A late Christmas gift

The other day my friend asked me to come over after work.  I always make time for this particular friend, and so headed straight there.  When I arrived he said that he had my Christmas present for me.  On his kitchen table was his Warhammer Chaos army.

That's five units of Chaos warriors and four units of Marauders.  

The two of us started playing Warhammer together.  We learned together and both collected large armies.  My memories of those games are special as they were my very first table top games.  The models were awesome.  The rules were great.  It was all new and wonderful.  This was back in the days of 6th edition Warhammer.

These were ugly models.  Our painting was pretty rudimentary as well.  We had no concept of painting theory.

About the time that seventh edition came out, he stopped playing.  We were still just as good of friends, we just didn't play games together any more.  His army sat on his book shelves and collected dust.  Last year he, we all, suffered an unspeakable tragedy, when his son killed himself.  As he was cleaning last week, he came across his son's Warhammer Wood Elf army, sitting next to his.  They had to go.

A couple of years on, things had improved a bit.

So now, I have these two armies.  The Chaos army is huge.  The units are sized for 6th edition and the army includes both demons and mortals, as that's how they rolled back then.  Pulling them out, sorting them, just admiring them, brought back so many memories.  Each unit has its story, all of them of fun times and great games.

Heroes.  They seem to have suffered especially badly from being tossed into a box.

In a way I feel more like a custodian of these models than their owner.  I'm not playing warhammer anymore.  Reading through the Hail Caesar rules the other day I couldn't help that think they would be great for Warhammer armies.  I may have to work on the rules for that, starting with a google search, since I can't be the only person who has thought of this.

Archaeon.  Holy crap I hated this guy.  He gave me fits for years.

I'll have to add a few units, and especially the demons would need more if I was going to play them.  They are primarily Khorne, not very balanced at all.  I'll start just by getting everything repaired and stored properly.  This is a huge project and I don't have a way to use it right now.

This is a 70$ model.  It didn't exist at the time.  I had to order the two separately and convert it.  

Screamers.  I took a lot of artillery.  These, and the unopened box, were the answer to that.

Lots of big nasties.  That Blood Thirster was another model that gave me fits.

I'm grateful for the gift; it brings back a lot of good memories.  It will be fun to do something with this army, once I figure out what that is.