Warhammer RETRO: The Original Chaos Warriors
The mighty Champions of the Ruinous Powers had humble beginnings. Come forward loremasters and see how it all started.
Chaos has been part of Warhammer for a very, very long time. You can go all the way back to 1986’s Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay to see early incarnations of the Chaos Pantheon and its followers. By the time of 1988’s dual Realms of Chaos hardbacks – it had started to get fleshed out, with the major powers in place and lots of miniatures available.
Fast forward 32 years to today and it’s easy to take the intricate and amazing mortal followers of Chaos for granted. We are overwhelmed with crazy insane quality like the Varangard, Gutrot Spume and many, many more.
Your puny mortal horse is lame compared to my daemonic quadraped.
Nurgle has benefits (hint: it’s tentacles)
Come on down ladies and gentlemen, chaos is open to all!
Now let’s go back to 1988 and take a look and the minis that first walked the path of Chaos that got us to where we are today:
Everyone has to start somewhere. These Chaos Thugs threw off the yoke of civilization in the Old World and never looked back. Many of these have the really old school “shields with a hole” design from GW, along with a bevy of mutations. #17 walked right out of the Road Warrior, #18 has been been visiting the hair stylists of the old 40K Dark Eldar, and #2 is just lost. #7 didn’t make it that far.
Welcome to the real killers – the Chaos Warriors themselves. The very early hallmarks are all there. Heavy armor, horns, and oversized weapons. There wasn’t much god-specific detailing on these but here and there you can find some. Note the Khorne rune on the axe of #8.
We are starting to get some more variety with this bunch. Asian styling on #6, running poses for #4 and look at #11 – I hear he will one day hack his way into the 8 Realms…
Chaos Warriors need leaders and the Champions are where the real detail and variety was. These are all clearly aligned with a specific power and many of these minis shouldered on for decades. There’s no Tzeentch in here, but the other 3 all got a handful of wonderful detail. #2 is classic Nurgle for years and years. #16 is creepy as hell, #17 is REALLY happy, and Slaanesh’s #11 can’t decide if he’s going to a battle or one heck of a party.
It’s been 31 years and Slambo (#11 up there) hacked his way from the ancient history of the Old World into the new fancy 8 Realms. I wonder if he and Gotrek meet up and tell old WFB war stories? I hope he’s not the last GW brings back from the past.
~Who up there should be brought back into the Age of Sigmar?
