Warhammer 40,000: Let's Paint Chaos Daemons

Therefore those err who say that there is no such thing as witchcraft, but that it is purely imaginary, even although they do not believe that devils exist except in the imagination of the ignorant and vulgar, and the natural accidents which happen to a man he wrongly attributes to some supposed devil. For the imagination of some men is so vivid that they think they see actual figures and appearances which are but the reflection of their thoughts, and then these are believed to be the apparitions of evil spirits or even the spectres of witches. But this is contrary to the true faith, which teaches us that certain angels fell from heaven and are now devils, and we are bound to acknowledge that by their very nature they can do many wonderful things which we cannot do. And those who try to induce others to perform such evil wonders are called witches. And because infidelity in a person who has been baptized is technically called heresy, therefore such persons are plainly heretics.

- Malleus Maleficarum, Montague Summers translation

My mother named me Doom Guy, a decision which would prove to be prescient years later when I went on to play a central part in the events of Doom.

- Dennis Farrell, Memoirs of Doom Guy

William Blake: Satan Calling Up his Legions (1804)

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This all started when I got Yeenoghu.

The demon lord of gnolls and ghouls is very familiar to those of us who've spent far too long fucking around in explore mode in NetHack, and when I saw there was a mini, I knew that this was my Daemon Prince.

Sadly, for a slightly expensive model, the quality isn't great! Straight out of the box, the body of the model was warped enough that there was simply no way to make the tabs on the feet fit the slots in the base.

The textured base that came with the model was quite boring anyway, so I clipped off the tabs and stuck him on a regular GW base, which worked out okay.

Mind you, I did try bending the feet, which caused one of them to immediately snap off because there was an air bubble inside the resin. The arm also didn't fit cleanly:

Gluing the tail on was also slightly challenging, and while I was at it, I decided to change the position of the flail as well.

I think the end result is a pretty cool model! I'm not unhappy with my purchase, but a little bit disappointed in the quality. I painted his skin in German Camo Black Brown and drybrushed with Chocolate Brown, with the furrier bits getting a little additional drybrush of Light Brown. I went for red cloth since my Chaos Marines are Word Bearers, and this way I can use him with them as well.

**

Now that I have an appropriately demonic HQ choice, and one that I can use in several different armies at that, I thought I'd try something a little bit different from last time and make a Daemon army.

Continuing on the theme of buying a silly Warhammer box, I picked up the Wrath and Rapture boxed set way back in 2019, with what I think must have been proceeds from my Brexit lectures that spring. The first models I assembled out of the box were the Bloodcrushers, or to be precise, the Juggernauts. I absolutely love them, but if I'm honest, the Bloodletters riding them are just, well, boring. So I decided to throw them out and swap in some of the Daemonettes that were meant to be riding the Steeds of Slaanesh. Because the Daemonettes are posed very differently from the Bloodletters, the first thing I found myself doing after setting them up on the Juggernauts was making some green stuff loincloths!

The (unpainted) Bloodcrushers made their debut that summer, facing Imperial Knights and doing surprisingly well. If I'm making a Daemon army, I definitely want these girls in it. Here's the first of them painted:

I quite liked my color scheme, even if I say so myself, so here's all three ladies.

I've since bought myself a Khorne start collecting box, and I used that and a daemonette to make a proper Bloodhunter:

Here's the whole bunch.

**

So now we have an HQ choice and an Elite choice: we still need some Troops. Way back when I first heard that Fantasy Flight Games were doing a Doom board game with miniatures and everything, I thought it was really cute and kinda wanted one for myself. Now that we're playing Warhammer 40,000, though, I can use the daemons as, well, daemons! I got started with some pink horrors.

Thinking about Doom demons in 40k, probably the closest equivalent to Horrors is imps. The board game comes with nine of them, and here they are. I painted them the same way I did Yeenoghu, with Bone details with a Smoke wash. I love the big grins they all have!

The next most numerous enemy model in the box is the (would you love a) Zombieman, of whom there are eight. Since the board game is based on some uncanonical later video game, I feel like the models look demonic enough that they'll easily pass for horrors. I went for a color scheme based on the original video game, with Medium Sea Grey and Luftwaffe Camo green to match my Chaos Marines, and some splashes of Red and Smoke. I gotta be honest, I kinda like it.

I've still got room for two more horrors in my list, and there were some Revenants in the box. I painted them both with Natural Steel armor, but it did occur to me that I should have an iridescent horror. Therefore, I made my first foray into Green Stuff World's paints:

I might perhaps have used a different name, but I picked this one anyway and tried it on one of the Revenants. Here they are:

The iridescent effect is a bit subtle given the name of the paint! It goes from the sort of pinkish red that you see in the picture to a metallic blue, and it works decently enough. I painted the business end of Yeenoghu's flail with it as well.

**

So this is my army list:

HQ - Daemon Prince of Chaos - 150 points 

Troops - Horrors (23) - 184 points [334] 

Elites - Bloodcrushers (4) - 160 points [494]

I'm not even pretending this list is going to hold objectives or do anything other than go at the enemy. My goals with it will be to try using psychic powers for the first time in 9th ed. and see how many Space Marines we can eat. I look forward to finding out!

Let's Read Tolkien 86: Vae Victis 10-11

Mordor, the Teshgol boundary 

April 9, 3019 

“So why not wait until nightfall?” Haladdin whispered.

As you may or may not recall, Orocuen Sergeant Tzerlag of the Cirith Ungol Rangers and Umbarian Field Medic Second Class Haladdin are in Mordor, trying to evade the enemy and make it back home. We find them eying a small nomad camp in a hollow, and Haladdin sweats it out while Tzerlag investigates. Sadly, he finds that all of the civilian inhabitants of the camp have been murdered by the Western occupation forces. As they're burying the dead, Tzerlag finds a man buried up to his head in the sand and left to die. Haladdin diagnoses only mild dehydration, and they pull him out.

To their shock, the man is a Gondorian officer. He introduces himself as Baron Tangorn, a lieutenant in the Ithilien Regiment. The baron had been part of a patrol of Easterling mercenaries led by an elven officer, Eloar of Lórien, which was engaged in counterinsurgency operations, i.e. massacring civilians. It's a little sad to think that back in 1999 when the Last Ringbearer was written, neither the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan nor the Vietnam War were inpossibly distant memories, and in both, counterinsurgency did tend to mean exactly that. The English translation was published in 2010, when the USians were right in the middle of the so-called War on Terror, which was largely fought by murdering civilians. When Tolkien started writing the Lord of the Rings in 1937 or thereabouts, they didn't call it counterinsurgency yet, but the Royal Air Force had only recently been busy bombing Iraq to put down a revolution, and the Italians were butchering Ethiopians to build Mussolini's empire. So very unfortunately, this is timeless stuff.

The baron, it turns out, had tried to stop the elf-led patrol from murdering the civilians, and for his pains he was left to die in the desert. As he explains it, he has nowhere left to go: a usurper has taken over his homeland, and if the elves find him, they'll kill him. This is what he has to say about events in Gondor:

“Denethor died a horrible death; supposedly he immolated himself on a funeral pyre. The very next day there was a ready claimant to the throne. You see, there’s an old legend, which no one had taken seriously before, that the ruling House of Húrin is only taking care of the throne for the descendants of the mythical Isildur. Such a descendant has shown up – one Aragorn, of the northern rangers. To prove his dynastic rights he produced a sword, supposedly the legendary Andúril, although who had ever seen this Andúril? He also performed several healings by laying of hands, although all those healed were from among his northern followers … Prince Faramir, the heir apparent, retired to Ithilien and is supposedly a prince there under the eye of Captain Beregond – the same one who testified to Denethor’s ‘self-immolation.’”

Meanwhile, Aragorn's remaining undead keep everyone in line, and rumor has it that the real ruler is his elven-wife Arwen. In events closer to home for our protagonists, Barad-dûr has been razed and according to Tangorn, the elves are looking to "push your people back into the Stone Age." Another reference to the US military; the threat to bomb a country into the Stone Age is of Vietnam vintage, but the idea of occupying and "undeveloping" a country is reminiscent of the Morgenthau Plan, the US policy proposal that aimed at deindustrializing Germany after the Second World War.

So Tangorn doesn't have much of a home to go back to, and he asks if he can join the two Mordorians and get his revenge on the elf-officer. They agree, and the next chapter opens with Haladdin and Baron Tangorn discussing poetry as they prepare to attack the enemy camp.

First Tzerlag and Haladdin, serving as an archer, take out several sentries in a sequence straight out of Skyrim, and then Tzerlag and Tangorn storm the camp. Tzerlag accounts for several of the Easterling mercenaries, but he's outmatched by Eloar. Tangorn and the elf duel, and Tangorn is winning, until Eloar tricks him into into striking the elf's chest armor, which appears to be flimsy leather. Tangorn's sword, however, bounces off it, and Eloar gains the advantage, knocking Tangorn down. Haladdin, watching, decides there's nothing left to lose, and fires his arrow at the elf.

Remember that part about the Certain Someone I quoted at the end of the previous post? On this Middle-earth, divine grace is shooting an elf in the eye.

**

I'm delighted we've returned to the adventures of Haladdin and Tzerlag! The dialogue is still hokey, especially when they talk about poetry, but for the most part these chapters read like a proper adventure story. I hope there's more of this to come.

Next time: deliberations in the desert.