Finished Chaos Chosen Command

Some GW Chaos Chosen figures I finished recently

I got the Chaos Chosen Command set as a Christmas or Birthday present a few years ago. With my decision this year to paint up some fantasy warband figures, this lot pushed their way to the front of the painting queue.

They are metal, predating the F***Cast nonsense. Even as metal they took a lot of effort to clean and build and, given my previous experience with F***Cast, I can't imagine this group would have been anything but a nightmare with that material.

I am planning to use them for skirmish games so I decided to put them on round bases. If they end up being part of larger battles then I can always buy movement trays for them. Basing was my standard technique of a layer of sand, some rocks and another layer of sand to try and tie things together. It'll never win any prizes, but works well enough.

In addition to the metal Chosen figures, I painted up a plastic Chaos Wizard that I've had for a while, and bought GW's new plastic Chaos Lord. This is a nice figure, but it is £15.00, which is beyond ludicrous for a single, plastic, mass produced figure.

I decided to do the unit with red armour, rather than my usual bronze/gunmetal. I've made red metal before using inks, so I used the same approach here. The one problem with inks is that they're transparent, so I underpainted the areas with a dark red first. The "metal" was a mix of FW acrylic inks - red and pearlescent silver. I settled on a ratio of 3:1, as the silver was very strong. I added a drop of Nuln Oil wash to the mix, to tone everything down - these are chaos troops after all, not the good guys. In one of my experiments I used black ink to tone the colour down. However, black ink is opaque, so it wiped out everything, while the washes are transparent, so have a much less dramatic impact. In retrospect I think I should have made the silver ratio a bit higher. The outcome does look metallic, but only quite close up. From further away, it just looks red. I decided not to shade and highlight the red metal, just in case it reduced the metallic effect even more. If I use this colour again I shall definitely tweak the ratios slightly, but for now I'm happy enough.

Chaos Lord

This is a multi-part kit that makes a single figure. For the most part the fit of the kit is excellent, but there was quite a big gap at the left shoulder that I had to fill. I didn't use the base that came with the figure, other than the rock he's got his foot on.

The sorcerer is another multi-part plastic kit, although a bit cheaper than the Lord. His base was also replaced.

The Chosen Command set comprises five figures. The heads are separate, allowing you to mix and match to taste. I chose (see what I did there) to go with the same setup as the box art.

I cut the heads off to leave quite a bit of sprue, then drilled out the neck. This was equivalent to pinning the two parts, so provided a better join than just gluing the head straight on to the neck.

Champion

The right arm was separate with this figure. Given the weight of the pieces I decided to pin them and use two part epoxy. For whatever reason it didn't fit very well with the epoxy, and snapped apart under very little pressure. My superglue either works instantly or not at all, but on this occasion, after cleaning up the joint and removing the pin, it chose the instant route and the arm is now firmly attached.

Musician

Single piece figure - so much easier

Standard Bearer

Another single piece figure, if memory serves

The group is rounded out with a couple of warriors. These had separate arms, but pinning and epoxy worked with them. Go figure...

Finally, the group shot

It was good fun painting fantasy again - it's been several years since the last group. There are quite a few other warband figures waiting in the queue, so hopefully it won't be several more years before the next lot.