The Menagerie: Kurgan

After purchasing a box of Warhammer Chaos Marauders, clipping all the parts from the spru and cleaning any mould lines with a modelling knife (take care when doing this. GW's new plastics are highly detailed but have started acquiring more mould lines than before) I could get to work. I plan to assemble the bulk of the Marauders to represent Kurgan raiders. However, since one of my party's characters is a Norseman I wanted to assemble a few of his countrymen. Rivals between tribes are a common enough excuse for a fight and it's possible he may recruit some help. Since Norseman and Kurgan have different generation systems and radically different skill sets in WFRP I wanted different miniatures to represent them. It also presented me with a nice modelling challenge, which is the kind of thing I enjoy. For Chaos players wanting a little more detail in their army, painting different units of Marauders as Kurgan or Norse makes than stand out as different on the battlefield.

So, I did some research on the Kurgan. Looking at most of GW's art they are mostly clean shaven with dark, if not jet black hair and little armour save for the heavy shoulder pads that mark them as Chaos Warriors in training. They are also evil with a capitol "E", so I wanted to make them look brutal and spiky. All the better to bludgeon my PC's to death with.

To help separate them from the Norse, who are not all Chaos Worshippers per say, I chose the bodies with the chaos star belt buckles and the legs with the skull engraved greaves as the basis for my Kurgan. Since Kurgan are supposed to be taller than even the Norse I glued a small piece of spru under the feet of each model before sticking it to the base, making them appear that little bit taller. I didn't want to use the marauder shields as the dome shape screams Viking to me and I wanted to use that to distinguish the Norsemen, so I used as many left handed weapon arms as I could find. To avoid duplicating two many weapons some axe and pick heads were snipped off and replaced with others from my bits box. Then, after some time spent rummaging, I managed to find two of the old Chaos Warrior triangular shields. These were a huge boon as they have the detail engraved on, saving me the hassle of painting freehand. I usually glue shields on in the assembly stage and paint around them, especially if the shields have already been lopped off their spru, and this time was to be no exception.

To help link these models with their Chaos Warrior brethren I used most of the shoulder pads, adding leftover spikes from the Dark Eldar kit to them and several of the straps. Inspired I also added some small skulls hanging on chains, and some empty chains for good measure. These came from the Flagellant spru, ironic hu? Finally I went for the helmetless heads where possible. I wanted to keep the long beards and horned helmets for the Norse. When I did use the helmets I snipped off the horns, replacing them with more Dark eldar spikes, and using the helmet plumes from that kit to make different top knots on duplicate heads.

Once dry, all the models were given an even undercoat of Chaos Black Spray. (I rarely undercoat in anything else. My Skull White Spray has enough dust on it's lid you could write "please use me" in it.) Then I could get to work. All the models were given a thorough base coat with Tallaharn Flesh, followed by a watered down Flesh Wash, applied at full strength to the recesses on the face and hands for extra shading.

I prefer to finish one are of a model before moving on to the next. So the flesh was highlighted, first with a mix of Tallaharn Flesh and bronzed Flesh, then in thin strips of Elf Flesh. Applying the final highlight in strips, following the contours of the muscles gives the impression of rippling skin very appropriate for Marauders and Ogres. Elf Flesh was applied directly onto the face as this is the focal point of the model and needs to stand out.

Next up were the cloth areas. The breeches were pained in Terracotta then highlighted with a 3:1 mix of Terracotta and Blood Red. The bands behind the armour plates on the shins and a few of the arms along with most of the loincloths were painted Dark Flesh, then given a flesh wash before being carefully highlighter with a 1:1 mix of Dark Flesh and Blood Red. Normally I would use a leather colour but I wanted to keep all the organic colours for the Norse models. Finally any fur was painted Space Wolves Grey before being carefully drybrushed with Fortress Grey and increasing amounts of white. I chose white fur for contrast prepossess, and because anything the Kurgan kill and skin out on the Steppes will probably have white fur.

The real trouble when paining models for evil armies is the tendency to do two much black and lose the detail on the model. Whilst I was determined to used some black on my Kurgan (the colour is called Chaos Black for a reason) I was trying to avoid this problem. Hence I chose to Use Chaos Black for the armour bands across the chess, straps holding on the armour plates and the loincloths made of leather strips. A few of the army bracers were also painted this way. Mix Chaos Black and Codex Grey in a 2:1 mix for your first coat. This gives a dark grey that can be shaded with a thinned out black wash. Any heir was also painted this colour at the same time, although received a drybrush of pure Codex Grey at the end. Its also possible to mix Midnight Blue with Black for the hair if you want a Manga style to your barbarians.

This left just the weapons and armour. Calthan Brown was used for the axe hafts, coated in a flesh wash then drybrushed with a 1:2 mix of Bleached Bone and Calthan Brown. The few skulls hanging from the shoulderpads were painted Bleached bone (needed 2 coats to go over the black) then also given a Flesh Wash before a Bleached Bone highlight then a 1:1 mix with Skull white highlight. Pure Skull White was painted on the teeth and eye sockets.
Any metal, including all the spikes and chains I added, were painted in a 2:1 mix of Boltgun Metal and Chaos Black. A thinned down black wash was then applied before being highlighted with pure Boltgun Metal. This was done to keep the metal dark and add to the sinister appearance of the Kurgan. Any hilts or guards were painted in Tin Bitz, the Brazen Brass before a heavy Flesh wash was applied. A few highlights of Brazen Brass were used on the skull shaped pommels and weapon runes.

The Shields were coated in Macherite Red which was then mixed with Blood Red for a highlight. The Runes on the shields and belt buckles were painted the same as the weapon hilts. Finally the eyes were picked out in Skull white and a small dot of Chaos Black used for the pupil.

The base was painted Chaos Black and flocked with large pieces of gravel to hide the sprue used to raise the models height. Snow Flock was then used to fill in the gaps around the stones and built up over some of the larger ones.