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This thread will chronicle my progress on my new Chaos Daemon army, themed around the Iron Pact and Forge of Souls. I've owned several GW armies/bloodbowl teams/etc, but this will be the first with every model converted to some degree.

Inspiration/Background: it all comes down to the Soulgrinder. After a hiatus from all things GW for a few years (I like to say that I only play the odd-numbered editions), the Soulgrinder model sucked me right back into the money-vacuum. The idea of an entire army of biomechanical daemons forged by blind smiths just seemed too cool to pass up.

Goals: 1) Every model converted. 2) Every model made from (or primarily from) plastic. 3) No gratuitous spiky bits.

Two weeks into the project, I found that the start date for 'Ard Boyz was moved up from last year, and I've been scrambling to get the army put together ever since. While I wasn't able to get everything finished before the preliminaries, a good friend was willing to loan me what I needed to play until I could finish the conversions of my own models. With both greater daemons and two of the grinders out of the way, the rest should be relatively easy...

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04/13/10 UPDATE:

I've actually had 1500+ points finished (to tabletop standard, anyway) for a few months...but having just purchased a house, all the camera bits were in storage.
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Progress:

Bloodthirster



Great Unclean One




Herald of Tzeentch (2)




Fiends (6)






Flamers (6)




Bloodletters (10 of 30 completed)



Horrors (10)



Changeling




Nurglings (5)




Plaguebearers

(pending)

Screamers (3)




Soulgrinders (2)





Also, one of my haunts asked me to bring my stuff in for a gamer profile:

Beautifull work, Im very impressed. Love the overall theme of the army!

Cilithan

Looking good man! But erm...waht is Iron Pact?

Bloody brilliant. Absolutely bloody brilliant.

Cheers,

Jack.

I'm not a fan of the Heli-Thirster at all. Looks waaayyy to comical for my liking. The rest is top notch though.

I really like your approach to daemons, I've never been a fan of fantasy models running around in the 40k universe so it's nice to see some distinctively sci-fi looking daemon models. The bloodletter could do with some more wire/tubes/sci-fi gubbins. I also agree with Grimtuff that the helicopter daemon doesn't really work. The claw looks out of proportion with the scale of the LOTR Balrog and, as Grimtuff says, the rotar looks quite comical.

On a more positive note I love the changeling, a really great approach to this model. The fiend is also great.

Keep up the good work.

MY God !!!! These are a ork of genius !

Those LOTR models are so nicely done, infact all of them are sooo nicely done

Those bloodletter conversions remind me of the predators from primeval. Top job fella, may have to borrow that idea...

Grim.

Very cool and impressive work. Especially the Changeling and the Fiend! Wanna see more!

EDIT: Only the Bloodthirster looks a little bit strange to me with these helicopter-rotor-thing.

CatPeeler wrote:

Horrors



Changeling


Soulgrinders

Not a fan of the helicopter GD, but these are creepy good and inspired. I particularly like the converted soulgrinder turned turned demon walker. Me likey

The smaller demons are movie like in their creepieness-alien meets hellraiser. Excellent!

Outstanding!
I love the idea of using the bloodletters as lessor daemon templates, modifying them to create the different daemon types. That gives the army a real visual cohesion.
And your fiend is particularly good.
Either good, actually, or f-in' brilliant!

I would agree that the bloodthirster does seem a bit out of character with the rest of the army. A bit more cartoony, perhaps.

But really, it's all pretty damn good. Great stuff so far.

haha i actually love that bloodthirster. i'd be terrified if that came flying towards me no matter how comical it looked

Hmm, I'm curious what you are going to do with the Slaanesh daemons, I can imagine you using Dark Eldar bits on the Daemonettes to create the weapons and armour.

Thanks, fellas!

Malika2 wrote:Looking good man! But erm...waht is Iron Pact?

"All of the souls you will reap.
All of your spoils of war.
To be a keeper of the Forge.
But a trifle price for the boon that is bestowed upon you" -From the Iron Pact (Codex Chaos Daemons, p45)

As far as the heli-thirster goes, people seem to either really like it or really hate it. It *is* a little cartoony (though less so in person), but I imagine the paint will make or break it.

The plaguebearers will also be based on the bloodletter models, but with further bionics and metal plates to represent the higher toughness/feel no pain. I may kitbash with some necron figs for that... or not. The flamers will be similar to the horrors, with the addition of some IG flamers I picked up, as well as some nozzl-ey attachments running up and down their backs. I may eventually convert some bloodcrushers from some fantasy ogres, but that's probably a ways off.

Thanks for checking these out--I appreciate the C&C!

Those fiends and bloodletters are exceptional. How did you do their faces? Overall you've done an amazing job of eliminating the comical GW aspects of the army and gone for pure creepiness.

Except for the helicopter.

The faces are easy:

1) Clip all the horns off the face and chin.

2) Glue the heads as normal, wait for 'em to dry.

3) Clip off the back of the head (essentially everything past the socket).

4) Carve off the cheeks and eyebrows with a sharp knife.

5) Carve all the stumps down to a more rounded shape.

6) Fill / smooth over the eyesockets with putty or plastic cement.

Bask in the glory of the eyeless horde!

nice. I'm not so sure on the heli guy and the flamers need more FLAME!!!!!! but otherwise AWESOME WORK!

Why is it Daemon armies ALWAYS have the sexiest conversions!? Stop tempting me!

Maybe some tendrils/cabling coming from the spine of the heli-thirster into the rotor would help a bit? It does look a bit out of place at the moment though.

Thumbs up on the walking Soulgrinder though, especially the claw arm.

Dragonlover

Everything looks sweet so far , I just think you should swap out the head of the converted LOTR troll looks too middle earth for the look of the army .

Those bloodletters would make excellent genestealers as well.

great work but i don't like the bloodthrister and the bloodletters all to much

Wow, these are very nice. For some reason they bring DooM to mind, with all the cyber-demon-ness, plus your bloodletters look a lot like the DooM3 imps.

I really love your fiends, and the changeling is utter genius... literally. I think that model alone is one of the most amazing concepts I've seen regarding the Daemon units.

The copter-thirster is fine to me, a bit silly, but what the heck? He's got wings... they just spin lol.

Good job. VERY good job.

The Fiends are horrible, and by horrible I mean awesome!
A small unit of those guys running around on a table would be a cool sight indeed.
Amazingly converted army, good work, love to see more soon!

Agreed... Love the Fiends soooooo much!!! The mixture of GS + Possessed parts + bloodletters is damn cool!!!

Also can't wait to see the Flamers!

I like the theme very much.
At first I was confused about the helicopter, but you know what? It's better than a cheesy pair of wings imo. Bloodthirster wings are way too fantasy for this army. Maybe you could try a pair of Valkyrie wings too. See what's more in the spirit of your theme...

Oh, well that's a nice idea!!! Valkyrie wings could be the perfect bits!!!

I'm sending 1 vote for a Greater Daemon with Valkyrie Wings!!!

And I also agree with Archonate, helo wings fit better than organic ones, even if it looks a bit strange at first... But who knows what lurks in the dark future?!? Your imagination and lack of censorship (do we say that in English?) are great qualities, so keep them and stay focused!!

Good luck!

This rules.
I LOVE that changeling conversion.

Maybe you could try a pair of Valkyrie wings too. See what's more in the spirit of your theme...

How about a pair of Valkyrie wings, split in two and joined at the seems by that putty to make it look bio-mechanical, it would fit the part of the army and would look awesome!

First off amazing work! Great take on the daemons. Making me want to do some. I don't see this brought up but what did you use for the bloodletters and horrors? Those look amazing and with a single eye would make great plaguebearers.