Well, I've let it happen. Pretty much every one of my 40K armies has some kind of backlog but they also can all make playable and at least partially painted armies. I try not to let a gathering of plastic sit too long in an unplayable state even if it's not painted. So having achieved that state some time ago I decided to start expanding my Age of Sigmar forces ...
Yep, that's a big ol' pile of angry dwarfs waiting to be built. They are completely unplayable as nothing is built. I wanted to do this one a certain way so I ordered custom stonework-looking bases for the whole damn army and that meant I couldn't really buy already built or painted units so here they sit ... on the sprues. Now this has all developed this year so they are not too backlogged but I haven't made much progress beyond the "acquisition" stage. That's multiple Start Collecting boxes because they are a hugely better deal than the newer options and some individual unit pickups of Vulkites and Hearthguard. Grombrindal there in the blister pack will be my first Grimwrath Berzerker.
Beyond what's already here I don't need much - maybe a few more Magmadroths if I like how they play (I have 3 at the moment) and probably a few more Berzerkers and Doomseekers down the road to have more options. I want each of those to be unique so it will take a little more effort but I'm not in a rush.
The chaos warriors are in a slightly better state though it may be hard to tell. I talked about restarting this journey a while back and I did follow though on that. I put together a squad of chaos warriors, dusted off some knights I picked up a while back, found a heckuva deal on some painted chaos knights (the red guys up there), finished gathering up marauder parts and at least one of the Warcry warbands which seem to be big players in the AoS chaos books. I have some characters put together as well so while it's not all pretty yet I could play them in a 1000 point game at least - progress!
The big additions here were in the Slaves to Darkness army box that came out last fall that came with the new army book, new daemon prince, new chosen (finally in plastic!), and new "Ogroid Theriadons". That last unit is a pack of 3 ogre/troll/minotaur-looking things and I really like them so I added 3 more to make a nasty unit of 6. I used to field chaos trolls in the old days so I like having a brute squad in my otherwise mostly human-ish force and these are the new heavy hitters. I already had the prior Start Collecting box with warriors, knights, and the lord on karakadrakadrakka thing sitting around from a prior flirtation with these kinds of thoughts. Converting some of my old characters to round bases meant I had a pretty solid force right away so now the big task ahead is to finish building and get the rest of the painting done.
Then there are the Beasts! I've been bouncing these guys around for more than 20 years and I may finally get them onto the table as an actual army soon. In the early to middle years of Warhammer Fantasy "Chaos" armies included everything - warriors, beastmen, daemons, whatever. Over the years as they expanded the range they split each of those forces off into separate armies which felt very forced at times but that's how it went. These beastmen started off as add-ons to my Chaos army that was mostly chaos warriors. The daemons I had back then eventually became a separate army and ended up used in 40K more than fantasy. The beastmen though just kind of sat. They made good gnolls for D&D but I didn't really care about building them out to be a full Warhammer army. A few years ago I seriously considered making them a "The Herd" army for Kings of War so I picked up a Cygor/Ghorgon to be a potential centerpiece but I ended up just letting them all sit in a box for the next few years.
This year as the Sigmar interest developed and I started going through boxes and drawers sorting out fantasy parts I realized I had a pretty good amount of them. With the Beasts of Chaos battletome coming out for 3rd edition as well I figured the time was right so I started basing them up and adding up points and I realized I didn't really need to add much. I have enough old figures that are effectively Gors to make the battleline units I need. I have old metal shamans and beastlords so the characters are covered. My old metal dragon ogres are complete and while they aren't as pretty as the newer ones they are still perfectly usable here. The Chaos Warhounds I bought years ago to use as Flesh Hounds in my daemon army when the official models looked bad are still the current model for Warhounds so why not pull them back into the army they're supposed to be in?
The minotaurs are a pure indulgence on my part - I like minotaurs, I like the current GW models in particular, and I thought an all-minotaur army would be a fun skew list to play so i started buying some. Right now I'm at 6 which will probably be one unit and I also picked up an old metal Doombull I can use to make them Battleline. This is really the only part I have spent money on with this army other than the book and it's probably the most playable of the three.
Future acquisitions will likely include more of the giant monsters as those would be fun too. More minotaurs obviously. I'd like to get up to 18 of those to be able to throw out 3x 6-bull squads. I know Bestigors and Ungors are major parts of the army but I just don't care about them that much. One day I'm sure I'll want some but for now it's mainly what I have plus Bullgors.
Beyond these newer arrivals I still have the half-painted-mostly-built Seraphon army in the miniatures closet from a few years back and also the large pile of Stormcast and Blades of Khorne I acquired through multiple boxed set purchases back in 1st & 2nd edition.
There are also the 4 daemon armies that are mainly for 40K but work perfectly well in AoS too and those are actually in pretty decent shape - probably the most "done" of any of these forces. It helps that you can play them in both games.
So yeah, this is a fairly stupid way to get into an army - stumbling into it with half-done units over multiple editions. I would not recommend doing it this way at all. The choose it/buy it/build it/paint it approach, ONE army at a time, is far more sensible. So if you're not already invested in one of these games do it that way, two armies at most so you can play games or teach people on your own. Hopefully I can make enough progress on these to feel it's worth posting about them again later this year. Maybe even play some actual games too ...
Onward!
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