Mixed/kit bashed Chorfs (8th ed LoA) - Agel

[roarofrevolution]

Hi fellow Dawi Zharr! I’ll be using this as a blog for my Chorf collection, my list ideas, lore for my army and other such related things! I’ll probably run it as edited topic intro posts to start off and then later, when I get to actual progress, keep it flowing like normal. It’s as much for me to keep track of my chorf progress as it’s for your viewing pleasure!

Contents:
Intro
Current progress (my wip as of joining CDO)
Lore
Plans for my collection
Continual progress (will come in the future as and when I have some )

INTRO

I guess I’m a veteran of GW wargames, having played them for most of my life at this point! I made my start just prior to the release of WHFB 8th ed with a Beastmen army and have been in the hobby for the last 15 years with a slight break from late 2018 to early 2022. Picking the hobby back up in 2022 with a disposable income led me to buy a copy of Tamurkhan, and a year later after reading the LoA section and being bored with my Skaven and Beastmen I decided to start collecting some models!

My goal and what I intend to document here is the creation of a new army of CD for whfb 8th ed Tamurkhan LoA rules. I plan to start playing it using the Great Host of Chaos rules along with my Beastmen (my gaming group are all friends since way back so they’ve already ok-ed this since some rules in that book can be a bit unclear), with the goal of having a stand alone playable CD army in a few years.

[roarofrevolution]

CURRENT PROGRESS

So firstly, last spring I did some test hobgoblins using two mantic kits and some bits, and I’m impressed by the new mantic goblin kit. They’re also a fair bit bigger than gw goblins of the whfb era so I’ll be building around them going forward. I should mention as well that I want to go for grey skinned hobgobbos, as ever since playing Dawn of War II and seeing the grey ork with blood/war paint on in one of the early cutscenes I’ve wanted to remake that ork’s skin tone and the grimdark feel on some project! The only night goblin in my local group, which is from a paint-and-take my dad got when he and I first walked into a GW store when I was 9 or 10 (my dwarf with a brace of pistols is sadly/thankfully lost in some trade amongst my classmates back around 2010) is also a part of this army. Contemplating making it a special unit filler or something in his honor/to mock him whenever I face him and his High Elves!

Now, 15 months later, I decided to start some test dwarfs. Same thing here, test building a few stock from kits first and then going into kitbasing and converting with bits, except Infernal guard all have shields in the though rules so I’m sticking shields to everyone from the start. I’m using a lot more diffirent kits for the dwarfs than the hobgoblins however. the LoA models are sadly recasts that I have about 40 of plus command sets and a few characters, but Ive justified it to myself by deciding that this will be a big kitbash army. Or at least that many units will be mixed infernal guard-looking models and big hat/mantic “”“big hat”“” looking models, more on that in the LORE section. Also pictured are some of the mantic boxes I’m using (other than those and the LoA range I have some old marauder metal dwarfs and some unused 1998 regular dwarf warrior plastic sprues).

The goal before a first game is a wizard, a unit of dwarfs and a unit of hobgoblins. The stretch goal is a war machine. As you kind of can tell my initial two units will be blunderbuss infernals and bow and shield hobgobbos!

[roarofrevolution]

LORE (-justification of why I’m mixing regular warriors and Infernal Guard in units counting as the latter)

My headcanon for the collection comes from my rudimentary understanding and casual interest in history. I listened to some podcasts about and read a bit into 17th century European wars recently, and how diverse the army composition was during the 30 year war etc with many cases of regiments being formed and reinforced by people of all manner of backgrounds and nationalities. As WHFB/TOW bases itself in early modern warfare (Looking at The Empire and Dwarfs in the most high-tech end other than us Chaos Dwarfs, as well as the rank-n-flank nature of the games), taking inspiration from this makes the most sense to me!

My units of dwarfs, even tho they will play as LoA, is a force that has been on campaign around the dark lands frequently as of late (and continuing so but now with even wider reach, my opponents are high elves, WoC and Empire/Kislev!), and as any good commanders would do when ranks need to be refilled, even when they started with pure regiments of IG of the LoA, the sorcerer prophets in charge have started taking in and reinforcing regiments with warriors from all kinds of CD settlements they’ve travelled past, since recruitable IG can be hard to come by far from The Black Fortress. Even some from far-reaching settlements to the north, or whatever direction really, which is my justification for the more out-there abyssal dwarfs and any other third party range with differing design cues I decide to incorporate into the army. The commanders stick with only accepting the best of the best however, which leads to a heavier reliance on machines of war and slaves of both the physical and spiritual kind (see next section)!

[roarofrevolution]

PLANS FOR MY COLLECTION

Back in late 2023 - early 2024 I ended up buying quite a few things for this project with a purchase from a recaster (something I don’t recommend doing) and once that arrived a purchase from a local store carrying Mantic products. I only made one other purchase in the summer of 2024 (of some 90s models!) and a friend gifted me a box of the old KoW Immortal Guard around the same time, leaving me with approximately the following (labled KoW for Mantic, LoA for the recasted FW models and 90s for the big hats!):

40 Hobgoblins, Hand weapons and Shields OR Bows (new KoW)
40 Hobgoblins, Bows (old KoW) (these are ancient, don’t have shields and break easily)
20 Infernal Guard, Hand weapons and Shields (LoA)
20 Infernal Guard, Fireglaives (LoA)
20 Infernal Guard, Hand weapons and Shields (old KoW) (seem to be the same plastic as the old goblins… jikes!)
10 Infernal Guard, Blunderbusses (old KoW) (not as old and bad as the above mentioned box)
40 Infernal Guard, Hand weapons and Shields OR Blunderbusses (new KoW)
2 Infernal Guard Command groups (LoA)
2 Infernal Guard Command groups (90s)

3 Bull Centaur Renders (LoA)
1 Deathshrieker Rocket Launcher (KoW)
1 Castellan (KoW, out of production I think)
3 Daemonsmiths (LoA)
1 Daemonsmith (KoW)
1 Sorcerer Prophet on Lammasu/Great Taurus (KoW)

Other (stuff I bought or traded for that I know will find use in this army):

1 Ogres cannon box (I’ll be trying to make both 1 Dreadquake Mortar + 1 Hellcannon from this)
2 Dwarf cannons (Battle for Skull Pass boxed set, might make Magma Cannons from these?)
1 Master Engineer (Dwarf whfb 8th ed fincast)
1 Dwarf Flame Cannon (2000s metal, to be made into 1 Magma Cannon. might not even convert it destructively, just cover up the runes with greenstuff and make new crew)

Not listed here are a few Marauder 80s-90s regular dwarfs, two dwarfs from what I think is the old Dogs of War, a few sprues of multipart plastic regular dwarf warriors from 98, as well as bits and so on. I also have a great reference book for armoured trains through the last 150 years and so an Iron Daemon or two is almost garanteed!

My ideas are to focus on bow + shield for the gobbos, with 50-60 getting that and the rest just hand weapon and shield. The dawi will be split into a unit of Ironsworn, and one unit each of shield + hw, Fireglaives and Blunderbusses, with the Ironsworn and Fireglaives getting most of the LoA models (I want the Ironsworn to be almost pure LoA models as the most elite unit of the force). I’m unsure of the size of the blunderbuss unit at this time, as they get bonuses for 10 and 20 firing models which comes with the drawback of having to have a horde formation if you want the reroll 20 models gives. If anyone has experience with this please share! I’m jumping between either doing the initial small unit and leaving it at that, or doing a block of almost 40(!). If I go for the lower count, I’m flirting with the idea of having a unit with great weapons as well. Just because I could!

You’ll also notice like all of my war machines will be conversions, which means some models have to be pulled from the IG pool to make crewmen. The Lammasu/Great Taurus I’ve seen most people online run as the latter, but since it’s got that beard I’m tempted to run it as a Lammasu, but my love for the Lore of Shadow as a Beastmen player probably influences that quite a lot . One other tempting option is building the unbuilt Ghorgon/Cygor I have lying around as a Cygor, and magnetising the head on the Mantic Dragon to have the mount be either or depending on lists! If I’m really cheeky I could paint the Cygor and CD mount in similar schemes, magnetise the Cygors arms as well and have it entirely swapable… That landed in my head in real time so now I have that to think about as well… hmmmm…

The only thing left to mention are the Bull Centaurs, who have access to spears but use them like infantry, rules as written… Well, I havn’t asked the entire gaming group but we will probably play them as cavalry spears, so that’s what I’ll be converting those 3 to have, along with some or all 3 being command models. My general idea for this army is for the dwarfs and war machines to make the main fighting force, with Hobgoblins as diverters, slight extra firepower and just something to buy my actually good units time. Good armour saves and knights are plentyfull in our meta so I will probably make a lot of use of Lore of Metal. I’m keenly aware of the lack of speed in my infantry, so going forward I’ll look to adding more Centaurs, the aforementioned train, some wolf riders and also K’daai of both varieties.

I think that’s most of my plans right now. My first lists will probably be quite infantry heavy anyway, but I plan a quite diverse collection in the long term!

[PawocK]

Impressive collection and project, keep it up deamonsmith.

I really like the idea of mixing several minis from several origines. The lore justify it nicely, I love the idea of several fortresses sending reinforcement.