A mountain in a jar

After a long and very stressful week of work I was rewarded today with a sweetie jar. Delivered to me by my mother who arrived for a weekend visit. Courtesy of an old friend Shaggy, whom I gamed with many many years ago. Back then, four members of our Warhammer gaming group embarked on a Realm of Chaos adventure. We arrived somewhat later to the Warhammer world than our other friends, who had already declared their allegiances as Dwarves, Elves, Greenskins and Undead. 

Chaos, unsurprisingly, seemed a more attractive prospect than the paranoid and joyless Empire or the rigid pompous aristocratic Bretonnian farmsteads. This was after all, escapism. It offered each one of us a home, Shaggy was seduced by Slannesh, Mackers revelled at the idea of spilling blood for Khorne, Jamie flittered and fluttered before declaring for Tzeentch, and I fell into Father Nurgle's comforting folds, and so we embarked on the sort of organic fun that Realm of Chaos offered. 

We bought miniatures, from The Dungeon in Belfast, 3 hours journey on a bus in those days (it went via Omagh! for some fucking reason), with nothing but a cheap portable tape deck blasting out Nirvana, PJ Harvey and Sonic Youth to pass the time. Later in Derry's short lived comic book, miniatures and general nerd store in Pump Street. It was run by a guy whose name I cannot to this day remember. Despite the geographic and financial constraints we played. 

I'm glad we did, and even more grateful that Shaggy preserved our collection of lead for almost two decades before gifting it to me. Here's what I received today.

A fucking gigantic sweetie jar of memories. I opened it up, and hour later I almost recovered from the nostalgia.

First up we have the Red Redemption Disciples. Although they were designed in the 80's, I bought them in the early 90's. By then, they were marketed as Chaos Cultists, having lost their earlier status as a regiment of renown. Twelve to a box, they were painted with snakebite leather and generous lashings of chestnut brown ink. The maggot motif was to mark them out as Father Nurgle's children. Sadly the design only made it onto a few shields and the banner remained undecided.

Father Nurgle features heavily, as I next managed to piece together enough pieces for not one, but two palanquins of Nurgle! One of the riders is of a traditional WFB sort, the other is of a tecknological/rogue trader sort. Either way, I have found a champion to lead my resurgent Nurgle warband. Considering the prices of these models on ebay, I'm ecstatic with finding these.

Next up we have a selection of citadel and marauder beastmen. Some pestigors and a few slannesh beastmen too. A nice haul, and containing a few models for my starter chaos warband.

Warriors are up next, 2 slaneeshi on he right, the guy in the centre with the metal shield, is from the Monsters Starter Set. A nice figure I'm sure you'll agree, there's also a Nurgle warrior and the Marauder minis chaos hounds and beast master.

A nice selection of thugs and marauders, some great sculpts here, especially the bone armour guy and the one with the flattened head.

Here we have a nice selection of Chaos Knights, all horseless I'm afraid, but nothing that can't be sorted out from either GW's bits section or ebay. Also shown is the old Chaos Chariot, no driver or horses sadly, but that's what ebay is for. One or two nice old skellies in the picture too, and a Goblin from the same Monsters Starter Set linked above.

Now, for the baddies and beasties, a group of Greater Daemons, in various stages of repair and usability, some nice old Ogres (or is one of them a troll?) a Dragon ogre (missing right arm and foot/tail section), a chimera, a coatyl, a boar centaur (nothing for him to push sadly) and a nice little chaos dwarf to add to my collection.

All in all, a great haul, and one that would have cost me a pretty penny on ebay. Considering how much i'll have to spend on dettol now, it's a good thing they were all free.