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Alright Dakka, it's time to make another fantasy army. Last time I blogged an army - the very beginnings of my Nurgle Skaven army, on Warseer back in 2007 - the army actually got painted, so here's hoping some electronic impetus will help Time frame for this is vaguely the 2013 Crossroads GT in November, but in reality I'm looking to smash it out by the end of summer, girlfriend willing

THE LIST

Demon Prince of Tzeentch - level 2 (METAL), lesser gift (x2), chaos armor, demonic flight = 440
Herald of Tzeentch - BSB, level 1 (TIZZ), greater gift, greater locus of change = 200

30 Horrors - standard, musician = 410
30 Horrors - standard, musician = 410

4 Screamers = 160
4 Screamers = 160
4 Screamers = 160

Soul Grinder of Tzeentch = 260
Burning Chariot = 150
Burning Chariot = 150
-------------------------------------------
2500 points / 9 drops

So it's new demons with the dial set to CUDDLE - light on magic, heavy on screamers, doomed to go untested until at least everything is built, if not also primed

DAY 00

Because every update requires pics, here's what I've already got on hand:



In the mail are the chariot counts as, an ebay lot of Changeling + 7 screamers (for 16 total screamers ), and a bunch of chaos terminator base arrows to add a little pizazz (of tzeentch) to the basing, which will otherwise be pretty generically sandy.

Here are the built dudes a little closer, both of whom are being recruited from my WoC army:





Gribble on the left is Widget, a unit filler from some tizz warriors that is going to fill the hell out of some horrors now. Not that I don't intend to buy 60 horrors, but will assuredly get well and bored of them, and having a few extra horrors for raising is probably smart. Lad on the right is Skullflux, the DP from same WoC army, and a model I'm so fond of that I'm building him a demon army to lead. Both models are going to have their cork bases torn down once bits arrive - as effective as cork bases can be I think I'm happy with simpler, securer bases for this crew. Particularly with how many flying stands are going to be involved!

And so the adventure begins. See you soon, though sadly probably only with pics of bare plastic & metal things

- Salvage

Aww man, I forgot Skullflux! I think I saw him in person exactly once, but a sweet model none the less.

Any plans to convert the hell out of your horrors or screamers? Or just saving that for chariot and standard bearer shenanigans?

WEHRRRRRR!

 Wehrkind wrote:
Any plans to convert the hell out of your horrors or screamers? Or just saving that for chariot and standard bearer shenanigans?

Weirdly, I think I spent a lot of my store of 'Yay for green stuff!' energy on my Nurgle dudes. These Tizz guys are either going to be bog standard, counts as or gently converted, often streamlined toward what I call Svelte Evil (i.e. trimming off excessive spikes, skulls, etc). Case in point is the soul grinder:

DAY 01



This grinder was destined long ago to be a second defiler for my CSM crew, hence why so much of it is done today At this step he's just about entirely gap-filled, just waiting for his right shoulder, which will happen tomorrow after cleaning up all the GS from this morning. But anyway Svelte Evil: no spikes, no leg plates, probably adding just a few skulls-on-spikes (because chaos). Torso will remain unattached until after painting, since it'll be almost exclusively blue while the legs are destined to be brushed metal + black. Trying to source a base for this dude tonight, along with picking up more of these gribbles ...



Only managed to clean the bodies from one frame, but already happy to see I can probably get away without any GS gap filling. Sure there are some jowls that could be attached, but all the limb joins sit very flush, and in sort of flesh wrinkles I'll be painting / washing for depth anyway. Since the arms appear to all be interchangeable I'll need to cook up a Variety Maximization Matrix to avoid as many duplicates amongst the 60 as possible

Probably all for today, about to wade out into One Last Snowstorm in the name of models, Wreck It Ralph, and Smexican date night @_@

- Salvage

I am in favor of svelte evil; I think GW goes WAY overboard on needless details when a nice smooth look would be better. Especially on horrors who are all about the flow and ebb,

I also love the fact you are building out a system to maximize variability

Skullflux of "Whoops I just just landed in my comet's LZ" fame? One of my favorite batrep characters of all time. The conversion looks great!

 Boss Salvage wrote:
Since the arms appear to all be interchangeable I'll need to cook up a Variety Maximization Matrix to avoid as many duplicates amongst the 60 as possible

You crazy, mang...

 Red_Zeke wrote:
Skullflux of "Whoops I just just landed in my comet's LZ" fame? One of my favorite batrep characters of all time. The conversion looks great!

The same Thanks for reminding me RZ, I had forgotten ... Thankfully running METAL should make a repeat of that ill-fated comet hard to pull off, but TIZZ magic does have Glean ...

DAY 03

Worked on stuff a few hours yesterday, but today saw me completing some stuff. Like that grinder:



Ok he's "completed" - waiting on a tizz icon from Wehrkind and a giant ass base from the LGS (that base he's on belongs to one of my OK's arachnatusks ) before gluing those legs in and finalizing his pose. Then prime and I suppose paint? Intimidated already!



Also finished clean up and assemble of the first 10 horrors. Unbased for the moment but that'll come soon enough, though part of me wonders if they'll be a nightmare to rank up with all those flailing limbs. Otherwise the kit is nice, not too bad to clean up, enough options, and no GS required is pretty unexpected for GeeDub. Oh, as for the Variety Matrix, I decided to keep it simple and just track which body (1-10) ends up with which number of arms (2 Right / 2 Left, 2 Right / 1 Left, 1 Right / 2 Left, 1 Right / 1 Left). 40 different sets is fine with me, I'll stick to which arm pairs look better together - it does look like some arms clearly go together, judging by jewelry, feathers, fire, etc.



Not wanting to bust into the screamers today, I also put the horrors' trays together. This involved reattaching 12 spaces to an 18 base tray, which I had cut down for my warriors (), and then piecing together 30 spots for a new tray. Am pretty sure things will hold fine, between the GS, the reinforcement plastic underneath, and the fact that the horrors are whimpy plastic dudes.



Finally, I squished some GS into the divots that the new style bases have in the top, and whipped up a free herald for when Daemonic Possession gibs an enemy wizard, in the form of Huron's Hamadrya! Freshly discovered amongst my bitz and pressed into service

Whew, think that's all for now. The chick is working all weekend, so I think the goal is to crush through all 9 screamers, and play with whatever the USPS hands me

- Salvage

DAY 07

Quite a bit of time to work this weekend, however screamers took forever to file down, glue together (such a terrible join on that tail ), GS and then clean up once dry All the same, that's six screamers:



And then today I got presents! First off, way more magnets than I need:



Then an eBay auction that I may have spent too much on -



- of which I'm using these for now, though likely hitting the other screamers up so I have more to summon:



Yes, yes I agree - those sky sharks are going to need a bath:



And as for The Changeling, some careful (read: lucky) drilling, brass rod and horror standard happened:



So that's one Herald of Tizz! As well as the base for Widget and a magnetized Hamadrya Herald

Tomorrow should bring GS on the BSB and crushing out 3-6 more screamers. And soon enough my super secret chariot counts as

- Salvage

 Boss Salvage wrote:



And as for The Changeling, some careful (read: lucky) drilling, brass rod and horror standard happened...

Ha! Yeah, you're a braver man than I. I've had a few models lately (Slaanesh hero, pMorghoul, Agonizer) that really probably could have used some pinning, but I was sure I was going to just blow the whole thing up.

BSB looks great.

Looking pretty sharp! Speaking of opposites, I just realized I didn't include the chaos arrow rock things in the little care package I sent you :( Sorry about that.

Also, what gauge brass rod did you use for the banner man? Looks awesome, and I have never actually played with that, but it is coming...

 Wehrkind wrote:
Looking pretty sharp! Speaking of opposites, I just realized I didn't include the chaos arrow rock things in the little care package I sent you :( Sorry about that.

Also, what gauge brass rod did you use for the banner man? Looks awesome, and I have never actually played with that, but it is coming...

Infinite sadness on the arrow-rock, but I do have many of them, and am dragging my feet on basing anyway On the brass rod, the one I used on this dude (as well as the BSB of my Nurgley Skaven) is size 3/64 K&S Engineering. Can't quite remember where I got it - possibly a game store in Colorado?

Which is fitting, as I'm in fact headed back to Colorado tomorrow night, back Sunday in time for Game of Thrones. Sadly this means nothing is going to happen with the army during that time - plan is mostly to eat, play Infinity with my bro, and eat some more - though the timing is pretty good, as I'm also out of models to build! By the time I get back there should be 2+ boxes of horrors and a couple chariots to play with. Also super secret Wehrkind bits

DAY 08



Simple Green always impresses - the prime / paint just washed right off these second hand screamers

And before you know it they were cleaned up, along with my last three new screamers, and filled with the obligatory GS:



Finally, did a little structural GS work on the BSB (hand to pole, pole to cloak), and since I had me magnets went ahead and based / magnetized all the horrors. Quite excited to have two big blobs of these guys, very cool sculpts with all those limbs everywhere. Caveat: not excited about cleaning 50 more of them



I think that's it for this update - like I said, I've now run out of models (besides summoned screamers I don't want to truck with quite yet)! I may mess with basing tonight but otherwise expect the next one in about a week.

- Salvage

Huh, I never noticed before, but the horrors are very humanoid. Somewhat more so than the old ones which were somewhat more random wisps of magic and teeth, no?

Glad to know 3/64ths! I have a terrible time guessing scale when I am at the hobby shop. What seems suitably tiny in my hands always seems crazy big on a model :(

Back from Western climes, but sadly my horrors continue to be delayed at the LGS - with luck I'll have 20 more by Friday Which means I'll likely spend Thursday working on basing, not that that's not a worthy cause in itself

DAY 15

Unlike my horrors, I did get my 'burning chariots' in the mail while I was away:



Bam! Double Titan Forge Skydevils! Also tizz icons from Wehrkind - thanks again man

Anyway, skydevils look like this out of the box and in the naked resin:



Spoiler: not using that giant resin flight stand. I'm very happy with the size, particularly when compared to the wee little metal screamers. These will both be getting chariot bases ... once those show up, thanks to an extra extra GeeDub shipping delay

In the meantime, I gave the devils a soak in Simple Green + water, scrubbed a bit, decided I couldn't get all the mold release off with any amount of scrubbing (hoping for no problems later!), and got to cleaning. Which was a mixed bag honestly, not the highest quality resin cast, but weirdly between Forge World and Failcast I guess I have to admit it's pretty ok? Few air bubbles I cared to fill, and the generally gribbly nature of the sculpt means gap filing the tail join is pretty easily pulled off. And by easy I mean I was lazy and working fast, but whatev. Here are the gals post-GS (I straightened / twisted one tail around in hot water, though the effect may be too subtle in the end):



No real intent to convert them at all, quite fancy the design as is. I had thought about putting riders on them ... but I really do want them to be giant uber-screamers, and so they are.

Finally, I put that tizz icon to work right away, and glued the last bit on the soul grinder:



Feels like I'm hardly moving, though I suppose a lot of stuff is built, all told. If winter finally abates I can move on to the exciting priming phase

- Salvage

Woot! Things! Glad to see the icons made it to you ok... I was a little worried about tossing them in an envelope like that.

Those mega screamers look pretty sweet! Bummer about the less than perfect cast, but they look pretty great now.

Nice looking start of an army there.

How are the Titan forge minis working for you? They do look pretty sweet!

I was thinking of using the Ogre Pirates as Maneaters in my OK army but they are really expensive I thought! Were the Sky Devils more reasonably priced?

I've been admiring those Titan Forge skydevils for a while, nice pick. You've got a very cool looking army-in-the-making here.

Woot! Replies!

Wehrkind wrote:Bummer about the less than perfect cast, but they look pretty great now.

Thanks again for them icons On the casting, maybe I'm being a bit harsh. The tusks, eyes, other details are all pretty groovy, it's just that the mold line (along the wings and down the tail) are in such a place that they're hard to get at and scrap away, making clean up less 'hard' and more 'futile feeling'? Bubbles and mis-allignments is what I'd call bad, and those are both fairly rare here.

rohansoldier wrote:Nice looking start of an army there.

How are the Titan forge minis working for you? They do look pretty sweet!

I was thinking of using the Ogre Pirates as Maneaters in my OK army but they are really expensive I thought! Were the Sky Devils more reasonably priced?

Thanks! I also own the Flesh Reapers - gorgers in my own ogre army - and the casting there was very nice, which again I think more comes down to the sculpt than company-wide resin production. I got those dudes from Maelstrom before it died (so % discount + free shipping to US), but these skydevils I picked up off eBay from UK, for IMO a pretty sweet price ($17 each after conversion? Plus cheap shipping.) Weirdly the skydevil with rider was WAY more from the same seller, like $20+ for the magelord

lennymaybe wrote:I've been admiring those Titan Forge skydevils for a while, nice pick. You've got a very cool looking army-in-the-making here.

Thanks

- Salvage

It's still alive! But waiting for horrors, grading midterms and doing taxes have made progress a tad limited ... here goes all the same:

DAY 25

I made a lot of bases!



And got the skydevils magnetized (and balanced) so they ride their base stems!





Finally, the soul grinder saw assembly at last, with legs glued in and all that!



(Here's that base, sans sand!)



So now I've got two boxes of horrors to churn through, with another three on order after that. I may die before they're done

In other news, I've updated the list a little:

THE LIST (1.1)

Demon Prince of Tzeentch - level 2 (METAL), lesser gift (x2), chaos armor, demonic flight = 440
Herald of Tzeentch - BSB, level 2 (TIZZ), greater gift, greater locus of change = 235

30 Horrors - standard (gleaming pennant), musician = 415
30 Horrors - standard, musician = 410

5 Screamers = 200
3 Screamers = 120
3 Screamers = 120

Soul Grinder of Tzeentch = 260
Burning Chariot = 150
Burning Chariot = 150
-------------------------------------------
2500 points / 9 drops

Herald got an extra level (hoping to make glean magic work) at the cost of a screamer, the screamers were reorganized (one big attak flight, two smaller chaffier ones), and a horror standard picked up a nearly worthless (but not quite) magic banner to make up points

- Salvage

Lovin' the arrows for the basing. Project's lookin' good!

Looking solid as usual!

Out of curiosity, what was their justification for bringing the soul grinder to WHFB? Seems a little techy, past even their otherwise rare steam tech.

Red_Zeke wrote:Lovin' the arrows for the basing. Project's lookin' good!

Cheers RZ! Glad you like the arrows, was hoping spamming the terminator arrows would work out, looks like it might just

DAY 29

Since I'm here, let's update! Mostly, I built 10 more horrors:



This lad is probably my favorite of the batch, largely because I'm partial to the four-armed builds (SO MANY LIMBS O_O), even if they're more of a pain to clean, rank up, etc:



And so that's 20 horrors all cleaned, built and magnetized (though that base they're holding down isn't yet ):



Also, while waiting for the horrors I built and primed a bloat thrall to complete 25 points of Cryx



I expected this dude to be a total pain in the butt, yet it turns out the model has been largely swapped to resin, so - with the help of some GS in every metal-to-resin leg joint - was actually quite pleasant to assemble. As much as I dislike PP's brittle plastic, I am a real fan of their resin

Wehrkind wrote:Out of curiosity, what was their justification for bringing the soul grinder to WHFB? Seems a little techy, past even their otherwise rare steam tech.

After re-reading the SG fluff entry ... I'm still not quite sure While you may have expected some commentary about Chaos Dwarfs and all their infernal machinery - pretty sure this is the explanation for the hellcannon for WoC, as well as all of those CD thingies (doom train et al) - it's not to be found. More so, there's no comment about the machine component at all, aside from brutal pistons churning the battlefield to goo, etc. The entry is all about the entrapment of a demon within the grinder shell as punishment, and the gradual adaptation of both machine and demon to each other. Really nothing about why this big death machine is wandering the fields of fantasy - not even warp rifts or dark futures or anything.

I am somewhat curious what other people think about the SG's appearance in fantasy. It was virtually unplayed with the DoC update + old book, but that's not necessarily a commentary about fluff or something, given the armies that virtually all DoC players were running ........ On my part, I loved when they included the big hate machine, though I also like including 40k elements in my chaos armies (maybe that should be "chaos" ) with virtually no justification if I can help it! Partially as reference to those old Realm of Chaos models rocking plasma pistols and chain weapons no matter the time period, and partially because of how awesome the grimerdarker chaos models are, yet how mediocre their game system is.

- Salvage

I didn't realise your were working on some Cryx as well. I've just started with them, only done a few deathrippers and a scavenger so far. They've been a nice change of pace from my chaos army.

Yea ... I've been playing Skorne for quite some time now, but I frequently get a bit bored with the playstyle. This usually means I get bored with WM/H, as I don't have another painted army, and just stop playing. So last summer I bought a LOT of Cryx stuff, with the intent of getting a second faction table ready, but burned out pretty hard. As of now I've got a 25 pointer I like built, primed and ready for paint ... though now I've got these tizz demons to keep me occupied, hence no progress on the Cryx painting.

All the same, here's the list for the interested:

Mortenebra (0)
* Erebus
* Reaper
* Reaper
* Helldiver
Warwitch Siren
Bloat Thrall

If and when I get this painted - it actually might be sooner than later, as I miss WM/H something fierce right now - I may reward myself with Something Ridiculous to make 35 points:

Mortenebra (III)
* Kraken
* Reaper
* Reaper
* Helldiver
Warwitch Siren
Warwitch Siren
Necrotech

What's especially ridiculous about the Kraken is that the Mammoth just came out, and my Skorne crew would love him to come rock out with them ...

- Salvage

Hurrrrrrr! Still tanking away on this thing, despite the draw of other projects - Warmahordes, Infinity, existing outside in the sunshine - and once again running out of models to build as horrors are officially Out of Stock

First up, the list has been tweaked:

THE LIST (1.2)

Demon Prince of Tzeentch - level 2 (METAL), greater gift, lesser gift, demonic flight = 445
Herald of Tzeentch - BSB, level 2 (TIZZ), greater gift, greater locus of change = 235

30 Horrors - standard, musician = 410
30 Horrors - standard, musician = 410

5 Screamers = 200
3 Screamers = 120
3 Screamers = 120

Soul Grinder of Tzeentch = 260
Burning Chariot = 150
Burning Chariot = 150
-------------------------------------------
2500 points / 9 drops

That stupid pennant is gone, and the 5 points went to trading in one of the DP's lesser gifts and the 20 point 4+ armor for a greater gift. Hopefully this yields awesome survival powers (2+ armor! +1W! Spirit Swallower!), but at the least it means I get to roll up more random things

Now to the updates!

DAY 38

I painted, sealed and magnetized the horror trays:



Not 100% happy with them (the seal came out a bit spotty, the magnetic sheet had to be trimmed after being stuck down) but they will certainly do. Speaking of troops, 10 more horrors happened ...



... including the standard and musician (giving the horns, naturally). Here's that standard lad up front:



With 30 horrors built, and a tray magnetized to hold them, it was inevitable that I tried to rank them up ...



... which almost worked On one side the mass of limbs looks great, and actually has a sort of inhuman horde feel, all those arms / tentacles / tongues reaching forward to devour - ok, at least grope - the world. On the other side, they're essentially impossible to rank up. The block with a unit filer will be easier, with some extra space to position overly invasive limbs, but I'm contemplating other options to make things easier. Even a few slightly elevated bases would help, or possibly a few small, single-base fillers here and there. This would also give me a few more horrors to raise as needed.

Speaking of extra horrors, I got these off eBay:



OOP horrors! Originally I was going to build the left two to use as champions / summoned heralds as needed, though I may pass for the moment, as I like the wee Hamadrya still, and shan't be using champs for a while yet. That said, I could see whipping up the smaller dudes and sticking them in the horror blocks. Totally different style, but they'll still be blue, and compact enough to allow for some ranking relief.

So without horrors to build, I see myself switching back to basing - in this case, all them horrors - and getting down to priming. Til next time!

- Salvage

My gosh that is a lot of horrors. I like the addition of the OOP ones, they make for a nice variation.

I happened to PM Salvage about fantasy, and thus found out about this project just now. Wow this is the perfect army for you, I think- themed, solid-but-not-too-solid power-wise, and lots of room for tactical play. Totally awesome!

Progress so far looks great . I think this will inspire me to start a P&M blog in the main area of Dakka (I usually hide my work in DCM) to motivate me through making my chaos dwarfs! Would love to have a test game against you in mid-summer, assuming you can stomach fielding your army in an unfinished state just for fun

I will be following this with great interest

Glad you made it over RT As for how the army actually plays ... I'm totally unsure if it'll work at all but am excited to find out once we've hit All Primed! And of course: there will be battle reports

 RiTides wrote:
Progress so far looks great . I think this will inspire me to start a P&M blog in the main area of Dakka (I usually hide my work in DCM) to motivate me through making my chaos dwarfs! Would love to have a test game against you in mid-summer, assuming you can stomach fielding your army in an unfinished state just for fun

Will be waiting for the blog!

- Salvage

 Boss Salvage wrote:
And of course: there will be battle reports

Have to admit, this is the part I'm looking forward to the most!

When do you anticipate "All Primed" to be?

It all depends on how soon GeeDub can pump out more horrors (waiting on three boxes for the last unit), and then how long it takes to build them. The last couple boxes I managed to build in a week each, should be able to keep up the same pace, if not a little faster once school ends. So end of May, beginning of June? Because everything that isn't a horror is already black or getting there this weekend

- Salvage

Looking forward to seeing some colours go on these chaps

So many models that don't rank up! *sigh* Come on GW, you know how big the bases are, sculpt with that in mind!