Impurity Is Still Our Armour

When I first showed you this model of a chaos demagogue a few weeks ago several readers pointed out something that should have been obvious to me – but of course hadn’t been.
As you can see he’s holding a couple of decapitated heads and so the question was asked – how did he chop off those heads when he doesn’t have a knife? Did he use his teeth? Twist them off with his bare hands? Find them lying around somewhere and borrow them to pose with?

Obviously I needed to provide him with a blade but what to use? I had a plan to use a long bladed axe until KrautScientist suggested a hammer as a way of capturing the chaotic revolutionary vibe (in a style similar to the “Workers rising up with hammer in hand Soviet propaganda!”). Suddenly my brain kicked into gear. A hammer isn’t the best tool to use when chopping off heads but even those like me – who’s knowledge of modern European history has been somewhat muddied by playing too much Command and Conquer as a youth – knows that where there’s a hammer a sickle can’t be far away.

I was tempted to put a hammer in his hand (and I am still a little) but I actually rather like his lack of obvious weapons and didn’t want to over-egg a model which uses simplicity as its core virtue. Needless to say of course, that if you agree or disagree I’d be interested to get your feedback.

Anyway, whilst I was working on the demagogue I decided to go back to this traitor guardsman who I was less than satisfied with when I first showed him. Particularly I thought the rust on his weapon – something of a signature element of mine – looked pretty shoddy. So I gave him a  little trip back to the painting table for an update.

As usual if you have thoughts it’s nothing to be ashamed of. Get them off your chest in the box below – I won’t tell a soul!