The lure of Chaos

A current development in the "Games Workshop Hobby" (as they like to call it) is that there are both people willing to buy individual plastic parts clipped from kit sprues, AND that there are people willing to set up and manage web or ebay stores to enable this.  I have long been a buyer of "bitz" to use the GW parlance, and when the company decided that it did not want my money in that way anymore, I gradually turned to online suppliers to meet that need.

Sometimes when perusing lists of bitz, you notice that there is enough commonality to make it worth while to buy a kit outright.  Instead of spending $20 on parts to get 50% of a kit, you could buy the whole thing for $30 and so on.  The risk (besides spending more money) is then that you become interested in the original purpose of the kit, that is to build a certain unit for a certain army, and before you know it, you are setting out on the path of building a new army, something few need to do in this era of belt tightening and other responsibilities.  Anyway, looking for chaos knight bitz led me down the darkest of dark paths, reawakening a desire for a chaos army.

I have long harbored desires to have a chaos army (something I clearly need in addition to Dogs of War, Empire, Dwarves, Goblins, and various random things), and looking for bitz made me start thinking about the kits, and the army, and now here we are (that the current White Dwarf has a few new Chaos kits does not help).  I already have a Marauders as Dogs of War Northmen unit (converted to have great weapons and to look more like vikings) and most of a box of chaos warriors.  I also have a mounted wizard (as a White Dwarf subscription bonus, from the last time they had those), and most of a unit of Bestigors, which in 6th edition can be added to a Warriors of Chaos army as allies.   So I only would need a few things to make a valid, if under powered army.  Enter the chaos battalion. 

 

This particular battalion is one of the few left that gives pretty good value for the money.  For $110 retail, you get 20 marauders, 12 warriors, 5 knights, and 10 hounds, which would cost $128 if bought in their own boxes, and you get a "free" sprue of marauders as well.  Not at all a bad deal by GW terms, as you are paying only $2.34 a figure.  To that I would add another box of marauders, a box of marauder horsemen, a box of beastmen, and a box of three Tomb Kings chariots to convert to nurgle marked chariots.  So for about $260 retail, I could have a sizable army ($2.85 a figure including 20 cavalry figures and three chariots), which would be 99% plastic, and easily expanded when the new rule book comes out in 2013.  And have a substantial bitz box contribution as well.

 

In the past I might have already reached for credit card, but now I am made of sterner stuff, as well as being all to aware of the massive backlog of figures to build (let alone paint) that I already have.  But I still WANT one.