Path of Damnation: Thug Life

I've sold my soul to the ruinous powers and am embarking on a quest that will see me achieve apotheosis or consigned to oblivion.

As with so many who.have tried this treacherous path, my journey begins with the humble Chaos Thugs (Marauders), mere pawns of the dark gods seeking their favour through slaughter.

My personal path of damnation will see me building a Chaos army for Warhammer: The Old World using only what I already own. I've no idea whether this will create an effective force, but that's not really the point.

My main aims are threefold:

1. Use the Chaos miniatures I own in a creative way;
2. Try to be a bit more creative with my painting and modelling;
3. Aim to emulate some of the style of the Realms of Chaos: the Lost and the Damned book, which I feel typifies how I see Chaos in Warhammer.

As such, I've decided to use the excellent cover art, painted by Les Edwards, from the Realms of Chaos: the Lost and the Damned book as my main source of inspiration. I've always believed this piece captures the corruption of Chaos and has a colour palette that would be fun to try to match.

This decision also influences which of the great powers I shall be swearing fealty to, at least in the short term. Grandfather Nurgle, the Fly Lord of Pestilence. 

This means there will be lots of greens and browns in the army, and a few splashes of red here and there. It also means I can potentially make heavy use of some technical paints: Nurgle's Rot (obvs), Typhus Corrosion and Blood for the Blood God.

Five of the Chaos Thugs I painted are from the CH6 range released in 1987 and I remember them appearing in the early issues of White Dwarf I bought. Above we have 'Brain Slammer' and the oddly named 'Punter Dunter'.

I had a bit of a battle with the skin of the Thugs. Initially I used a variation of my zombie recipe, but it turned out too green for what I wanted, more like the head on Punter Dunter's belt (I might save that for some more corrupted champions). So I opted to add a thin coat of Kislev Flesh coloured with a coat of Skeleton Horde contrast paint. This has given them an unhealthy yellowish tinge which I like.

'Pin Head's and 'Stabstab' are both a little smaller than the others, which is useful as I'm planning to bring some Chaos Dwarfs into the unit and these two will bridge the gap between the Dwarfs and the larger models.

They also typify some of the quirkiness of the sculpts with 'Pin Head' having shades of Ram Man from He-Man and 'Stabstab' holding improvised weapon (two daggers strapped to a stick) like a bass guitar. For some reason, he reminds me of Dave Hill from Slade.

'Siclesword' (that is the correct spelling) is the only one of the bunch armed with a shield. I'm not going to be uniform about weapons, but instead will equip the unit with whatever loadout is in the majority. At the moment it looks like thiswill be great weapons, which probably means the Thugs will be killed before they get to attack. If it looks like they will be in the minority, I may add shields to some of the others.

Siclesword's hair and armour typifies what seems to be a design aesthetic for Chaos models of this era. All the models in this range have mismatched boots and incomplete armour similar in style to gladiators.

I like this lack of uniformity as that was lost in that later plastic Chaos ranges and really turned me off collecting a force.

The final model in the group is Ironhand the Mighty from the simply titled Heroes for Dungeonquest expansion Dungeonquest board game released in 1987. I have several others from this set which will be finding their way into my army.

He actually is a gladiator and so fits right in with the other Thugs. I think he was meant to be some sort of half-ogre because the dimensions of his head are even more out of proportion than othe miniatures of this time.

To my mind, he's already begun to receive rewards from Nurgle, his blessing marked out by the massive boil on his buttock.

And so my journey down the dark path has begun. 

I feel that I've done a decent job of capturing the aesthetic of the Les Edwards art work, but I'm not totally pleased with the skin and so will try to work on this as I progress. I'm pleased with the basing scheme as it's effective and easy to do.

This chaotic assault on Lead Mountain is part of a two-pronged attack which has seen me selling on a few more miniatures. This time it was some Empire Halflings who's gate was sealed last year when I conscripted my Advanced Heroquest Men-at-Arms into my Bretonnian army rather than start the Imperial force I've always threatened to begin.

Acquired: -29
Painted: 22
Lead Mountain: 608

Howdah You Do?

Obviously, having painted a Mumakil with a massive howdah, I needed to paint up some guys to ride in it.

Enter the Haradrim.

The War Mumak of Harad kit comes with a sprue of Haradrim warriors to act as the crew, as well as an officer figure. Additionally I had a single Haradrim warrior knocking about my bits box (I was sure I had a few more) and one extra special addition to the force.

I was pleased to discover that I could fit all 15 of them in the Howdah, meaning that I don't have to find extra storage space for them and they can live in my display cabinet.

Mind you, they are not exactly models that I am massively proud of. The sculpts (and their moulds) are showing their age.

There was quite a lot of clean up to do on the mould lines and some of the archers have smudged blobs for hams where they are reaching back to their quivers.

Therefore I decided to not get too worried about the paint job and just aim for table ready - like I've done for the other old plastic sculpts in my Rohan and Mordor forces.

I used a red base coat and added the flesh tone, wood, leather and gold before giving the whole model a wash in Agrax Earthshade.

After this I used contrast black to add variation. I actually used images from the films and cosplayers to guide what to paint black on individual models, ensuring that I avoided being too uniform.

I didn't bother with adding any purple (which some paint guide go mad for) as from my research there's only a handful of warriors in the ambush scene from The Two Towers with any purple on them.

The captain model is a bit of an odd duck as he has a bird helm which I can find no reference for in the films. It's one of those designs which would feel more at home in Age of Sigmar and is indicative of what happens when the Games Workshop design team start inventing things - it all gets a bit over the top.

It also seems an odd choice to include in the kit when the Mahud, who are featured relatively heavily in The Return of the King is right there.

Mind you, Games Workshop did turn him into an individual model you can buy (currently at the bargain price of £16.50), so the omission is easily explained.

But why a bird helmet?

Anyway, whilst we're on the subject of models that don't fit in, I've also done this guy. He's the Saracen character from Talisman and was one of my favourite characters to play in the game because his artwork looked cool.

It being the eighties and me being very young meant that I didn't really think about his handy ability to sell people into slavery, something that was changed in the only later iteration of the game he appeared in.

Anyway, with the addition of an old plastic shield which handily features a snake (the emblem of Harad) I've added him to this force as another captain because he's a close enough fit I can't imagine what else I'd do with the model.

There is a bit of a scale issue, but I could argue that he's from Near Harad and the plastic warriors are from Far Harad...sorry.

I'm really pleased to have got this whole kit done so quickly and it's made for a strong start to the year, which has been added to as I've begun another round of selling off some old models.

This time it's some second edition Bloodbowl miniatures that I've decided I'll never get round to. I have kept a couple of teams in case the urge to play Bloodbowl ever returns, but I already have four other painted teams so I should be fine.

Acquired: -18

Painted: 16

Lead Mountain: 625

That Still Only Counts As One!

First post of 2025.

Surely it needs to be something big.

I mean really big.

REALLY, REALLY BIG!

Oh yeah! That's the way to start off the new year.

A Mumakil, or Oliphaunt, from the Lord of the Rings. A war beast that the men of Harad ride into the Battle of the Pelennor Fields to drive back the charge of the Rohirrim.

It's taken me about a week to do, partly because there's a large model to build and a large surface area to paint, but also because it's a bit of a swine of a model kit.

The first step was assembly which appeared fairly straightforward, which was helpful because the instructions are from the 'vague grainy picture with arrows around it' period of Games Workshop instructions.

Two major problems appeared during this section, first were the four struts supporting the main howdah, which were not numbered, didn't have any defined keying and needed to be slotted in with the howdah above them to ensure they went into the right location. Most of the swearing in the whole build happened at this point.

The second issue were the massive straight join lined down the middle of each leg and across the body and head. This is where the age of this kit showed the most.

And so I took to doing the largest greenstuff application I've ever done on a model.

I don't usually bother with filling gaps as usually paint will cover most issues. However, the lines were so visible that I felt I'd need to do something more definite.

I actually have a surprisingly large amount of greenstuff for someone who doesn't use it and so go on with filling the gaps.

I looked at a few videos before trying this step and one guy had use his knife to cut lines to simulate the Mumak's skin into the greenstuff whilst it was still wet. I'm not sure how successful mine were, but it's better than just a smooth surface.

Looking at the joins now it's painted, I could definitely improve this process, but importantly the joins don't draw the eye, which was my goal, so I'm happy with how I did.

Meanwhile, I started on painting with the base, which is pretty much the equivalent of an entire unit's worth of painting: our dead Rohirrim, two dead Orcs and three dead horses, along with sundry weapons and shields.

I really like the base and decided to go with clumps of grass and flowers rather than using the basing material I usually put on my LotR models because of the level of detail involved, which include horseshoe prints, that I didn't want to cover up.

Next up was the howdah, which was a much simpler affair and done with just four contrast paints, although waiting for each stage to dry was a bit of a pain.

I will say that my top tip if you are going to paint one of these monsters is to keep the base and howdah separate for painting, because otherwise thing will get really awkward.

And finally we got to painting the Oliphaunt itself.

I again mainly used contrast paints, but added some dry brushing of the skin and the tusks to enhance the texture of the skin and deepen the shadows, whilst smoothing out the appearance of the tusks.

I suppose I could have done something to add spikes to the tusks or painted designs to the skin, and I may still do that, but for now my goal was to get it done and on the table.

And so there we have it.

I have to admit that this beast has been one of my white whales of gaming ever since I saw the first model. That's the reason I went for the somewhat frustrating plastic kit (that I had been warned about) rather than exploring 3d printed options.

Given that the scenarios that involve these creatures all included at least two, if and when I get another, I will look at alternatives as this was frustrating at times.

However, I'm really pleased to get it done and it's a great way to start the new year. I now just need to paint a regiment of troops to ride it.

Acquired: 0

Painted: 1

Lead Mountain: 640