Rift Survivors – army showcase

This blog post is an expansion of my army showcase for Dortsche Krijgsheren ’25. It’s meant for my blog overview and therefore has a different tone. That said, there’s definately duplicates.

This blog post shows the Rift Survivors army and tells something about its creation. This army is special because I started it in 2017(!), it’s been dormant for quite a few years and restarted in 2025. This blog post shows the 2025 iteration.

The army, what does it look like?

Here’s the overview of my 1,995 point army that rekindled this army.

I love the bright colours! Purple is not really my colour (as I usually do in blues and yellows), but I can see the combination of purple and green working.

That said, as the army progressed, the monsters gravitated towards bright purple-and-pink, which -in hindsight- could have been better in green hues with purple accents.

That said, I love the results and the army as a whole is a great new addition to my Kings of War collection.

The models are mainly 3d prints (berserkers, hydra) as well as a pair of upscaled Mantic wyrm riders from the Vault as Nagarri. The warlock is a 3d printed ogre, I painted one time as a test model for my ogre army which happened to have the right colours. The gargoyles are my old GW giant bat models which have had their paint job and bases upgraded. Finally, the sacrificial imps are six Mantic Goblins painted in this army colour’s scheme.

hounds & well of souls

These swamp hounds (rules for hellhounds) were added in july of 2025. The Well of souls/Abyssal archfiend was an earlier option for the army that was built, but only used in one or two test runs.

About the vibe of the army

The army does not look like classical abyssals in red hues. Here’s why: I do not like the Dante-esque vibe of the classical abyssals. That’s why I wanted to do something radically different in colour and models.

Why?

The Abyss in Pannithor is clearly designed after the Inferno as painted in churches and paintings from the renaissance, for instance Michealangelo’s Last Judgement. This interpretation is described most clearly in the book called Dante’s inferno.

Dante’s inferno is a book writen in renaissance Italy which describes Dante’s visions of the real afterlife as he imagined it. Throughout the narative, Dante travels the inferno and sees the torments that sinners undergo in the afterlife. It’s steeped in Renaissance Catholic church doctrine supplemented with themes from classical literature and the bible.

Countless people were traumatised by works such as this one because they actually believed they would end up in the fires of hell if they did not follow the directions of the church. Also, even today, there’s plenty of people who believe that Dante actually saw something of the afterlife, so the theme and works are emotionally invested.

For me, Kings is a game first and foremost. It’s also one of my main hobbies and my way to relax, both wile painting and playing. Nether of these I want connected to something that people see as demonic or satanic. This is why I distance myself and my army from the classical abyss and I don’t want to invest time painting models that resemble that vibe.

That said, the classical Abyss with all it’s negatieve connections is part of the world of Pannithor. If I do not want any part of that, but also don’t want to ignore it, I can always fight it. That’s how the Rift Survivors came into being.

They use the rules for Forces of the Abyss, without actually use the theme.

This works. For me.

Orgins

I started in 2017 (!) with an abyssal army based on a blog post made by Nick Williams. Original blog post and pictures are here: The army was not played often and had to be completely rebuilt in 2019.  Here’s the information about that iteration:

As you can see, some of the 2017 and 2019 units (in particular the bats) have been rebased to fit into this new army. This means that the army can be expanded easily as the collection nears 4k points.

Army List 2025

For Dortsche Krijgsheren, the army I used is as follows:

The army list is a fairly clasical alpha strike list which focusses on the new berserkers. (use them before they nerf’em) and the new formation.

The army did not perform too well, but thats probably because I faced my hard counter (trident realms ensnare list) twice over the tournament. We’ll see how things run.