Chaos Warriors are a versatile kit and with a little creativity you can add a lot of variety to them including making them Chaos god specific. Here’s how I customized mine to follow the four main Chaos cults.
The first thing I did when thinking about how to make the generic Chaos Warriors set look Chaos cult specific was to look at what simple changes I could make to the models without altering them severely. The answer I was seeking came to me in a moment of clarity, it’s in the helmets.
Specifically, each of the four major Chaos gods, Khorne, Nurgle, Slaanesh and Tzeentch are known for certain mutations and aesthetics. For example, Slaanesh mutated heads are often portrayed as having a single asymmetrical horn. Nurgle is often portrayed with a single pate or forehead sprouting horn or with tusks, etc. I decided to have a little fun with the helmets to make each unit appear unique from the others and so as to give them some cult specific aesthetics beyond simple paint scheme variations.
The first unit I did was for Khorne. I decided to avoid the usual red armor in favor of a hard looking granite color, but deliberately worked some red into the models here and there. I stuck with the traditional brass color for the helmets and sword hilts. This unit has two hand weapons to maximize their frenzied attack effectiveness. Shields are for wimps and the (only slightly) less martially oriented Chaos powers.
The Chaos Warriors set comes with helmets with both upturned and down-turned horns, I chose to use only upturned horned helmets on this unit to emulate the large Khorne Skull rune horns seen on many Khorne marked warriors. The unit champion has a skull helmet for Khorne sitting on his Skull Throne.
To distinguish my Tzeentch unit I used bright colors and only down-turned horns with the exception of the Champion on whom I used the multi-horned helmet. The shield and banner have blended multiple colors symbolizing the Lord Of Change. I used bright steel for all the metal bits as it’s a metal and color often associated with Tzeentch.
My Slaanesh Warriors all have single horns on their helmets as does the bare Slaanesh mutated head of the champion. I simply clipped off the left horn on each helmet. The banner and musician’s horn come from the Daemonette set.
Finally I decided to go with tusks for the helmets of my Nurgle Warriors, it gives them a brutal and bestial look. I clipped the horns off all of their helmets and glued them to the lower face of each helmet. The color of their armor is muted, dirty and weathered looking. I stuck with earth tones for this unit. The fly head on the banner is hand painted. The halberds and musician’s horn come from the older out of production Chaos Warriors plastic set.
As you can see, a little creativity can go a long way to making each of your units unique even when using many boxes of the same model set. Other ideas are waiting to be tried. For example, one could alter the cloaks, use alternate or modified shields, or vary the weapons by using bits from other sets. And of course, color options are endless.
This was a fun project and it didn’t take a terribly long time to build or paint. It gave me a solid core of troops from which to choose when playing Warhammer while at the same time making my army and the units comprising it a bit unique. The Realm Of Chaos is calling!
