So this is to chronicle my latest exploit - something that I've wanted for a while but have put off building. But that time has since passed and I'm building "The Abomination" which is a Khorne + Tzeench Daemon army.
I've wanted to run a Bloodthirster for a long time (back when all I played was
40k), and yeah I basically want a tournament army (my Dark Elf Monster List is mainly built for looks, though it can do well in the occasional tourney).
Of course all the good units from the Daemon book are all metal & expensive as all get out, so if you wanted to build the kind of list I'm talking about it's going to cost an arm and a leg. This is diametrically opposed to my outlook of being a cheapass when it comes to my hobby with overpriced miniatures.
So of course being an especially resourceful cheesy git, I worked out some ways to build the army on the cheap. Sort of like applying the army-list creation thought process to model purchasing.
This has been about 6-8 months in the making, leading up to this point where I am actually constructing the army. The goal is to have a strong tournament army on the cheap, but at the same time pulling off a paint job that makes the whole army look great on the table.
So without further ado I'll go through the units:
Horrors
GW charges $44 for a single unit of metal 10 Horrors? I've got two words for that: HELL NO!
Doing some perusing of The Warhammer Forum, I stumbled across someone's
Horror Conversion from Plastic Ghouls. Apparently I wasn't the only one who has seen and subsequently stolen this idea. I know at least two people in our local area who have done this conversion for their armies.
As such I've got 3 boxes of Plastic Ghouls which now sit assembled (without their heads) on 25mm GF9 Magnetic Bases.
3x 10 Horrors = Compulsory Core Finished.
Flesh Hounds
GW charges $35 for five metal Flesh Hounds that ironically look more like they belong in a Lizardmen army than a Daemon army. While the models aren't particularly bad, they ain't worth the $140 it'd take to get 4 units of them.
And then the Warriors of Chaos book came out and they released Plastic Warhounds. 10 nicely aggressive looking Chaos Dogs, in plastic, for $22. And so the direct hijacking of models was done. All they really need is a decent paint job to look suitably Khorne like and you're golden.
4x 5 Flesh Hounds = Best Cavalry in the Game Finished.
Tzeench Heralds
So given that I'm using Ghouls as Horrors, the question as to what to make my Tzeench Heralds out of was a concern. Fortunately, I have a decent local group of players who do most of the gaming systems. One of my friends is a now disaffected
40k player (go-go 5th Edition!) who had some
OoP Horror models that he no longer wanted in his Chaos Marine army and just wanted to get rid of. I got 10 of these guys basically for nothing, which now that I'm actually using them for something I believe I'm going to be treating him to dinner or a healthy case of beer.
Now, I could just pull these guys off their circle bases and throw them onto square ones, but that won't quite do. All of my Tzeench Heralds will be given the Flying Horror gift, so I needed a way to model flight on these guys.
I thought about trying to get more plastic Hawkman wings from Heroclix mini's like I did for my Plastic Harpy conversion for my
DE's. However I can't seem to find any online vendors that have the kind of models w/ wings instock that I want from either Heroclix or Mageknight, so I went and used Privateer Press's bits service to order 4 sets of
small Angelius wings which will nicely go onto the
OoP Horror models.
Out of the 4 Heralds I plan on making (for now), one will be the
BSB. I've got some Brass Rod I will use for the banner and am going to be talking to my Chaos Marine playing friends to get some Chaos Icons from the Marine kit to mix with it in order to make a banner.
Khorne Heralds
Ever since they released the Daemon army book for
WHFB, it seems the Heralds of Khorne all come pre-manufactured on Juggernauts with Armor of Khorne as standard. Some people put more options on them, but they don't require much in the way of modeling to be represented.
So
GW has released some really nice Juggernaut models lately, though being metal they are exceptionally expensive. Given that like to build mini's to support a wide variety of army builds, I would want 4 Khorne Heralds on Juggers, one of which would be a
BSB.
Fortunately, I had other (former) Chaos Marine playing friends who had mini's they no-longer wanted. One of them was kind enough to trade me 4 old school Juggernauts of Khorne sans riders for two Warmachine blisters.
These guys got mixed with the new Plastic Bloodletters kit to give me my 4 Khorne Heralds, with the Banner nicely coming from the kit. Easy as pie.
Unfortunately I've had to make bases for these guys as he didn't have any
WHFB 50mm bases to spare. Luckily I had plenty of Cavalry bases from the Warhounds left over so a little Testors glue and the modular movement tray bottoms later I've got my 4 50mm bases for these guys to sit on.
The Rest of the Army
Sadly the rest of my army will not be made from the entertaining money saving conversions and will merely be stock models that were acquired through patience and eBay sniping. That said, I'm fairly proud of the deals I snagged over the past 8 months:
10 Furies - $15
8 Flamers - $18
Bloodthirster - $28
Given all this, I've been able to acquire the models to make just about any kind of competitive Khorne/Tzeench Daemon army for less than half the cost of
GW retail.
Pics shall be forthcoming of what has been completed thus far. As of now, the only thing that's not built are the Tzeench Heralds since I'm waiting on my bits to arrive from Privateer Press.
and i love the kroot/ghouls!