Citadel: Old Chaos Champion and Chaos Familiars

I pulled out a box of old figures earlier this week, and found a few old Citadel Miniatures that I had nearly finished (but never did, for whatever reason).  Having just picked up some Army Painter Inks and looking for an excuse to use them, I decided to finally wrap up these old figures.

The figures were never used for Warhammer Fantasy (the game they were geared towards); I remember ordering them just because I liked their looks.  Many years later, the figure happened to match a villain I created during my City of Heroes/Villains days named Mesonoxian, and that was where his color scheme originated from.

Note that the bases are purposely unfinished.  I have a couple of Basius 2 pads coming (hopefully) early next year, and I plan on going back and finishing off a lot of bases once they arrive!

First up is 021907 Chaos Champion (per the Collecting Citadel Miniatures wiki):

The old Citadel Chaos miniatures had a ton of little details, and it was clear that the sculptors were allowed to let loose when sculpting the figures.  For this figure, the face has an excellent impassive expression and the posture is rather confident.  The right arm and leg appear to either be armored, or covered in a sort of chitin (which, given it's a Chaos Champion, I think the latter is more likely).  The left side has two feet, though the left hand looks fairly normal.

The figure was painted with a black robe with rust orange details to match my villain's design.  I used blood red on the chitin as that was my character's tertiary color, plus it made the chitinous parts stand out further.  The blue skin and yellow eyes turned out very nicely, as did the horns.  The pouches on the belt are painted a dark purple, which is hard to differentiate from the black.  Finally, the staff is painted bronze with a heavy brown wash.

Conclusion:  I'm really happy with how this figure turned out; given that I was aiming to match another creation of my own, I had high expectations.  I'm particularly pleased with how the face and horns turned out!  I think the black robe could use some more highlights (some were applied, but I think they were muted too much with a black wash).  Also, a lighter purple on the belt pouches would help them stand out from the black robe.


Accompanying Mesonoxian are his two familiars:  Mystery Imp Familiar and Skeletal Familiar.

The Mystery Imp was painted with a purple robe and black hat, to keep him with a similar tone to Mesonoxian.  To further link the two, I painted the Mystery Imp's tail the same blue as Mesonoxian.  The satchel and shoes are gray; I felt the rust orange would be too bright for the familiar, and there weren't enough other details to spread the color around.

The Skeletal Familiar is a straightforward skeleton, painted bone with a brown wash.  The staff he's carrying was painted dark brown, with medium brown highlights on the wood grain.  The candle is black with some gray highlights (particularly on the melted wax, to set it off from the staff).  I painted the candle's flame blue to tie this figure to Mesonoxian, as well as to give it an arcane appearance.

Conclusion:  The two familiars were fairly simple, yet they both add a lot of character when paired with Mesonoxian.


So that's my latest "blast from the past" with my older miniatures.  All three of these are solid sculpts that have held up well over the years, and remind me of my early days in the hobby.  I'm glad to have them completed, and look forward to using them in a future game!

- M:M