Finally Finished my Khorne Bezerker Army...

One of the ways I manage to keep myself engaged with hobby games after well over half my lifetime is the variety of models that I get to paint. I rarely stick with one army or faction, preferring to flit between one system, or army, and another. That way, I get a different challenge each time I paint; I get to paint different models, different scales, and different colours. It keeps me interested, but it also means that I rarely have a so-called ‘full-sized’ army.

This is something of an abstract concept, so for those of you who don’t know: Each game has a ‘standard’ size, usually measured in points or the system’s equivalent. With Warhammer 40K, that’s usually 1500 points. With Warhammer, it’s 2000, though that has changed with the advent of Age of Sigmar, not sure what the standard size is here. With Lord of the Rings, it’s something like 700 points, and with Batman Miniatures Game I think it’s 300.

The Red Fury, in its full glory.

So it’s no surprise to anybody who knows my approach to hobby gaming that even though I’m well into my 17^th year of doing it, I’ve only managed to create a full-sized army 3 times.

This is the third: The Red Fury.

An army of Khorne Bezerkers, why not? I came up with the idea for the army around halfway through 2011, when I wanted to build up a force to take to every Games Workshop in the country and play a game with it. I intended to build it up a lot more quickly than I did, and it really was my first army where I’d planned it out from the start; I knew where I was going with it, what models I wanted, and what strategies I wanted the army to achieve. Here’s the army list:

	Components	Points	Total Points	Total Army
HQ	Chaos Lord	65	130	1496
	Aura of Dark Glory	15
	Axe of Blind Fury	35
	Veterans of the Long War	5
	Mark of Khorne	10
Troops	Khorne Bezerkers (8)	162	284
	Chainaxe (4)	12
	Gift of Mutation	10
	Veterans of the Long War	8
	Icon of Wrath	15
	Power Weapon	15
	Plasma Pistol	15
	Chaos Rhino	35
	Havoc Launcher	12
	Khorne Bezerkers (8)	162	284
	Chainaxe (4)	12
	Gift of Mutation	10
	Veterans of the Long War	8
	Icon of Wrath	15
	Power Weapon	15
	Plasma Pistol	15
	Chaos Rhino	35
	Havoc Launcher	12
	Khorne Bezerkers (8)	162	284
	Chainaxe (4)	12
	Gift of Mutation	10
	Veterans of the Long War	8
	Icon of Wrath	15
	Power Weapon	15
	Plasma Pistol	15
	Chaos Rhino	35
	Havoc Launcher	12
Heavy Support	Chaos Defiler	195	200
	Havoc Launcher	5
	Chaos Vindicator	120	157
	Siege Shield	10
	Havoc Launcher	12
	Daemonic Possession	15
	Chaos Vindicator	120	157
	Siege Shield	10
	Havoc Launcher	12
	Daemonic Possession	15

 

The heavy vehicles pound the enemy from a distance...

So the concept was simple: Pound the opponent from a distance with three 5-inch blast templates per turn, and destroy whatever was left in close combat afterwards. The Rhinos add to the firepower with their Havoc Launchers, and the Daemonic Possession on the tanks protected them from being stun-locked out of combat.

Unfortunately, I designed the army while 5^th Edition 40K was still in full swing, and while upgrades to the Bezerkers sorted out the discrepancy in points, I still completed it four years and two editions after the fact. It’s got no way of dealing with Fliers, for example, and since most armies these days have at least some form of flier it can cause problems. With the introduction of Hull Points in 6^th edition, tanks became much easier to destroy. And of course the idea of relying on blast templates and close combat weapons is something of a departure from the fact that the most damage I ever do to anything in 40K is with small-arms fire.

While the Bezerkers wait to eviscerate anything that gets too close.

Nonetheless, the Defilers and Vindicators do their jobs well as destruction machines and are absolute magnets for bullets. Oddly for an army that relies on close combat, I play a defensive game and allow the opponent to take the fight to me. I enjoy hiding my Bezerkers in ruins, out of line of sight. This forces my opponents to approach me if they want to win, because if they don’t, I can use the tanks to blast them from a distance.

This isn’t a strong army, by any stretch of the imagination. A hardcore tournament player would take me to pieces in moments. But it does what it does well enough, and hopefully proves a beyond-beginner level of challenge for most people. If Chaos are getting a new codex for 7^th edition, I’ll be interested to see what changes it will bring and how it will affect the dynamic of an army like this. Until then, I’ll try and get some games in, and see what happens when an unstoppable force whoops an immovable object’s ass.

Lead by this beast of a warrior (Games Day 2009 model)

You may also notice a difference in the painting of some of the models; this is again due to the changing editions of the paints. The Bezerkers started off being painted Mechrite Red, but by the time I got around to painting the last squad, two of the Rhinos and the two Vindicators, that colour had been replaced by Mephiston Red which is a little brighter. I was a bit miffed about that, but I wanted to see this army through to the end so I tried not to worry about it too much.

New models: Khorne Bezerkers

That is actually 500 points...

So here they are, resplendent in all their glory... the beginnings of my new Khornate Chaos Army. And todays Daily Mirror.

How this came about is that I had some Khorne Bezerkers left over from the Chaos Space Marine Battleforce that I got from Games Workshop way back in 2008. I was missing a few sprues out of it; there were only 4 out of the 8 Bezerkers in the box and as I later found out, no backpacks for them. But I didn't notice until a couple of months after I had it and couldn't really do anything about it. So they remained dormant for a while...

Seriously, don't mess...

Then earlier this year I started collecting Orks, and thought how cool it would be to put Ork arms on Khorne Bezerkers so they could use Ork Swords and Axes instead of the usual Chainswords. Not a bad idea, and from this an army list was drawn, but I was going to need a lot of Orks for that and so far I had ten, so I put it on the back burner for a while.

Now, I've been collecting Orks, and Orcs, for most of the year. I've even gone for some Space Marines. But the Chaos Gods do not lose a Champion lightly, and I kept coming back to the army list I'd drawn up. Looking back, the list I came up with is as near as I ever get to power gaming, although I wouldn't strictly speaking call it that because I'm quite sure my army would go down easily to any half-capable player. But at some point, I was going to have to do this army. It was in my blood...

I really liked all 4 conversions on the Skull Champion.

So I got myself down to Games Workshop and brought myself some Bezerkers. Combined with a Lord and the 4 that I already had, I had a 500 point army right there. It was when I broke them out of the pack that the problems started to arise. I noticed that the Bezerkers had some quite distinctive backpacks that the ones I already had didn't have. I also noticed, when trying to assemble them, that the backpacks don't really fit the model. This is nothing that can't be solved with a modelling knife, and you might expect better from Games Workshop these days, but you have to remember that these models have not substantially changed since at least the late 90s, (the actual sprue says 1994,) and it's going to take more than a minor niggle with the fit of the model to persuade GW to re-design them when, aesthetically at least, these models work as well as they need to. The missing backpacks was easily solved by using some other backpacks I have from my old Chaos Space Marines, including the Champion's backpack which, for lack of knowing which sprue was which when I first got those boxes out, I never used. The other problem was more to do with my Army list, as it happens. I wanted the Skull Champions to have plasma pistols and power weapons; the option is there in the codex but the models come with neither. Enter my conversions...

I didn't really intend to convert much of this army as it is something I wanted to put together reasonably quickly for gaming (goodness knows I need a better army than my current one!) but it's Chaos; you can't not convert Chaos. The most obvious ones are the weapons, where I reverted to my original idea of putting Ork arms on the Bezerkers. Keeping it to the Skull Champions was, in retrospect, an easier option, and fits in with my usual trick of keeping characters in the army (basically whenever there is an option to take a Champion-type character, I always take it because I like the character they bring to the army. Especially Chaos.) Plasma pistols were a little more tricky; I had to find some (hard,) and then convert them so they would fit on the model (a little easier.) I ended up cutting the hands off the Champions and sticking the plasma pistols on whatever remained; it worked but they point the guns a funny way. I think next time I might just glue on the whole arm, if that will work. For one of the Champions I gave him the helmetless head that comes with the Bezerkers, and an Ork Jaw to use as an oversized face mask. Ridiculous, but I like it. The other, I gave a different head, I'm pretty sure it was out of the Possessed set that also came with the Battleforce.

Then I had to paint the things...

Mad as badgers, the lot of them.

I began by using almost an entire pot of Mechrite Red in the Spray Gun. This was not intentional, but the gun became blocked and for some reason I could never get the water/paint balance right again after I'd cleared it. But, the Bezerkers were suitably red. I then drybrushed Blood Red over the armour, again thanking my lucky stars for the Foundation paints as this would have taken a lot longer if Mechrite Red didn't exist. (I would have known, by now, not to paint Blood Red straight on to Black, but I would have taken ages building the colour up from Scab Red up to Red Gore, then Blood Red...)

And that's as much as I'm going to say about that for now. There is more, but as I'm pretty much going to paint the army in the same way, it's ground I'm going to cover in future blogs. No, I'd much rather talk about this beast for the time being...

"I'll thank you not to mention my sense of timing and proportion..."

Anyone recognise this? I worked Games Day 2009, and this was the model that came with the ticket - and any staff who worked there. And yes I KNOW - it's a Warhammer model, not a 40K model. Fact is, I really don't care; the model was sitting in a bag of models awaiting assembly, and to be honest I would much rather see it on the table being used in whatever capacity than get rid of it. Don't get me wrong, I see the value in the model as a collector's item, and I'm pretty sure I could have made a tidy sum for it on Ebay, but that's never what I intend by buying models, or otherwise obtaining them. I want to see them kicking ass, not being stuck in a cabinet! My painting's not that good anyway.

I'd like to draw your attention to the brass, that I painted using a guide found in my most recent edition of White Dwarf (Can't think of the number off-hand; it's talking up Dreadfleet at the moment.) How it works is this: First, paint the brass a mix of Scorched Brown and Shining Gold. Then, layer on a neat layer of Shining Gold. I'm pretty sure at this point you wash it down with Devlan Mud (another one of GW's better ideas.) Then pick out the highlights with Burnished Gold, and finally a very light drybrush of Mythril Silver on the raised areas. I was a bit heavy handed with the silver but other than that I think it worked quite well and certainly added some dept to the brass areas.

The axes, by the way, are supposed to be a Daemon Weapon - that's how I'm going to use it at any rate. The colour is supposed to be Obsidian, an idea I got from the Skulltaker article way back in White Dwarf 34somethingorother. It didn't work quite as well as I'd hoped but it doesn't look bad. Finally, I was quite pleased with the cloak and particularly the dirt on said cloak. It was first painted black with a bit of grey mixed in, (this actually required two coats as I did it from red,) and highlighted with a bit more grey in the mix. The muck was Khemri Brown drybrushed on with an old drybrush, and the dust was Denheb Stone done in much the same way. I think that looks very effective.

So when are we going to see these on the table? Probably not all that quickly; as it stands now the army relies on a very quick short game and I envisage it being shot to pieces as it tries to slug across the table. A later version of the army list includes Rhinos for everything but right now it's just these guys and I don't much fancy their chances against an Imperial Guard Gun Line. What's next for the army? If I remember rightly, a Chaos Defiler. That'll be interesting, especially as I have yet to buy such a thing; right now I need to finish off those Orcs, paint some pieces of scenery I've been working on, and there's a load of Soldiers of Gondor that would benefit from some attention as well. And that's just the models I've built. Busy, busy! Not planning on getting any games in next week as I'm fairly certain that the only night I'm going to be free will also coincide with the one day I have to be up early for a conference. If I get any painting finished off before, say, the middle of the week after, it will be a miracle. But watch this space, I've worked miracles before...