The biggest deposit of gray onto the shame pile with the tote box I received from my friend last winter was definitely Khorne Berzerkers – over two dozen in total. With these in the Chaos pile it was a no-brainer for me to lean the whole army into World Eaters as a unifying scheme, and for models that are around twenty years old I really like these. I liked the variety in poses and weapons that they come equipped with. There were also plenty of little bits and bobs like scabbards, grenades, and skulls (for the Skull Throne, of course) that they could be adjusted with. Despite age, I think these still hold up nicely, but I might be biased because of my nostalgia for Dawn of War and Oldhammer.

I also think that these are fantastic “learner” models – I’ve heard other painters suggest that if you want to learn a colour scheme or if you want to learn to paint in general, older models where the detail barrier is lower are a great resource, and I strongly stand by that. That said, the prospect of painting these was a little daunting at first – as tricky as the copper, corroded trim was on my Death Guard previously, the trim-to-armour ratio on the Berzerkers seemed like it was a lot higher and like I was going to have to be more precise on my metallics. This is also a richer colour scheme than I’ve attempted before – while I wouldn’t call red or gold especially difficult colours, they can be pretty unforgiving if you miss spots or if your hands shake as much as mine do at the table.

I did these up mostly stock, though I had to take a few liberties with models that were already painted previously or that had damage to their weapons. For added effect, I also had a bunch of old resin skull bases kicking around that I’d bought off of The Troll Trader while they were still doing resin bases en masse – it’s a shame they don’t do them anymore the same because I’d have loved to get my hands on another couple dozen of these, and of the ones I’d been using for Death Guard and Aeldari. But as @brittneystucklessart has pointed out to me more than once, over the years, no one change stays constant but change itself is. (Or something like that, I’m probably mangling the quote.)

These will be riding to battle in the Party Bus Rhino, and I’m quite happy with how they turned out. They will be at the melee front and center of my demo games for Warhammer 40K but also One Page Rules, and they’re also going to be the testbed for the painting tutorials I want to try and do in the future. More on that to follow, but we’ve still got a couple more units’ worth of Chaos to show off to fill out the rest of this army!