skitarii box too.

I do want to add more to the beastman pack, but it depends on when and where I can get my hands on decent examples at a reasonable price.

Almost everyone in the hobby must have at least one sprue of IG on their hands by now, and I was no exception, so these guys ended up becoming a Traitor Guard squad with the addition of new heads from Puppets War. The cultist leader made an easy conversion into a fallen Commissar too, with a Bolt Action head from a certain WW2 army once the incriminating badges were scraped off...

I see these guys as kind of an elite, a squad that's only recently succumbed to the temptations of the eightfold path and still retains most of it's focus and discipline, unlike the main body of rabble that are well on their way to becoming little more than crazed savages.

Of course the ultimate elite and the leadership of the warband lies with the  Chaos Space Marines, who were a very rewarding experience to assemble and put together. They come from all over the place, brand new and recycled from decades ago. Some are even Chaos Warriors or Bloodbowl star players converted to add an even more unique aspect to the warband.

The Chaos Lord in terminator armour was based on a pretty much ruined Abaddon carcass and the colour scheme was intended to show the sheer age and ground-in filth that a pack of ancient renegades would have built up on their armour over the millennia. I see them never removing it either, so they must smell delightful when you get up close.

So there you have it - let me know what you think, either here or on social media.