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!

Still alive...

Hey guys, quick post to say I've not forgotten about this blog. Recently with Leeds festival, my birthday, Uni course starting, and general "Real life" syndrome, I've not had much chance to do any more for my fantasy list.

However, my good friend Max came up and thoroughly trounced my 40K Khorne daemons with my fantasy slaanesh daemons 7 kill points to 2 (or 3). I blame a hangover, square bases and an over sporting attitude when winning to allow him victory.

So, why am I here? Well, my blog will be coming back alive soon with a campaign weekend after christmas giving me the motivation to get painting again! It's a storm of magic weekend, with 2400 points (and 600 in monsters). I'll also need to craft two fulcrums, I'm still undecided whether I'll buy the stock GW ones, or create my own (I've got some ideas that involve jewellry accessories and two plastic toy crabs!).

I've got the majority of this list already, I just need to bulk it up and paint like a loon. 3 months...plenty of time...right?

I'll return with my premliminary list soon...

Storm of Magic - We could be (magically bound) giants

Hallo, and here's a BIG announcement of GIANT proportions! Arf!

I've just finished this cheeky chappy. He's mostly finished - I'm going to base the whole army at once - He's still missing a prisoner in his cage on his right waist. I decided I'd do the cage seperately, for ease of painting, then put it all together at the end.

This guy was an utter blast to paint. I sat down and painted him in 2 hours. It all just came together so well. My usual source of light (the kitchen worktop) was a bit grim, so I quickly stole in while my missus left the ironing board unattended to nab my pictures - ninja skillz!

I wanted to get across that firstly, this giant is mortal, and not a daemon. He's warped and monstrous, but he's not daemonic, so he's still looked down at and sneered, a beast to be used. I decided to give him fleshy skin, a 50:50 mix of tallarn flesh and astronomonomnomnomicon grey. I used this on my dark eldar which can be found at simonfisherlol.blogspot.com.

However, they've convinced him to fight for the glory of Slaanesh by crafting him some nifty kreuger-style claws. Slash! These were just the champion talons from the daemonette box. One of the fingers from these was used as a finger gauntlet for his thumb. His tongue is also from the instrument in the daemonette boxset, which most people have a dozen of. He's up for that pain for pleasure malarky too, so I modelled some dangly chains from his body. I did the blood running down his back, running into his ripples of fat. I was going to put a banner on his groin, dangling through his legs, but I decided against it. He's a Slaanesh giant - he probably wants quick access to the interior contents of his breeches.

So, basically GW are trying to shift as many giants as possible at the moment by alowing them to be used without scrolls of binding and giving them the giantkin helm. Luckily, I'm a whopping big sap and fell for it, but that's ok. This kit is utterly brilliant, and I cannot recommend it enough. Go get yourself a damn giant.

Here's the damn pics.

I'll be having fun with this guy I can tell you that!

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.

Storm of magic preperation - Herald of Tzeentch

Salut! Ca va? Bon? Bon! Moi, aaaaaw, je suis c'etait super! Merci merci!

So, la storm d' magique (aka the Harry Potter cash in) is upon us, and I acquired the book on wednesday. It was available for "pre order for delivery on the day of release" from my local gaming store, which meant "buy it today and take it home and promise not to read it until saturday".

So, it looks absolutely bonkers! I've definately got a few ideas how to make a nice, fluffy Slaaneshi list...the lamassu especially, and I've got some ideas for a giant conversion.

But to be honest, I'd had a few ideas floating around about what to do for some count as wizards. One of the main sore spots of mono slaaneshi lists, particularly competitively, is that their magic could use a couple of the main lores from the rule book to help it. So one way of addressing this is by including a single herald of tzeentch. With master of sorcery and spellbreaker he could help keep my augment's/hexes up, whilst dispelling particularly nast spells such as dwellers. It makes sence that some daemons of slaanesh have specialised in magic casting, especially in certain lores (like shadow).

I decided to use the new plastic tzeentch sorceror from the storm of magic as a base. Those chicken legs suited the legs of daemonettes. I decided to make im a little different from the stock plastic model, but changed certain parts to add a slaaneshi tone. A claw from the top of the plastic daemonette banner pole on the staff did this perfectly. The flagellant plastics had a great caged up face that screamed slaanesh, and I decided to add some pony tails. I added two hands from the empire wizards kit (the book and the hand making the horns with a particularly camp dagger). I'm hoping the model is so unique that he'd stand out as a high level wizard, whilst not betraying my slaaneshi theme.

So, here's Noface, Shadow Scholar of Slaanesh (suggestion for better names welcome).

Also, here's another Soulcrusher conversion. I'm particularly fond of her whopping scythe hammer thing.

Keep following guys.

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!