The World Eaters of Frenesia.

Today we're having a trip back in time, to around 2003, when I built my first proper army. Until this point, I had not had an army as such, instead playing games with random collections of models, most of which were unpainted or painted badly. After buying the Chaos Space Marines 3.5 Codex, I read the background for the World Eaters and decided that an army of brutal, crazed maniacs was a fun idea. Since that day, I have always tried to make strongly themed and fluffy armies. The World Eaters have eight marines in each squad, and there are eight bloodletters and eight flesh hounds. The only squad without eight members is the biker squad. At the time, I don't think I had the cash or willpower to stretch to eight bikes. The squad does, however, have some great conversions.

Having started with a random collection of Chaos models, I had plenty of bitz for mad conversions. This army was of course built in the days when Games Workshop sold bitz, and some of the models make use of bitz bought in this way.

The force is led by Daemon Prince Frenesia, who is converted from the Inquisitor 54mm Chaos Magus model. I am proud of this model, as I've never seen another daemon prince built from this model. I did however, get the idea from an army in the Chaos Space Marine Collector's Guide, which has a daemon prince built from another Inquisitor 54mm model. I recently gave him a slight improvement by repainting his cloak and a bigger base. I left the rest of the model untouched.

His second in command is Kamonak, who is an unconverted daemon prince model from the Warhammer Fantasy range.

Frenesia is supported by a squad of Chosen in a rhino. The Chosen champion has dual power swords that were added quite a few years later. You can see that the blending on the swords is far beyond the skills demonstrated on the rest of the models.

Before Frenesia, the warband was led by Lord Sanguinoso. Frenesia took command after defeating Sanguinoso in an arena challenge. I love this model. I really spent a long time on it, and it was my first real experience of using green stuff (where the wings meet his back). The head has to be my favourite part. I believe it came from the banner of Abaal the Undefeated.

His second in command was Lieutenant Fugace. This was an interesting model. The base model is a fantasy chaos lord, which had almost the same pose as the 40k chaos lord used for Sanguinoso. I thought it would be fun if the second in command was a futurised version of the equivalent fantasy model. I'm not sure why I used the different colour of gold on this model, but ho hum. There's no fathoming the decisions of an aspiring painter!

Next up is a squad of possessed, made from a really random assortment of parts. Check out the Cypher model and the head from a plastic beastman! I tried to really embrace the Chaos on these models, with arms for heads and inhuman poses.

Next up are the various squads of berzerkers. This is a footslogging army, save for except the Chosen, and would often struggle against shooty armies, like my friend's Tau, would tear them to shreds before they made it across the table. Still, more blood for The Blood God...

The army has two units of daemons to summon: a unit of bloodletters and a unit of flesh hounds. The bloodletters are the some of my favourite models, and back in the day they had power weapons, which made them really terrifying to my opponents! The flesh hounds are meant to represent a parent hound, who is represented by the mount normally ridden by Abaal the Undefeated, and their puppies, represented by seven Mordheim chaos hounds. My opponents always loved the look of this unit.

The army also contained an 'aspiring chamption' on a juggernaut, which would nowadays probably be a chaos lord, but I have always thought the model looked less like a lord and more like a lowly aspiring champion. This model was never really fully painted and had a lot of black on it, so I recently repainted it, so the paint techniques on this are much more advanced that the rest of the army. I tried not to go too overboard though, or it would really look odd next to the other models.

The Dreadnaught is called 'Collera Furia' and is a standard metal dreadnaught except for the right arm, which comes from a plastic space marine dreadnaught. I don't know where I got the arm from, since I don't remember ever owning a plastic dreadnaught. Maybe I traded a part with a friend. This model always had its arm and base attached via sticky tack so that it could fit in my figure case, so I recently magnetised it to make it a bit more robust during gameplay. There's nothing that breaks immersion quite like a dreadnaught falling apart to reveal its inner sticky tack!

Finally, the biker squad. This was a good exercise in making use of parts I had laying around. Three of the bikes are standard CSM bikes - GW used to sell them as a squad of three; one is an imperial space marine bike with some added spikes; and the final two - the champion and the one with the imperial space marine backpack - are made from Ork parts. One is obviously the Ork wartrak with the tracks swapped for wheels, and the other is a wartrak with a custom built rear end. I was pretty pleased with these when they were done - particularly the dead ultramarine on the champion's luggage rack!

So that's my first Khorne army. After this, I moved on to Daemonhunters and Space Marines for a while, and didn't return to Khorne until about 2014. I did have a huge hobby break in that time (around 6-7 years), but when I returned to the hobby I returned almost immediately to Khorne, and began making The Bloodstorm!