Swing low shitty chariot.....

My inablity to get anything painted due to massive amounts of procrastination was inspired by the Chaos Marauders, mixing various green skins with other nasty types in order to make a mixed up mongrel of an army. Hopefully my next post will show some progress in this area but while I was pondering (I do a lot of that). I started doing a bit of research about which one (who are we kidding, the concept of an all chariot greenskin army were only a short day dream away) I might like to purchase.

It turns out that citadel have made a fair few chariots for the goblinoid fraternity over the years. What follows is a little meander through the two wheeled mayhem that is the Goblin Battle Chariot.

FTG13 Gnoll / Goblin Chieftain's Chariot

The first example is from the very early '80s. These guys were originally known as Gnoll's and there was quite a substantial range of them. They were later renamed as Fantasy Tribe Goblins and then later again as C12 Great Goblins.

As you can see from the pics above there is a crew of four jammed onto the little vehicle plus a couple of giant boars to pull it, while the Gnolls/Goblins are quite unique in their style, it's a cute little model and just shows what citadel were capable of in the early days.

BN1 Goblin Chief's Chariot

Next up is chariot from Nick Lund's Chronicle imprint. As far as I understand it, Nick's Chronicle miniatures were bought by citadel and Nick went to work for citadel, making new miniatures. This may be one of the figures he produced while at citadel as Rick Priestley supposedly designed the actual chariot. When Nick left to help set up Grenadier miniatures Uk chronicle ceased to exist.

I like this model, but the chronicle figures don't match too well with the other citadel figures, style wise, and this is a problem for some folk. If I was offered one I'd take it!

To go along with it there were several Chariots in the chronicle range, two images of them are shown above.

MD1 Goblin King's Chariot

The Machineries of Destruction range were released throughout the late '80's and contained classic models like the Lead Belcher, Man Mangler and Gob Lobber. The range included two Goblin Chariot releases the first of which was the Goblin King's Chariot. This looks like a Kev Adams sculpt and the set came in a specially printed box with it's own back story which included the fact that the chariot is in fact possessed by a fairly powerful demon which not only gives the chariot a pretty healthy profile, but also means that it has the powers of a level 4 wizard and the spells to go with as well as manifesting itself as a very talkative boar.

MD6 Goblin Battle Chariots

The second set of Chariots from this range is the Goblin Battle Chariots. This set again came in it's own printed box which was of a different style to the previous releases in that it had an illustration on the cover (same as the Elven attack chariot). This set also contains two chariots rather than just the one and was again sculpted by Kev Adams. A great little set for building up your army.

As you can see from the catalogue page above you got 6 crew members for the two chariots so get plenty of choice should you have flush enough to buy more than one set.

MD9

The final Machineries of Destruction set was another Gobbo chariot but this one didn't come in a nice fancy box but only in a normal blister. This one was sculpted by Bob Olley and may have originally been intended for his Iron Claw imprint but for what ever reason it was released as a citadel model.

While we are in Bob Olley territory we might as well mention the Goblin Chariot he did for Ral Partha. I quite like this one even though the Gobbo's are different from Gdubs archetypes, it's still a neat figure.

As you can see in the above pick there was an Orc Chariot released around about the same time as the  spear/rock chukkas. The above pic is from a later catalogue as the two war machines have had random crew members added to bring them up to 5 figures (you can see that they are quite different in style). I have to say I've rarely seen this model (the chariot i mean) but it'd be a pretty nice addition to the rolling death army. Pulled by wolves again, which seem to be the most popular motivation technique for green skins.

Moving into the 90's and we've got Grom the Paunch on his custom ride being pulled by 3 wolves, presumably because of the added weight of Grom's belly.

There was also a gobbo chariot at the time which gave you plenty of options. 2 or 3 wolf choices and several different crew. This was designed by Brain Nelson and Norman Swales and is a perfectly serviceable little cart. Of course we are in the territory of the plastic wolf but the, it was the '90's.

In addition to the citadel (and related) chariots we also have the couple that Marauder released. First up was a little Goblin chariot with 2 wolves and 2 crew. This is a pretty small set but the wolves are nice and it'll fit in with citadel figures pretty well.

MM33

MB6

The other Maruader Chariot was an Orc one with a driver and the choice of 3 different crew. This one looks a bit bigger than the citadel wolf cart from above and actually looks like it's been converted from a captured farm cart which you'd imagine is pretty spot on for Orcs. This one was offered as part Marauders brilliant army deals. As you can see below.

All this greenskin goodness for 70 quid! What I wouldn't do to have been able to afford that back in the day!

And that brings us roughly up to date. The current Orc chariot has ben around for a good while now. It's a fully plastic kit and to be fair to it is a fairly good model (despite the weird boars) and is a pretty serviceable set. You could probably swap out the boars for wolves and crew it with whatever green skins you fancy and away you go. Theres bound be loads of them on eBay.

If However, you wish to keep things metal and still want to expand your rolling horde, then you should probably have a look at Crooked Claw who have lovely little gobbo chariot designed by Kev Adams himself. This would fit in perfectly with the older citadel chariots.

And finally for today, the Foundry offshoot Casting Room does 4  different goblin chariots just in case you prefer even more mobile angry mini green skins.

So. As you can see. The idea of Greenskins riding around in two wheeled contraptions being pulled by snarling beasties has been a pretty popular one overt time. The only difficulty you'll have deciding which one you want (and trying not to collect them all, pokemon style!) To help you decide you may want to check out Richard 'orclord' hale's collection of painted examples of many of the above, plus some that I missed! http://www.sodemons.com/rhchariots/index.htm