Warhammer Renaissance: Let's Paint Chaos Warriors

My main wargaming project right now is building a Warhammer Renaissance Chaos army from what I already own. I've already got some Khorne Daemons, and in Renaissance a Chaos army can be either Chaos Warriors, Beastmen or Daemons, or all three combined. Obviously that's the most fun, but at under 2000 points, it means the army has to be dedicated to only one Chaos god. So it turns out I'm building a Khorne warband.

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My first unit is some Marauder Horsemen. I've previously used the Samurai Rabbits from Eureka Miniatures' excellent Pond Wars range for my Stormbun Eternals and the Loyal Zootopian Lancers. Reading some Usagi Yojimbo gave me an idea, which led me to Warlord's Samurai Horsemen. I was originally going to field them as Rough Riders in 40k, but now they have the perhaps dubious honor of being the first full unit to join my Warhammer Renaissance Chaos warband.

Stillmania compels me to name each unit and provide them with a background, so:

The Moon Dancers

Long ago, in the land of Nippon, six samurai were so consumed by the way of the warrior that they lived only for battle and killing. Their daimyo, sickened by their bloodthirst, banished them from his service, making them rōnin, warriors without a master. As their infamy grew, no-one in Nippon would retain their services. And so the six rōnin headed north into the Chaos Wastes, where they dedicated themselves to Khorne and now ride under his bloody banner.

Six Marauder Horsemen with a standard bearer are worth 138 points.

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In addition to the horsemen, I also own a whole regiment of twelve Chaos Warriors, assembled and undercoated, who've sat on a shelf for so long that they were covered in a thick layer of dust.

Since our first game will be at 750 points, with a maximum points value per unit of 200, I can't field all twelve of them; ten Chaos Warriors add up to 180 points.

I think it's funny that I painted these specifically for Renaissance, which is basically an Oldhammer project, and I kind of accidentally made this the most grimdark unit I've ever painted. But I wanted them to look like proper fantasy villains, and I think I did.

The Scholars of Brass and Blood

Siegfried Totenbaum, High Professor of the Altdorf Polytechnical College, decided to experiment with an innovative new teaching technique called the group project. His students were divided into groups and told that their grade, and therefore their entire future, now depended on the success of their group project.

The first student death occurred two weeks into the project. Several fatal accidents followed, later escalating into outright murders and open warfare. Soon Totenbaum had been assassinated and the Polytechnical College was engulfed in flames. The only known survivors were a group of students who swore an oath to Khorne, overcame their enemies, and fled through the sewers as the College collapsed above them. They now roam the Chaos Wastes as warriors of the Blood God.

The obscure elven tome Totenbaum got his idea from, known by its Classical title Rota Magna, is believed to have been destroyed in the fire.

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Now all I need is a character to lead the army. A while ago, Archon Studios made a 28mm He-Man miniature game. I bought it on a whim; I watched the Filmation animated show religiously as a kid. So here I was, thinking that I need a Chaos Hero with something I can plausibly pass off as an Icon of Khorne from the magic item list - and I remembered I also got the Teela expansion.

I think she looks pretty good in Khorne's colors!

Of course we have to give her a name, so:

Thekla von Grauschädel

Born in the lowly hamlet of Grauschädel in Reikland, Thekla was sent to work as a maid for a local wizard. Slaving away in his household, Thekla developed a passionate hatred for her master and all magic-users. One of the older servants taught Thekla to read, and in the wizard's library, she found tomes with rituals for the destruction of magic-users. The wizard was such a brutal master that many of his servants soon joined a cult dedicated to his murder, and with young Thekla's leadership, he was soon dead and his manor burned to the ground. Thekla and the other servants fled into the woods, where she soon became their leader. The cult activities continued, and Thekla eventually drew Khorne's eye and earned his mark.

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Together with some Bloodletters, I now have a tiny Chaos army for Warhammer Renaissance, and I'm hoping to get to try a game soon!

Let's Paint Warhammer Renaissance

A while ago, I was introduced to Warhammer Renaissance. Bizarrely living on a Facebook page, it's a fan project to take the 4th-6th edition Warhammer Fantasy Battle rules and make them, well, better. I'm interested in trying it, as I should have some folks to play with, and more to the point, a huge pile of Warhammer Fantasy miniatures from back in the day. If Epic was my first love in wargaming, I did also own the 4th edition Warhammer Fantasy Battle box, but got to play far too little of it. This is as good a time as any to fix that.

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Making something out of my chaotic collection of Warhammer Fantasy miniatures is very appealing to me, both from the obvious financial standpoint, but also on a deeper level. As long ago as 2019, I read a blog post from a Warhammer hobbyist, written shortly before he passed away. It made me resolve to try to finish modeling projects before starting new ones, so I did: I built some Warhammer 40,000 armies and actually played games with them. I followed that up with a New Year's resolution to not buy any new miniatures in 2024, which I think I mostly kept.

Then in 2025, Legions Imperialis showed up, and I've really enjoyed painting and playing it. I also feel that I've gone about it a lot more responsibly: I have no untouched Legions kits in my collection, and the unpainted stuff all fits in a single Legions Astartes Battle Group box. I'm quite happy about this.

So now it feels like the next logical step in this process is to go back to all the Warhammer Fantasy stuff I've bought over the years, and try to build some workable armies out of that. I'm going to try to do this with an absolute minimum of new purchases. This will make a serious dent in my stash of unpainted miniatures, and that makes me feel quite good.

What's more, we're going to be approaching Warhammer Renaissance through Stillmania. For those of you who have yet to hear the good word, Stillmania is an approach to wargaming named after Games Workshop writer and designer Nigel Stillman. It's basically the antithesis of the current meta-chasing, win-at-all-costs tournament culture.

For me, Stillmania means coming up with heaps of fluff for my army, but especially in my current circumstances, it means that I'm building a Warhammer Renaissance army out of what I have, and playing that army. I'm looking forward to it.

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At a guess, I could probably build three, if not four, whole Warhammer Renaissance armies from what I already own. The easiest one to get into playable condition has to be Chaos; not just because the models cost a lot of points, but because I have so many of them already. For starters, I bought a Wrath and Rapture box back in the day, so I already have a bunch of Daemons we can get into Renaissance shape.

I started with the Juggernauts I'd painted earlier and once fielded in a game of 40k. I'd given them grey bases to match my 40k minis, but it didn't seem appropriate for fantasy models. So I came up with a sort of hell-themed basing scheme of Vermillion with a German Camo Black Brown drybrush:

I like it.

Yeenoghu got the same treatment, and while I was at it, I also painted the base of my Skull Cannon of Khorne to match, even though it doesn't exist in Renaissance.

I'm still kinda happy with the job I did on it, though, so maybe one day...

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Wrath and Rapture also came with Bloodletters, and this project finally gave me a reason to paint them.

I never really thought much of Bloodletters, but they're kinda growing on me. Here's a closeup of the flag for pride month:

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I'm very happy to have this project underway!

Epic: The Ikteros Pattern Basilisk

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a Legions Imperialis army must be in want of artillery. So obviously my Solar Auxilia need some Basilisks. But there's a problem: I can't tolerate the miniature in Legions at all.

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The so-called Mars-Auxilia pattern Basilisk is an Earthshaker gun on a Leman Russ chassis. Or more accurately, it's an Earthshaker gun sticking out of a turretless, slightly extended Leman Russ hull, and I think it's ludicrous even for a Warhammer vehicle.

If you look at the layout of a Leman Russ, the engine simply has to be at the back of the hull. With the turret, sponsons, driver's position and hull gun, there's really nowhere else it can be. So on the Mars-Auxilia Basilisk, the breech where the gun is loaded, the fighting compartment around it, and the ammunition, would all need to be exactly where the engine is. This seems to be confirmed by the large door on the back of the vehicle.

I can't make this make any amount of sense, and even if it somehow did, that fighting compartment is just way too damn tiny. More to the point, that thing doesn't look anything like a proper self-propelled gun. Compare, for instance, the Armageddon pattern Basilisk, which does. I think I need to try to do something about this.

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The Basilisk hull is made up of a top and bottom bit.

I cut the top of the fighting compartment off with a hobby knife, which was fairly easy.

And drilled a little hole in the bottom hull.

I then glued together the two hull halves.

And glued a cocktail stick in the hole to hold the roof up at the proper height.

This makes for what looks like an appropriately sized fighting compartment to me.

It leaves a bit more to be filled in on the left side.

Then it was just a matter of a little green stuff work, finished off with some putty.

This, then, is the Ikteros pattern Basilisk. It's not the prettiest thing I've ever made, but I think it's perfectly adequate on the tabletop.

Produced on forge world Ikteros, home of Legio Venefica, the Ikteros pattern mounts a substantial fighting compartment on the Leman Russ hull, keeping the crew and their ammunition supply safe while allowing room to work the gun.

Ikteros pattern Basilisks are fielded by the Yat-Kha Shock Cohorts of the Solar Auxilia, who appreciate the vehicle's capacity for sustained operations in hostile environments.

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This was a fun little conversion to do! It may not be the prettiest thing ever, but I'm happy with it and it was a good learning experience with green stuff. I've already found a Solar Auxilia sub-cohort to be an excellent allied formation to include, and I'm definitely bringing the Basilisks in my next game as well.

Warhammer 40,000: The Iconoclasts

When I accompanied you to the holy place called Bethel, there to join you in celebrating the Collect, after the use of the Church, I came to a villa called Anablatha and, as I was passing, saw a lamp burning there. Asking what place it was, and learning it to be a church, I went in to pray, and found there a curtain hanging on the doors of the said church, dyed and embroidered. It bore an image either of Christ or of one of the saints; I do not rightly remember whose the image was. Seeing this, and being loth that an image of a man should be hung up in Christ's church contrary to the teaching of the Scriptures, I tore it asunder and advised the custodians of the place to use it as a winding sheet for some poor person.

- From Epiphanius, Bishop of Salamis, in Cyprus, to John, Bishop of Jerusalem

My 40k Chaos Space Marines represent the Iconoclast Host, a loose collection of Chaos Marine warbands sworn to Lorgar and the Word Bearers Legion. Based on the demon shrine world of Techke Baranos, the Iconoclasts haunt the Acheron sector. They've subverted the hive world of Kirov and attracted the support of various renegades, including Chaos Squats and even Knights; they participated in the Ignatian Rebellion, and who knows what else they've been getting up to since.

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The latest thing my Iconoclasts did was get wiped out by Grey Knights. So obviously I've demanded a rematch, which we've set for 1 000 points, and have been thinking hard about how to counter their mobility and psychic dominance.

A good place to start would seem to be to bring an HQ that can do some psykering and counter-psykering. My first thought was a Sorcerer, but to be honest, the Dark Hereticus discipline just isn't great. I have fond memories of my Sorcerer using Warptime to launch my Berzerkers into a blob of Imperial Guard conscripts, which would solve both of my problems at one stroke - if 9th edition hadn't nerfed Warptime by prohibiting charges after it. The Grey Knights had no such limitations! Frankly, most of the other powers aren't great, either.

My original idea was actually for an army of exactly 500 points featuring a Sorcerer, but then I looked at the Master of Possession. You get Masters of Possession in Gladius, and while they have their uses, I tend to find both other hero choices more useful. The Malefic discipline is just so much better than the Sorcerer's, though, and they have both an anti-psyker aura and staff. Clearly this is who I need.

Hilariously, the GW model is totally unavailable. It came in several bigger boxes, but now can't be bought anywhere. Not that I particularly liked it anyway, so I hardly mind having to build my own. But it just never ceases to amaze me how often GW just refuses to take our money. (The model was re-released shortly after I finished mine)

My starting point is this Legion of the Damned marine I bought on eBay.

As I learned earlier, the old Legion marines aren't actually that badly out of scale, they're just a little short in the leg. I extended my guy's upper legs and torso, which made them almost as tall as one of the new Legionnaires.

The copper wire is actually firm enough to hold the different parts in place until the gaps are filled with green stuff. The lower legs do end up looking a bit stubby, but I don't think that'll be very noticable on the tabletop.

The next step was to add arms and a backpack from the Exalted Sorcerers kit, and an old CSM icon.

I'm actually really happy with how this looks! Final additions are a Greater Good skull and Bad Squiddo mushroom on the base, and some Anvil parchments for a Word Bearers touch.

And then some paint.

After painting, I added a few sprinkles of green flock and a tuft of Gamers Grass Wild Flowers. I was inspired by Aekold Helbrass and his Breath of Life, and wanted a little extra Chaos in my Chaos.

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That's not all we can do on the psychic front, either. The Chaos Marines in Kill Team got an option to have a squad-level psyker, and 9th edition brought that over to 40k. So if I take a unit of Legionaries, which is just a fancy name for Chaos Space Marines, I can make one of them into a psyker by paying 20 points for a Balefire tome. This seems to me to be a very Word Bearers thing to do.

She has a Statuesque Miniatures Bionic Roider head, some Wargame Exclusive books and some Anvil parchments. Another Kill Team weapon option I went for was the heavy chainaxe. I quite like the way the Scab Maulers in Darktide look, so I tried to do something a little similar here.

As none of the wargear options other than the Balefire tome actually cost anything (for now!), there's really no reason to not give the Aspiring Champion a daemon blade. The sword in question is a Kromlech vibro katana, and the Champion is also decorated with a Wargame Exclusive Imperial book, and has a Statuesque head.

When I was painting my Horus Heresy Word Bearers, I came up with the idea of having a sort of apprentice chaplain in each squad called a deacon. Here's a 40k one.

And here's the whole squad.

I also made a chaincannon guy, because hey, why not.

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So that should give me at least some tools to counter the Grey Knights' relentless space wizard fuckery. The other need I identified was for speed, and with the help of a convenient French bits store and some stuff left over from my Deathwatch Vanguard Veterans, I intend to address it. Here are some Warp Talons.

The Champion has a Statuesque Roider head, and Warp Talon claws.

I made a Deacon for the Warp Talons as well, and he has a Kromlech Cranium Pattern head, and Wargame Exclusive book as well as some Anvil parchments.

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With the points I had left, I decided to give my Chaos Dreadnought another chance. If it just blows up again, I'll know to bring something else next time. That still left me with something like 20 points, so I decided it was now time for my first Chaos Spawn.

The body is a Minotaur, the tentacles and head are from my Beast of Nurgle, and the rest are random daemon and Tyranid bits I had. I think the overall impression is fairly, well, spawn-y.

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So, here's the Word Bearers half of my 1000 point army:

HQ - Master of Possession - 105 points

Troops - Legionaries (6) - 108 pts

 + Balefire Tome (20) = 128 points [233]

Fast Attack - Warp Talons (5) - 140 points [373]

Elites - Helbrute - 105 points [478]

Fast Attack - Chaos Spawn - 25 points [503]

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It was painting Horus Heresy that made me realize I actually really like the dark red I've picked for my Word Bearers, and I'm happy to bring it over to 40k. I mean yes, if I ever field a big Chaos Marine army, it's going to look like a whole bunch of different armies all rolled into one, but if it's a problem that Chaos looks, well, chaotic...

Our rematch will hopefully happen soon!

Horus Heresy: Looking for Allies

Many creatures which once had shunned this desert ventured to live here now. Many in the band remarked how the daylight owls proliferated. Even now, Ghanima could see antbirds. They jigged and danced along the insect lines which swarmed in the damp sand at the end of the shattered qanat. Few badgers were to be seen out here, but there were kangaroo mice in uncounted numbers.

 - Frank Herbert, Children of Dune

I've been very much enjoying getting into Horus Heresy, if only because I keep getting new modeling ideas all the time.

I like the rulebook and Liber Hereticus because there's a lot of stuff in there. For example, there's this relationship chart, without which I would never have realized that the Salamanders are the friendship is magic legion.

More to the point, it tells me that my Word Bearers aren't really super friends with anybody except the Sons of Horus. I do like their color scheme, but other than that, eh. None of the special units exactly inspire me, and the legion as a whole is just not that interesting to me. All of the fun factions, though, are less close friends and more in the sort of casual acquaintances line.

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Since I've already got some Thousand Sons for 40k, I have to admit I'm partial to building some for 30k as well. Besides, the magic robots and psyker dreadnoughts are pretty cool. It also occurs to me that the funniest possible Thousand Sons unit would be a Scout squad, and once I'd thought of it I really wanted to build it.

I decided they should have Nemesis bolters, and frankly, the Nemesis bolters on some of the Forge World models just look like boringly generic sniper rifles. Not to mention that the whole idea of a silencer on a bolter is absolutely ludicrous. So I bought a box of regular scouts and took their bolters apart.

I then drilled a couple of tiny holes, superglued in some copper wire, and reassembled the bolter to be longer.

Then it was a simple matter of filling in the gap with green stuff, and we have Nemesis bolters.

I had two telescopic sights in my collection of space marine bits.

For the other three, I chopped sights off some unused Deathwatch bolters.

Then we add some Statuesque Miniatures beret and veteran heads, and we have a Scout Squad.

This is what the Sergeant looks like painted up:

And here's the Scout squad Viman-dadaran-ich, the very producers of doubt, in its entirety.

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The problem with Thousand Sons, though, is that since they're only Distrusted Allies, they can't score objectives for me. But Word Bearers actually have precious few legions that they're really friends with, which makes sense because they are theologians. Apart from the previously mentioned Sons of Horus and Salamanders, it's just the Emperor's Children, White Scars, and... Dark Angels.

Back in 2019, I got the Vigilus Ablaze campaign book so my Dark Apostle could use the new prayers in our next game. As it happens, Vigilus Ablaze also had rules for a specialist detachment of Fallen, and I wanted to make one. The first model I finished was a Sorcerer with an improvised combi-plasma, made from the Fallen/Dark Angels Veteran kit.

I gave them old-style Librarian heraldry.

Since then, the Fallen were completely dropped from 9th edition, so I suppose this dude is now a 30k Dark Angel Librarian? Mk VII armor was around during the Heresy, it's not completely impossible. While I was at it, how was I supposed to resist Wargame Exclusive's Cypheria? I suppose I could field her as a Moritat...

This all gave rise to another conversion idea. I have a slightly ancient Legion of the Damned sergeant from 3rd edition, and I'd thought about using the model as a chaplain earlier. It's just that there's a problem. Scale creep.

Looking more closely at the model, the torso is more or less the same size as the Mk VIs, but the legs are a lot shorter. I think that's a problem I can solve.

Here we go! While I was at it, I added the Mk VI power sword.

Using the same method that got me the Thousand Sons scouts, I feel like the objectively funniest Dark Angels character to make would be an Esoterist. So while I was at it, I added some Dark Angels bits and a Kromlech Book of Damnation.

Here we go, then:

I managed to get that green stuff shaped at least decently, I think, so I feel like this is going to work! I'm going to argue that this is a variant of Mk V power armour. I think I more or less solved the scale issue:

Here they are all painted up. I'm very happy with this!

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It's a well-known fact that Warhammer has stolen huge amounts of fluff from Dune. Navigators, proscribed computer technologies, the Imperial religious bureaucracy, and so on. The Warhammer 40,000 timeline is, I think quite explicitly, written so that the events of Dune fit neatly in it.

Even though it's a science fiction classic, I have to admit I only got around to reading Dune after the new movie came out. It was not only a great movie, but also hands down the most Warhammer movie ever made, which is obviously not a coincidence. As I was reading the novels, I started thinking about incorporating some Dune content in my Warhammer hobbying. I was quite pleased, then, when I came across this in Dune Messiah:

A heliograph of 'thopter wings flashed in the bright afternoon sun above the temple, part of the Royal Guard with Muad'dib's fist-symbol on its fuselage.

Muad'dib's fist-symbol! That's it: in my headcanon, the Imperial Fists are now Fremen. I don't know what the deal is with emperors having royal guards, but they did it in Star Wars as well, even though "royal" most definitely means something related to a king, not an emperor.

I've always been slightly partial to the Imperial Fists color scheme anyway, because the yellow is such a bold choice, and I quite often ended up playing as them in the Space Crusade video game. So I hit up the excellent Victoria Miniatures for some appropriate heads, and we're ready to go.

I'm going to start by painting up the sword Praetor from the Age of Darkness box as an Imperial Fists Praetor. I chopped up one of Victoria's Desert Torsos A for an appropriate head. I also couldn't decide whether I should swap the volkite charger for a bolter, in order to take advantage of the legion bonus. I've left the volkite on for now.

While I wasn't really interested in any of the Rites of War available to my Word Bearers, there are actually several Imperial Fists ones that I might want to try: the Hammerfall Strike Force or even the Stone Gauntlet.

I freehanded the army badge and some Imperial Fists heraldry onto the right shoulder pad.

I'm actually kinda happy with this model, and I may now have to start thinking about a command squad for them.

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One of the ironies of all this is that a big reason I bought the Age of Darkness box in the first place was that I wanted to build Fallen for 40k. Only for the Fallen to then completely disappear from the game. Nonetheless, I've quite enjoyed trying out different legion paint schemes and so on. I'm definitely attracted to the idea of Dune-themed Imperial Fists, but I think I also have some ideas for more Dark Angels...