Chaos for chaos!

Greetings fellow bad decision makers!!!  I have been traveling again, but my mind always drifts to chaos during these long days in the field.  The new chaos book is out and I feel excited and lack luster at the same time.  I have not been so split with emotion since I was forced to make a decision between Pepsi and Coke.  To clarify, mouth Coke not nose coke.  Once again my creative juices started running and I just could not stop myself from seeing chaos visions of my own design.

I would like to keep each army feeling different.  Right now Slaanesh and Khorne feel like a similar army due to how assault heavy they are Khorne troops sucking at everything.   Here is my first idea to differentiate chaos cult armies from one another. 

Chaos Taint: (only one test may be forced on a unit per game phase)

1) Khorne Blood Boil: When a character or unit with this special rule is within 12” of an enemy wishing to shoot or overwatch; the unit must pass a blood boil test (leadership test) including fearless units and vehicles which count as LD10.  If the test is passed the unit may shoot as normal, if the test is failed the unit must move D6 towards the closest enemy model and forgoes their shooting.  Units with mark of Slaanesh are immune to this test. 

2) Slaanesh visions of excess: When a character or unit with this special rule is within 12” of an enemy, all enemy models wishing to move, shoot, use psychic powers, or assault must pass a vision of excess test (leadership test) including fearless units and vehicles which count as LD10.  If the test is passed the unit acts normally for that phase; if the test is failed the unit may not do anything that phase.  Units with mark of Khorne are immune to this test.

3) Nurgle harbinger of disease: When a character or unit with this special rule is within 12” of the enemy all enemy units must pass a disease test (leadership test) each phase they remain within 12”; including fearless units and vehicles which count as LD10.  If the test is passed the unit acts as normal if the test if failed the unit suffers -1S, -1BS, -1T, or -1AV until their following player turn (chaos player’s choice).  Subsequent failures do not stack but the unit may suffer multiple effects such as -1T and -1BS.  Units with mark of Tzeentch are immune to this test.

4) Tzeentch aura of mutation:  When a character or unit with this special rule is within 12” of the enemy all enemy units must pass a mutation test (leadership test) at the start of each phase they remain within 12”; including fearless units and vehicles which count as LD10.  If the test is passed nothing happens to the unit, if the test is failed the unit takes one wound or hull point per point the test is failed by; only armor and invulnerable saves may be taken.  For each unsaved wound suffered add a wound or horror to any Tzeentch unit within 24”; if there are no wounded units or horror units within 24”, place the horrors within 12” of the unit with the aura.  Units with mark of Nurgle are immune to this test.

The overall theme of chaos taint matches up really well with the fluff of chaos taint. The taint of chaos is stronger in some than others which would have to be described in each profile.  Greater Daemons would have chaos taint with a -2 modifier applied to enemy units.  Chaos lords, heralds, and sorcerers would have chaos taint with a -1 modifier applied to enemy units.  Chaos champions or units with the daemon special rule would have the chaos taint special rule.

My overall hope would for each army would be to give Khorne bonuses to assault, give Slaanesh the ability to reduce enemy LD values and "will" to do anything, give Nurgle the ability to reduce stats of enemy units, and Tzeentch mutating everything around him.

***Note: I am not happy with the Tzeentch test.  When a unit with low leadership comes across a greater demon which would apply a negative modifier, there is a high chance the unit would go poof and a unit of horrors would take its place.   As cool as the power sounds it is just not fair.  If anyone has any ideas on what it could change to let me know I would love to hear other ideas on the topic.

Adepitcon update: Sounds like I am getting a whole much of Tzeentch models in the mail soon and they sound medal.  I have an idea of making miniature tornados out of snow tec around the waist of the horrors and trying to paint it like a puff of smoke.  I will take a couple applications of snow tec to get what I am going for I will send updates when I get home and start working on it.  If you have any ideas of modeling summoned demons let me know!

Thanks for reading!

Ian

paint for the paint god

Welcome fellow bad decision makers!

The warm leather couch welcomes my posterior again while I was laying my paints across the table.  Once again I am faced with a decision.... Star Trek, or Harry Potter movie marathon.  Now that I forced an internal conflict within myself and hopefully my readers I am faced with an undeniable, fact that I have no idea what I am doing.  Adepticon is 7ish months away and we still have not figured out a paint scheme that works.  

Below you can see a picture of my hopes and dreams; basically my first full test unit.  The skin is four types of blue and a blue wash.  Blue is such an unpleasant color to paint not because of the color, but more because of the GW color options.

Hmm looks like the teeth need another highlight.  The Skin too

Let me tell you why GW blue is the dagger in my heart.  With Red games workshop has a really good color blend.  Start base Khorne Red -> drybrush Wazdakka Red->drybrush Evil Sunz Scarlet-> highlight Troll Slayer Orange.  This is a perfect progression of a red base all the way up to a bright highlight.  If you follow that color trend you will get beautiful demon skin; note early in the painting process you will need a good wash to bring out all that muscle definition. 

Now Blue.  Kantor Blue,->Aldorf Guard Blue-> Caldor Sky blue is the best progression of blue GW has.  The issue being that their end color being way too dark.  So this leaves me with a predicament.  Either find a game store nearby that would give me a better progression of blue or I need to start mixing white with blue.  I hate hate hate hate mixing, I would rather hit my hand with a hammer than mix.  Mostly because if you ever need to go back to painting those models you have to perform another mix and they don't always match 100%.

We talked about skin.  Let's talk about fire.  Games workshop has a pretty sweet tutorial about fire when going over the bloodthirster model.  I honestly don't like their fire.  If you squint really hard and cross your eyes you can make out my effort to paint fire the GW way.  My major issue with it games workshop fire is the lack of depth when I paint it.  What I want to do is paint my fire like I painted my Khorne skin.  Look below at how I did fire.

So how do you like the blue skin?  Any ideas on what would make it better.  Right now is your chance to change how Team Bad Decisions paints our models. 

I am traveling again for work.  I will be back in town late this month.  Maybe when I come back and my world is not falling apart I can make some more progress on test models.  See y'all next time!