Hobby Update: Varangur Chieftain

A last quick update for the Varangur here... A Chieftain on foot. I don't normally name characters, but this guy looks like he'd make a good MANDALF, to reflect his resemblance to a certain wizard as well as his general burliness... we'll see if the name sticks.

"Something, something you shall not pass."

Not too much to say about the guy himself. Being infantry (with only average speed, the larger infantry base size, and likely limited line of sight), getting him into sneaky combats will be hard to achieve. He seems more like a blatant supporting hero; keep him nestled in between a few infantry units and he'll do the best; keeping them inspired and charging in alongside.

When it comes to marks/gifts, I've generally succumbed to what I consider orthodox thought: Headstrong and Fury is generally the way to go. But I think characters are the exception to this rule. I think the Varangur characters could get a lot of mileage out of taking the Brutal gift, particularly this chieftain. As mentioned above, he is a supporting melee character; meant to be charging in alongside other units; contributing to combat while keeping everyone inspired. Brutal makes him that much better at his job of being a force multiplier.



By now, I've worked through the majority of my old Warriors of Chaos plastic, transferring tons and tons over into Kings of War, and coming out with over 7,000 points of stuff (including the Ogre Allies). Not bad! Only a handful of old things remain sitting around in storage:

• Half-built custom War Shrine
• Half a dozen chariots (2 Gorebeast, 4 Core Chaos)
• 10 Hellstriders, plus a hero on Hellstrider
• Chimera
• ~30 Warriors
• 6 Nurgle Ogres with Great Weapons

I may sit down and figure out a way to convert the Ogres over. I cannot think of anything else to use them for, and some Siege Breakers could be useful in my little allied force...

The War Shrine is a chariot chassis on a bunch of green stuff tentacles. I was aiming for the Great Wave of Kanagawa, but with mutated, writhing tentacles instead of water. Sadly, this was started just prior to the End Times, and never really finished up as originally intended. No plans to do anything with it right now. There isn't a great KoW equivalent, so it's likely to sit around for a while.

The chariots need just minor touchups, and would be pretty easy conversions at two to a regiment, but I couldn't settle on a good way to include them. Already having a bunch of Mounted Sons, I didn't want to just proxy them as just more knights. And I couldn't really get a good fluff reason, not could I find the right ally unit I wanted. Even asking the community, I couldn't settle on a good reason, so those are likely to sit around in storage for a while too.

The Hellstriders are neat, and I was generally happy with their old paint job, but I don't know what to do with them. I already have Horse Raiders on real plastic horses. With their weirdness they could almost be Abyssal Horsemen... but they don't really match up with wysiwyg, since there is virtually no armor on the models to represent the 5+ defense in the stats... Plus, the marauder bodies and heads would look weird in an Abyssal army, so this group would likely require repainting and probably headswaps too. That's a fair amount of work for something I'm not entirely sold on.

Definitely needs some touch-ups (and a new base, AND a rider), but not a bad place to start.

The Chimera was my first big purchase for WHFB (big in terms of size of the model, not cost! GW is expensive, and I was several battalion boxes in at least at this point...). I was actually pretty pleased with my old painting. If I can find a kingly-looking rider for it, I'd actually be pretty happy to convert this over into Kings of War. The Varangur could use a bit of a centerpiece model, and fluff-wise, could definitely use an imposing main leader! The painting would need an update, but this isn't a bad place to start.

Lastly, I do plan on converting over the remaining warriors. I need to do a final inventory on the models, but I should have about 30, and should have enough weapons and shields for them to do up two regiments of Sons of Korgaan infantry.

If I paint up the Warriors and Chimera and Ogres... I think that would do it for the existing models I still want to work with and net me another thousand points or so. Unfortunately, temperatures have dropped here recently. I did manage to get a few things primed, but no more Varangur. I think I'm out of good priming weather, so all these final units will likely be more of a spring project.