Chaos Banner!

 As part of my chaos army in the on-going Call of the Crown painting challenge, I decided to finally tackle my favorite chaos banner from the Realm of Chaos: Slaves to Darkness book.

Some quick background. When I first began a chaos army back when I started in WHFB 20+ years ago, I tried to recreate this banner.  It wasn't terrible, but it wasn't good, and eventually I lost it. 

Now, I was determined to finally try again, but also terrified to try and tackle it. I was really afraid I would screw it up.  But over the past few years, I learned some basic tips and approaches for free-handing banners and it has really made approaching banners much less daunting.

Here's a few pictures throughout the stages. 

First, trace it out with a sketch using pencil. it helps to draw very light "guide lines" down the center and halfway point vertical and horizontal.  Then, use a micro artists ink pen, trace over the pencil in black. 

Then start filling in the main colors.  This is regular printer paper.  Make sure to thin down your paints.  Also, I painted the back of the banner first (all black) so that I didn't mess up the completed work when flipping it over. I learned that the hard way.

You can see the artist's pen in this picture. Not too expensive, I picked them up at A.C. Moore (or Michael's art supply store, i forget).   I began filling in the rest of the colors here.  Try to work from the background "layer" forward.  

Here's the completed banner.  I also used the micro pen to write in the text on the scroll. 

...And here's the side-by-side.  I might still go back and add some thin rope (probably sewing thread). 

Overall, I'm pretty pleased with my recreation.  The flames were definitely the hardest part.  I really love the ridiculously large size of the banner from the Oldhammer era.  It looks awesome on the battlefield.  This Chaos army and my orcs and goblins will definitely have lots of unnecessarily large banners. 

The Warpstone Conflict

Apparently this has been stuck in "draft" for a while.  It was some brief background for the campaign we were playing a few years ago. I should probably organize it under the campaign page.  But at least it's here for now.  It's also a little out of date.

War has broken out in the Old World again. What began as a few small skirmishes in Bretonnia outside of Parravon when a goblin horde emerged from the forest of Athel Loren has turned into full-scale open warfare across Bretonnia and southern provinces of The Empire.  The war escalated when a massive piece of warpstone landed outside the village of Lietzburg in southern Talabecland, which has drawn major heroes into the conflict, from Skaven Lord Thrott, to the reemergence of infamous Orc Chieftain Gorfang Rotgut and even the Emperor Karl Franz.

Below is the timeline of events.

Imperial Year 1870: Marquis de Parravon leaves for a campaign in Lustria.
1871: Gorfang Rotgut send goblin Boss Skragg of the Crooked Moon Night Goblins to Bretonnia town of Parravon to "cause a ruckus".
- goblins raids occur outside of Parravon
- word reaches the Marquis who requests help from his old Elf ally, Prince Althran
1872: Prince blah lands in Bretonnia and repels the raiding goblins

-skaven mount n attack which fails
-skragg gets annoy with his ally, and launches attack against skaven. lose, retreat back to forest
local bretonnian lord doesnt know that marquis has asked for help and attacks the elves

baron edmund takes his army Leitzburg's first and invades down to fight the elves/skaven


things cool down as gorfang realizes he needs to take matters into his own hands


warpstone crashes, skaven send a force to leitzburg and retrieve it

word of the warpstone reaches Ulthuan and they send very powerful mages to "assist" prince blah's army and retrieve the warpstone before the rest falls into the hands of the skaven

Lizards of albion happen to be in bretonnia gathering materials for construction of new Temple ...
hear bout warpstone and go on the march

As gorfang gathers the rest of his Waagh, he sends the black orc lord and lieutenant Skullface to distract whoever he finds (turns out to be the lizards)

Thrott sends an army and hits Empire army with Baron Edmund, but gets routed back to bretonnia

Waaagh Gorfang reaches the Bretonnian town of Summersall Fort along the river briene, and hits a massive SKaven force led by Thanquol in response to the rout of Thrott's force