Let's roll up some Chaos warbands!

[Tauntaun Scout]

Hey everyone. Let's roll up chaos warbands from whichever chart you choose and show out painting progress on them!

I went back to Realm of Chaos: Slaves to Darkness and rolled up a Slaaneshi champion with pointed head. His (her? their? it's?) retinue wound up being a sorceror with the head of a daemonette steed, and 9 humans.

So with that, I set to digging. By sheer coincidence I had metal figures that would work for the two heroes in my storage vaults. One of them was missing a weapon, so I gave him an orky axe from a 40k sprue. Comically oversized weapons: This is the way.

But what to use for the 9 humans? If I'd rolled up like 3 humans I woulda tracked down cool old metal creepy freaks. But for 9 there is only one choice: Battlemaster's chaos archers! When these 11 models are painted I will post pics and roll on the chart for additional followers. I will make precisely 4 more rolls for followers, one apiece as I paint up each new addition to the warband.

[Yuber Okami]

Ah, the old craziness is back...

[Tauntaun Scout]

Ah, the old craziness is back...

Indeed it is.

Try as I might, I absolutely cannot find out the rules for equipping my champion. Other than rolling up magic items or demon weapons as a favor of the gods, I can't find a single rule for how to equip them. Seems like the type of oversight that was common back then. Since I hadn't gotten any such thing when rolling up the champion, I gave him a hand weapon and I guess that's all he has?

[Diablo Jon]

Indeed it is.

Try as I might, I absolutely cannot find out the rules for equipping my champion. Other than rolling up magic items or demon weapons as a favor of the gods, I can't find a single rule for how to equip them. Seems like the type of oversight that was common back then. Since I hadn't gotten any such thing when rolling up the champion, I gave him a hand weapon and I guess that's all he has?

Have you got the Lost and the Damned? because page 48 has rules on generating starting equipment for champions. Basically a level 5 hero starts with d6+1 points and you get an extra point each level up to level 25 and then you can use the points to buy equipment (costing the same as equipment in the 3rd edition rule book i.e light armour 2pts) no mention of what champions starting out with a standard non hero profile get I give them a d6 points. As you say, much as I love the books, they could be horribly lacking in clarification at times.

Still I love 3rd edition chaos warbands so I might roll one up and join you in painting it up 

[Tauntaun Scout]

I do not have TLATD. Hypothetically I may have got a pdf of it. Hypothetically. I know about the chart in there but I was trying to find something similar in STD because maybe it differed slightly between patron chaos gods.

I like how thsoe books were expensive and separated by a significant chunk of time so in between, or if you couldn't shell out massive cash, there was no way to know what to give the most important member of your warband! I guess groups just made their own rules!

[Tauntaun Scout]

So here is the warband. I now get my first of 4 expansion rolls. When each roll is fully painted up, I get to do the next one.

First off is a pointy headed aspiring champion, and a sorcerer with the head of a demon steed. Luckily I had these lying around! The champion was someone else's old conversion fodder so he was missing his weapon. I put an old plastic ork axe on him.



I also rolled 6 human followers, then 3 more human followers... since I had the option to equip them with bows and light armor for free, making a unit of 9 plastic chaos archers from Battle Masters seemed like the only economical option. A quick hunt on eBay turned up more than I need for a reasonable price, along with a small pile of beastmen, orcs, goblins and chaos warriors which may save me on future rolls for followers. Tonight I'll finish everyone's bases with sand etc.



So on with the the rolling! I rolled up... no additional followers. Ok. So... that's painted, I guess. Next up I rolled... a cockatrice! Oh for crying out loud this is not gonna be cheap.

Warband rolling history:
1: Champion, Sorceror, and 9 Human Followers
2: Nothing
3: Cockatrice
4: TBA
5: TBA

And then that will conclude the warband.

[Nordic1980s]

Nice! The axe works well on the sorcerer, about similar in size to champion's axe.

[bobhope]

Really nice work! Still one of my favourite weekend activities rolling up warbands

Here’s my wip on the desk at the moment

Will follow for inspiration to get mine finished

[Tauntaun Scout]

Those look great, Bob Hope!

This warband is making me think dangerous thoughts about painting a full 1,000 or 2,000 point army of Chaos from an edition TBD though. Beware of the lure of chaos...

[Tauntaun Scout]

Moving right along. The cockatrice was not as difficult as I thought. Yay! However something struck me as odd. The characters should be changing as this goes along. They should mutate, get weird new weapons, etc. etc. So I decided to roll on the Rewards table once from now on along with the followers table. The caveat being, I would re-roll anything that doesn't have to be modeled, like a simple stat increase or something doesn't count.

Hence along with the cockatrice after a few false starts, I rolled and got a familiar. That has to be modeled, so it's in! Luckily we all have a bunch of old familiars in our bits boxes. Seriously those things enjoyed one of the longest production runs of any WFB minis. I think they were continuously available through various means for about 30 years. I opted for a mini dragon cause I could paint it all funny. And cause I could imagine them getting it from the same shopping trip of zoological oddities that the cockatrice came from.

Next up I rolled 3 beastmen and 5 goblins. I could delve into the pile of used Battlemasters chaos army pieces I got off eBay to start this project. Or I could hunt through my basememnt for metal. I know I have one good metal 3rd edition beastman, and probably enough old metal forest goblins. All those feathered headdresses could be potentially painted in very Slaaneshi colors. On the other hand, the round shields of the plastic guys could be painted orange with a white skull device, tying them in with the chest armor of the archers and giving the otherwise disparate warband a unifying badge. Also there's something poverty chic about using lots of Battlemasters figures.

I have not yet actually rolled for this round's mutation/replacement/whatever of a figure either...



The whole warband.



A very fiery familiar for my sorcerer.



B'caw!

Warband rolling history:
1: Champion, Sorceror, and 9 Human Followers
2: Nothing
3: Cockatrice and Familiar
4: 3 Beastmen and 5 Goblins (character changes TBA)
5: TBA

And then that will conclude the warband. Or will it? At the end I guess I have to decide he fate of my aspiring champion. It could become a daemon prince, a spawn of chaos, a skeletal champion (for a year and a day before crumbling to dust), or end the campaign as a recognizable version of itself.

Ok, so obviously "no change" is not gonna fly with me. Since it has no visible skin I don't think a skeletal champion would require any modelling either so that's out. This means either a spawn or a daemon prince! I prefer spawn. Seems more sporting? But I'll let you folks vote on it via PM, until the final retinue roll is done.

[WuZhuiQiu]

Nice work! Might there be a place for rare earth magnets in applying mutations...?

[Tauntaun Scout]

Nice work! Might there be a place for rare earth magnets in applying mutations...?

Maybe! But not today. Read on, if you dare...

[Tauntaun Scout]

Onward with these foul misbegotten servants of damnation.

I went ahead and painted 3 beastmen and 5 goblins, opting for Battlemasters plastic so I could make the shields match the chestplates of the archers. Woe! It did not work. I forgot the Battlemasters shields tend to be somewhat concave. My freehand skulls, which worked so well on my space marines convex kneepads, ended up looking more like mushrooms that got stepped on. So I painted over them with a simple Slaneshi shield device.

I got sick of rolling of physically modellable changes. I just kept rollingthings that wouldn't be physically visible, or wouldn't be seen under the weird armor and flowing robes of this model anyways.  So I made my own "chart" by lining up 11 bits, rolling a D12, and counting down the line. A 12 would result in my being content not to convert the figure after all. I got a 10, which meant grafting an old 90's chaos spawn "two conjoined heads on a single neck" bit onto my model. Lovely. I drilled a hole in his back to glue it into. Slaanesh then smiled upon him and made my hand slip so that his chestplate was damaged, requiring a second mutation to hide marred lead! I twisted the neck a bit with pliers so that one of the faces would be facing the same direction that the model is gesturing towards. I glued it in and then thought about how to fix the damaged breastplate. A skaven-tail-made-tentacle was an obvious and easy choice. But then it hit me. His armor is some sort of skeletal construction, why not a 3rd (skeleton) arm that grew out of his armor? Best of all it would use a 3rd edition bit. So that makes a new pair of heads for this roll, and a 3rd arm to get me ahead on the next roll. With these additions painted I rolled again on the table! Getting a bunch more humans and beastmen. Boring, but straightforward.



The warband is growing...



Beastly beastmen.



Lots of gobbos.







Conversion closeups. This is guy is very hard to photograph well.


Warband rolling history:
1: Champion, Sorceror, and 9 Human Followers
2: Nothing
3: Cockatrice and Familiar
4: 3 Beastmen and 5 Goblins, Champion sprouted two monster heads and a skeletal arm.
5: 7 Human Followers, 6 Beastmen

And that is going to be the end of the actual warband for the forseeable future. However in digging through the bits and going through the process of converting the champion, I got some ideas for making a spawn and/or demon prince model of him.

[Maxromek]

Fantastic idea and great minis! I love the colour schemes, but what really caught my eyes is how weirdly well the grey basing works with goblin green edges