There will be blood(letters) - more count as shenanigans and A unit filling WIP.

I took the plunge and got some old school Daemonettes to add to my army as count as bloodletters. There's actually quite a bit of variety, and I've got about 20 or so with a unit filler to be going on with. I'll be keeping an eye out on ebay for any more going cheap in the near future.

I actually quite like these models! I know some people hate the S&M crab look, but I think they're a nice homage to the older chaos that I grew up with.

Well, here are my first two testers to give me a good feel for how the unit is going to come out. I've tried some new photography techniques as well, but you get te idea.

I used the foundation paint Adeptus battlegrey for the skin. It's not as dark as my charcoal grey mix I've used for bloodletters in the past, but darker than the lighter shadow grey I use for the rest of my daemonettes. The black wash darkens it further, making the skin tones different to help aid my opponent differentiate the units.

I've also put red about the model to again help single them out as bloodletters. Huge hulking claws, and gold and red liberally chucked around on the model should hopefully remind people they're not daemonettes but something else.

They more muscular and squat than the modern daemonettes, so  I'm happy a unit of these will stand out sufficiently without looking out of place.

I've also included a picture of my unit filler that I discussed in my previous post. Enjoy!

Editorial - Another filler post. Unit fillers, that is.

Hi guys, I've had this post ready to go for about two weeks, but with things in real life getting on top I've not had chance to go back and tweak it before I posted it. UNTIL NOW!

Editorial: Unit Fillers

So, what does everyone think about unit fillers?

For those who don't know, live under a rock, or play more childish games like 40K (ooooh snapz!), Unit Fillers are basically models which are used in lieu for the actual models which should make up the unit. They are generally based on a larger base which ranks with the rest of the unit, so if a unit is 20mm, unit fillers are often put on 40mm square bases. Game wise, they have no additional affect, but the equivelant base space they occupy represents the number of models that should be there - so the earlier example would take up four spaces, and count as four models for wound purposes. Confused? Good, I'm terrible at explaining.

There are several different kinds of unit fillers, and several reasons why people do them.

The first is a simple money saving, and time saving, reasons. For larger units, people will spare themselves the monotony of painting more identicle zombies or goblins and instead choose to put a dioroma or terrain piece in.

The second is to add a bit of character to units. A well done diorama (the squabbling animosity orcs model GW produces), or the odd characterful model (again, see the Empire Bear mascot GW produces) can add alot of personality to a unit. And I've seen alot of people using Ogres to bolster their puny ranks at the back, and why not? Many people have older, antique models from over the years which no longer have a place in their front line, so why not add them as a cheeky auxilliary to the back of your squads?


There seems to be alot of debate regarding unit fillers across several forums. Some people love them, and rightly so. If alot of effort has been put into them and they match and enhance the feel of the unit then I'm all for them. A few people dislike them, however, thinking they look out of place and are lazily alternatives to buying and painting models. Again, I kinda agree on this point too, some terrain pieces look out of place in huge units and detract from the "fluid" movement of the group of models, making them look static and stationary as they stand by a huge piece of gothic masonry.
So, coming back round to the topic I want to talk about, are unit fillers worth it? Does my slaanesh army need them?

Well, no, I don't need them. Building my second unit of daemonettes, I have more than enough to make up two full 30 strong units of core. However, I've got a unit filler in the form of a faithful daemonic hound to go alongside my banner bearers. The banners both intrude the model to their right hand sides personal space (the blue flag actually intrudes the one behind it too!), so I've added an OOP Dark Edlar warp beast to my front line.

And, secondly, I've plans for a unit of old OOP metal daemonettes. These guys are pretty pricey, so a few shrewd investments on ebay should help bulk up my unit. But alas, I may need help to fuller fill out the unit to a substsantial size. I got a bargain on eBay for 7 old daemonettes (including command).I found an old daemon prince from that era in my bits box, painted a sexy shade of scoprion green in the same scheme as my Death Guard from around the year 2000. Old school! So after a 10 year slumber in the bits box, I gave him a proper strip, and touched him up. As he's about the same size as a current day chaos spawn, I'm going to make him into a unit filler. As he takes up four spaces in the ranks, and the old crab claw daemonettes cost about £3 each before postage, that should save me around £12.


Unfortunastely, terrain pieces will not be finding their way into my unit. I find them far too static within my fast army, and would look out of place within my ranks.

So, here's a few unit fillers I found trawling the internet. They arn't mine, and look really cool, so I thought you'd like to see them. If any of these are yours, feel free to drop a comment and I'll happily drop your name and website details in either this post or a future post. You are obviously someone who deserve adulation and celebration and if you really want, I'll come round and give you a kiss.
No tongue though.

This is a terrain piece done well, as the bloodletters are on the terrain piece, making it look as if they're moving through the terrain.

I'm not sure why, but I approve of this terrain filler.

The Kislevite is being seduced by three daemonettes. It takes up four models, and uses 3 daemonettes, a net gain of one daemonette! Since they are the rare-as-donkey-shit diaz daemonettes this is a saving of about £100.

Screaming bell masonry, tenticles, and cool blues.

I think this filler is really cool! It's alot of character and the balls and chains are really well executed.

This is nice, except it's skaven, so I automatically have to hate it. If I didn't loathe the Skaven, I may like it...

I hope you enjoyed this blatent display of other people's work! I'd love to be able to make fillers like this, so keep an eye out for future updates!

Azazel, Prince of Damnation...

...or should I say, patron saint of cursing "damnation!" at a particular chunk of metal.

Cheesus Cripes, this was a labour of love, without the love. So, a labour. A long, hard damn labour.

Everyone's favourite special character daemon prince of slaanesh (by purely being the "only" one) has been unlovingly created by myself. There's a story behind this so-and-so, so please allow me to vent before I press on with my out of focus photos of my kitchen, that sometimes include war toys in the foreground.

This model seems to go for silly money on eBay. Which is weird. I like him, I've seriously got a hard on for quirky old minis that games workshop made aeons ago. This cheeky chappy generally goes for about £40, and a new plastic daemon prince goes for £20.

I picked him up from a trader for just over a tenner. Bargain. He needed stripping and was missing a tail, but so what?

So he came with two right wings. The photo was made so it looked like he had two wings either side, but one was just back to front. So I got a bit of a refund (I decided I'd rather keep the majority of a good model who just needed stripping) and search for a spare wing on ebay.

Well, a month or so passed, with no luck, so I bit the bullet and bought great eagle wings from GW themselves - they were pretty much the same ones and just needed some work to make fit on Azazel's back. Alot of damn work. Alot of greenstuffing, cutting, filing and drilling and 3 pins worth (two on both wings and one between the two wing holding them together) and they were fixed in. Phew.

The sword was a bit piddly, so I decided to give him one of the swords from the plastic daemon prince. I also put the top of a slaanesh  icon on the hilt, to extend it and also make it a weapon befitting Slaanesh's right hand.

Finally, with the legs I was happy to angle the left foot so the back leg was in contact with the base. It gives the model more support, and makes him look like he's moving more naturally than the prancy version if hes stood upright. I also put a spare loincloth from the daemon prince kit to cover up his missing tail (and Azazel's particularly pert man-bottom.

So, without further ado, here's some piccielicks.

He still needs a bit of greenstuffing on his back to make the joint betwixt the wings less noticeable, but other than that he's a done deal.

And if I never hear the name "Azazel" again it'll be too soon.

In game...I dunno what to do with him! I'll perhaps use him a generic daemon prince, with no mark of slaanesh (shocking!) and wings (obv), unnatural swiftness (I7 WS8 always strike first with rerolls? Yummy) and Immortal Fury (St5 rerolling to wounds). All this for 375 points. He then gets a tad expensive when you start adding wizard levels to him...so I'd probably just use him as a monstrous battering ram.

Other possible alternative were using him as a bloodthirster, and adapting his old rules for campaign games (which can be found here: http://www.angelfire.com/co4/thedarkgods/characters.pdf).

So let me know what you all think! I've also editted the settings so anyone can comment, so post away!

Storm of Magic - Fimir Balefiend (and a history lesson)

So, storm of magic has well and truely swept over me. I'm going to be running a storm of magic campaign at the club, revolving around returning to Albion. Albion is home to those pesky swamp loving Fimir, who have rules in the new storm of chaos book. So, I decided to have a go at making a fimir balefiend.

Now, here's a bit of background about the minis and the fimir in general, since this really makes the model special. The fimir were a warhammer race from the 80s, who made it into the boardgame "heroquest". There were three, single pose fimir made for this game. Games Workshop made more, in metal, for warhammer. But there was a foul up, and although they had infantry stats, they produced monstrous models (a good bit larger). They were quite unpopular and hardly used (why buy models who have crap stats?). And between this, and the background revolving around raping to reproduce (the only female fimir were the wizards, and they were infertile, so to reproduce they had to raid human villages and make away with their "maidens"), led to them being dropped from the game.

So, I acquired 3 of the old heroquest figures for about £5 (better than some of the current gw prices and they've been out of production 20 years...).  However, as a numpty, I didn't read through the rules thoroughly before my purchase. Fimir balefiends are monstrous infantry...these models are quite definately just bog standard (pun intended) infantry.

So, as well as converting this warrior into a mage, I needed to make him a suitable monster base. I decided to have him elevated on a arcane ruin, making him look like he's hovering above a bit of marshland (that's where the cheeky branch comes in!)

I attempted to make a swamp using a few layers of pva just left to dry. It came out ok, but unfortunatley it seemed to dry in the shape of top of  the base (lightly bobbled using a standard GW Base). After a few layers it formed ok though. I've not quite finished, I'm going to try and give it a gloss finish to look liquidy, as I read swamps looks quite wet somewhere on wikipedia.

The staff was made from a spawn eye and, weirdly, the end of a tyranid tentacle as the curvy top. I greenstuffed the rest of it, to make the look of a gnarled branch.

Apart from adding a scroll to his waist, there wasn't much else conversion to do. The paint job is gnarloc green foundation  (brilliant shade of green, I use it just on its own with a black wash), with dark angel green speckles. I did a dark wash around his back and tail of a 50/50 mix, just to try and break up the monotonous colour (no one creature is just one colour). The metal areas I painted silver and tin bitz - Albion is a place stuck in the stone age, I thought his armour would be quite old and made of cheap metals like bronze. It would put im at odds with my daemonettes and their golds, which isn't a bad thing.

Here's a few pictures of my newest creation.

Herald of Slaanesh

S'up fellow daemonfiddlers, how are we all today?

I've got a nice update for you all, my herald on foot. I absolutely love this model (far nice than dechala!). He was an utter blast to paint too. He's got so much wargear - rings, pouches, swords, scrolls - lots to keep me busy.

I've yet to give him a wash, so that should bring some details out.

So here's my vintage herald. He has yet to be named, though...

Lemme know if you like!