Wargaming's most insane game?

When I was a teenager, back in 1988, I remember my gaming buddy, Chris, had the Realm of Chaos books, which were an accompaniment to Warhammer Fantasy Battles 3^rd edition (and Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay incidentally). While we played some small games of WHFB and we did talk about how cool it would be to do a Realm of Chaos campaign, we never had the time or drive to get it done.

For those who don’t know, the idea of the Realm of Chaos books was that you create a chaos champion aligned with one of the chaos gods from the Warhammer universe (Khorne, Slaanesh, Tzeentch or Nurgle). You then roll up some chaos rewards (weapons, armour, mutations etc.) and some followers (chaos dwarves, orcs etc.), using a preposterous amount of random tables, to create small warbands.

These warbands would then participate in games, either as add-ons to larger Warhammer Fantasy armies or, if they are large enough, as forces in their own right.

Well fast forward 35 years and now is the time. This time it is my good friend V who owns the reprint editions of both Slaves to Darkness and the Lost and the Damned. As a fellow Warhammer Fantasy fan, it only took a brief conversation for us to commit ourselves to playing a Realm of Chaos campaign.

Our journey begins at our local gaming club when we sat down after a long evening of gaming with a fistful of dice to roll up our warbands.

The first step was to choose a chaos god. As V is a huge Slaanesh fan it made sense for me to pick Khorne.

The next step was to roll up my champion. The dice decreed I was to be a Chaos Dwarf, with a standard line trooper stat line. For reference the profile values are: movement (M), weapon skill (WS), ballistic skill (BS), strength (S), toughness (T), wounds (W), initiative (I), attacks (A), leadership (Ld), intelligence (Int), cool (Cl) and willpower (Wp).

M 3 – WS 4 – BS 3 – S 3 – T 4 – W 1 – I 2 – A 1 – Ld 9 – Int 7 – Cl 9 – Wp 9

Interestingly V also rolled a Chaos Dwarf as his champion, but this time a follower of the depraved and disgusting Slaanesh. Immediately we decided that for the purposes of narrative we were to be brothers. A thrilling development.

As a follower of Khorne, I immediately get a suit of Chaos armour for free (essentially really good heavy armour) as my first Chaos Gift.

Next, I need to roll a Chaos Attribute, or mutation. The dice gave me overgrown hands which modified my basic profile and gave me my first modelling challenge.

M 3 – WS 3* – BS 3 – S 4* – T 4.5*- W 2* – I 2 – A 1 – Ld 9 – Int 7 – Cl 9 – Wp 9

As per the campaign rules in the Slaves to Darkness book we now have 1 Chaos Gift and 1 Chaos Attribute. This entitled me to my first roll on the chaos retinue table to determine what creatures have been drawn to follow me on my journey to shed blood in Khorne’s name.

However, as V and I wanted to play with just our warbands and not include a full Chaos army in our games, we decided to roll twice more each on the chaos rewards table entitling us to a further retinue roll. With a champion and two small units of followers, the warbands would be substantial enough to play a game with without needing to add other models.

So with this in mind I made two more rolls on the chaos rewards table.

As it is the most likely roll I unsurprisingly rolled 2 further Chaos Attributes but as a) modelling too many mutations so soon after starting my warband was going to be a pain and b) when I gain 6 attributes my champion could easily degenerate into a Chaos Spawn (making for a short campaign) we decided to bend the rules a little and swapped one of the Chaos Attributes for a roll on the Rewards tables specific for my patron god (in this case Khorne), even though Chaos Attributes cannot normally be avoided in this way.

So my Chaos Gift from the Khorne rewards table was the face of a Juggernaut (think massive metal ‘horse’ the size of a rhinoceros) and my Chaos Attribute was a shrunken body, which again modified my base stats. Seriously? A dwarf with a shrunken body? WTF?)

M 1.5* – WS 3* – BS 3 – S 2** – T 4.5* – W 2* – I 4* – A 1 – Ld 9 – Int 7 – Cl 9 – Wp 9

Hardly the combat monster I was hoping for to harvest skulls for the skull throne. Lets hope I can get some followers that are vaguely decent in combat.

For my retinue rolls I rolled a single unit for each, giving me 2 rolls on the follower table.

I gained 5 Chaos Dwarf followers (the story just tells itself) and 5 Beastmen. Not bad. Looks like I’m leading from the rear.

Crafting a model collection for a game system that’s been dead to the world for over a quarter of a century, meant some creative decisions would need to be made.

Not owning a 3D printer, I wanted to get as much stuff as possible from my collection or off-the-shelf.

The 5 chaos beastmen were easy as I already owned a few original metal beastmen from Games Workshop’s range in the 1980s. Shocking, I know. A wargamer with a hoard of unused miniatures from their childhood. How improbable…not.

The paint scheme could only be one thing for a Khorne army. Black, red and brass. No thinking required here.

I had a lot to get done so all the painting was quick and dirty. Base coat, wash, out the door.

Beastmen

All models were primed with an airbrush using Vallejo Ghost Grey primer.

All paints are Vallejo Model Color (VMC) unless otherwise stated.

Skin – Beige Red

Beastman fur and hair – Mahogany Brown

Hooves and horns – Field Blue

Skirts, drum body, knife handles, axe handle loops, stitching on banner bearer’s right bracer, banner bearers left arm wrap – Red

Belts, knife sheathes, axe and spear handles, drumstick shaft, banner bearer’s bracer, leather straps and banner pole – Leather Brown

Bone knife handle on musician – Dark Sand

Drum skin, drum beater head, rope on banner – Tan Yellow

Fur on banner, drum and drummer’s fur wrist wrap – Neutral Grey

Weapon blades, metal bracelets, metalwork on drum, banner bearer’s earring, studs on banner pole, knife handle frame – Black then Natural Steel

Shields, chaos badges on belts and banner, laces on knife sheaths – Black

Studs on skirts, designs on chaos badges and shields, loop on banner top, sword handles – Black then Brass

With everything painted it’s a wash all over with Citadels Agrax Earthshade and we are ready for basing.

Games Workshop beastmen in metal must mean GW chaos dwarves in metal, right? Er…no, and barring a lottery win that isn’t happening anytime soon. So, Mantic to the rescue. Mantic has a range of miniatures called Abyssal dwarfs that would do just nicely and are very reasonably priced. I bought a box of the Blacksouls/Decimators kit and also the perfect model for my warband leader, the Abyssal Dwarf king.

After priming these models got an all over airbrush of the VMC Red. Although their armour is quite busy and varied, I wasn’t going to spend a ton of time picking out all of the small textures and details on these models.

With the armour done the rest of the colours were:

Skin – Dark Flesh

Skirts and gloves – German Uniform

Belts, beards, boots, axes and shields – Black

details on belts and shields, axes – Bronze

skull details on a couple of models – Iraqi Sand

Slap on the Agrax and bish, bash bosh, done.

Now for the centrepiece. Mantic’s Abyssal Dwarf king was a pretty good start. The heavy armour and exoskeleton was a great look for chaos armour.

There were two main conversions I needed to look at. The first was the face of a juggernaut. I managed to find an old metal juggernaut head on ebay for a reasonable price and purchased it. The other was the overgrown hands. After having a shout out at my local club, my pal David gave me a selection of spare Orruk arms from the new Age of Sigmar kits. These seemed just large enough to be out of scale but not so large they be difficult to model on. Changing the hands meant swapping out the weapon too, but the Orruk axe looked suitably Khornate so I was cool with that.

The shrunken body mutation I hand waived as I wasn’t going to be able to model it in a satisfactory way anyway.

The Mantic model has a flatish face with a spiked surround. I was able to file the back of the juggernaut head flat and, after doing the same to the dwarf king’s face pin the two together with a bit of greenstuff to hide the join.

The hands were equally simple with just a quick snip it was off with the old and on with the new. Again a little bit of greenstuff was used to blend the join.

After priming I sprayed the whole model VMC Black.

The armour was first painted Silver then Army Painter Speed Paint (APSP) Slaughter Red to give a coloured metallic look.

The exoskeleton was painted oily steel.

Juggernauts have red skin so I painted the hands and head White then a coat of Vermillion.

Other colours were:

Weapon handle – Yellow Ochre

Teeth and claws – Iraqi Sand

Eyes – Lemon Yellow with Black pupils

Hair – London Grey

Skirt and head details – Brass

After washing in Agrax earthshade, I based this and all the other models using Geek Game Scenics Mediterranean Soil over a coat of US Field Drab, with the bases edged in my usual Black.

I was really pleased with my final efforts and it felt great to finally begin a Realm of Chaos project after all these years.

Next stop our first game.