The warband I've got planned and am, theoretically at least, working on this year includes an eighteen-strong beastman horde.
Every chaos troupe should have beastmen in my opinion, the gibbering and varied (not just goat-headed) pack just screams chaos to me. Of course, they're led by the biggest and toughest of the lot; law of the
jungle chaos wastes, innit?
I chose
this brute sold by Viking Forge miniatures in the US as that leader:
He's listed as "FM-27 Giant Armoured Troll" and was originally an Asgard Miniatures sculpt. Asgard is about as Oldhammer as you can get, or Protohammer I suppose. Founded by Bryan Ansell, Steven Fitzwater and Paul Sulley in Nottingham in 1976, they had Bryan himself, Nick Bibby and Jes Goodwin (I think) as sculptors. Bryan left in 1978 for a little outfit called Citadel Miniatures; you may have heard of them. Several Asgard miniatures appeared in very early White Dwarf magazines.
History lesson over, you can still buy several of these highly characterful sculpts from Alternative Armies in the UK and Viking Forge in the US. Check out the Chaos and Barbarian ranges in particular, there are some real gems in there. More info
here and
here.
On to my take on this fellow, my first paintjob in months. An absolute pleasure to paint, full of character but none of the excessive details that clutter some modern sculpts. One thing that did surprise me was the carefully moulded...
equipment... that I discovered just about poking out below the level of his mail skirt. The horror...
Apologies for the dodgy phone photos with added shine and flattened highlights.
So, he'll now lead the horde, with three WIP beasts and the banner bearer still bare metal. Getting there!