Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:
I had the idea of Slaaneshi demons looking like 18th century aristocrats, in fancy and graceful outfits, which is juxtaposed by something grotesque. Like, one of them is playing a gilded violin that's made from some guy's ribcage, another one has a wine glass full of blood with someone's eyeball in it.
Basically anything written by Marquis de Sade, but toned down for a general audience.

You're on the right track, but I'm not sure an entire army of this would work. How many different iterations of this style of model can you think of, and then remember, you have to have ~90 daemonettes (at least in my army) that are all recognizably uniform but also aspects of the God of Excess.

It probably wouldn't work that well for troops, but it would work quite well for characters and elites.
It would also work thematically; they high ranking demons are "high class" and as such look like sadomasochistic nobility, and the lower ranking demons, such as your average daemonette, are "low class" and look like sadomasochistic crackheads.

So you'd make them Vampire Counts in space?

Tyel wrote:
How many models do you need?

I mean if you had the harpist, a painter and a sculptor that would be 3 heralds. Could you somehow do a poet too? I'm not sure how you would express that as a mini.

Is there a 40k named keeper secrets? Then another 2/3 variants? But that's probably just gear. Whip variant. Sword variant. Veiled and non-veiled versions.

Poetry could be scrolls and pens I suppose, as well as books. All three of them could also work with underling type units based around gathering their needed materials. Canvas/Music Sheets/Paper made from flesh, paint dyed with the screams of burning souls, ink made from blood, etc. Imagine Flayed Ones, but less silly looking.

CthuluIsSpy wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:
I had the idea of Slaaneshi demons looking like 18th century aristocrats, in fancy and graceful outfits, which is juxtaposed by something grotesque. Like, one of them is playing a gilded violin that's made from some guy's ribcage, another one has a wine glass full of blood with someone's eyeball in it.
Basically anything written by Marquis de Sade, but toned down for a general audience.

You're on the right track, but I'm not sure an entire army of this would work. How many different iterations of this style of model can you think of, and then remember, you have to have ~90 daemonettes (at least in my army) that are all recognizably uniform but also aspects of the God of Excess.

It probably wouldn't work that well for troops, but it would work quite well for characters and elites.
It would also work thematically; they high ranking demons are "high class" and as such look like sadomasochistic nobility, and the lower ranking demons, such as your average daemonette, are "low class" and look like sadomasochistic crackheads.

Some of them could work as an army to an extent. Change the Violinist to "The Conductor" who leads their grand symphony - a band who seek the perfect song, but alas, always fall short. Instruments forged from still living victims (much like the harpist), items made of flesh, bone, and soul-stuff, etc. The lowest level flunkies are the stage hands, brutes who drag members of their "audience" in to be incorporated into the show. They traverse the materium and immaterium in search of The Song, and gather up their audience and new equipment, as what is the perfect song without the perfect equipment and the perfect audience?

To go with 18th century aristocrats look, give the Conductor, Players, and Stage Hands the powdered wig nobility look, while their audience members are half crazed slaves chained together and prodded along by the hands.

 Trickstick wrote:
I really hate the widespread view that Slaanesh = sex. There is such a wide range of things that a god of excess could cover but people fixate on one tiny bit of it. It happens with all the gods to some extent, like Khorne = blood, but Slaanesh gets pidgeon-holed to an extreme degree. I guess it is just having something a bit rude is titillating to some people, and they fixate on it.

It's a combination of people enjoying fun, and "excess" being an extremely vague theme to go off of. All of the Gods are gods of "excess" because by definition the Chaos Gods represent emotions and concepts taken to their unhealthy extremes.

Sex and drugs are easy targets because they're intuitive examples of human excess, WHILE ALSO not infringing upon the other God's themes in any way.

The aristocracy idea above is the first example I've ever seen of non-sexual Slaanesh that sounds in any way interesting, but it also sounds far more fitting for something like cultists than daemons. Daemons have existed for a trillion years before humanity was ever conceived, very few should look distinctly human. Or wear clothing, for that matter.

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:
I had the idea of Slaaneshi demons looking like 18th century aristocrats, in fancy and graceful outfits, which is juxtaposed by something grotesque. Like, one of them is playing a gilded violin that's made from some guy's ribcage, another one has a wine glass full of blood with someone's eyeball in it.
Basically anything written by Marquis de Sade, but toned down for a general audience.

You're on the right track, but I'm not sure an entire army of this would work. How many different iterations of this style of model can you think of, and then remember, you have to have ~90 daemonettes (at least in my army) that are all recognizably uniform but also aspects of the God of Excess.

It probably wouldn't work that well for troops, but it would work quite well for characters and elites.
It would also work thematically; they high ranking demons are "high class" and as such look like sadomasochistic nobility, and the lower ranking demons, such as your average daemonette, are "low class" and look like sadomasochistic crackheads.

There are a lot of ways excess and depravity can be displayed. Horrific mirror reflections of beauty. Models disfigured with envy of others. Leather whips and chains/BDSM. A beautiful model hiding horrid features if you look at it with the right angle. Fuming potions of lust and love. I mean, we're talking at least 2/7 of the deadly sins with Slaanesh (lust and envy), that's a lot of historic material to work with.

 BlaxicanX wrote:

 Trickstick wrote:
I really hate the widespread view that Slaanesh = sex. There is such a wide range of things that a god of excess could cover but people fixate on one tiny bit of it. It happens with all the gods to some extent, like Khorne = blood, but Slaanesh gets pidgeon-holed to an extreme degree. I guess it is just having something a bit rude is titillating to some people, and they fixate on it.

It's a combination of people enjoying fun, and "excess" being an extremely vague theme to go off of. All of the Gods are gods of "excess" because by definition the Chaos Gods represent emotions and concepts taken to their unhealthy extremes.

Sex and drugs are easy targets because they're intuitive examples of human excess, WHILE ALSO not infringing upon the other God's themes in any way.

Every 6 months I see someone say that there's more Slaanesh then sex and drugs and rock and roll but when pressed to actually give examples of what a distinctly "slaaneshian" model would look like without any sexual or drug overtones, the examples given are always crap like "colorful snipers that never miss" or "a guy that's really fast".

Bloke wot eats a lot of tasty food. Also, ya know, Noise Marines.

 Thadin wrote:
I think that reasoning falls flat, when you consider that they've shown frontal nudity on a model, in quite the close-up.

Redesigned Fiends of Slaanesh are front and center, in pictures all on their own and they have not one, but four pairs of naked breasts out in the open. If that's not Slaanesh imagery, I don't know what is.

They also have piercings and BDSM gear. If morality guardians taught us anything these days, the bloodied harp nailed into still alive victim would cause order of magnitude less protests than abhorrent sight every single human can see by simply lifting his/her shirt. Funny how it works, eh?

But yeah, it's slightly weird, there is very little about it different than the rest of the range, it anything it's the Fiends who are outlier in that mess of ugly shambling zombies last line refresh left...

 ashcroft wrote:
I'm still in shock that the forces of She Who Thirsts are going to be headlining a big box release. I can't imagine anyone saw that coming.

Seeing as when AoS launched it seemed perfectly plausible that they might squat Slaanesh in all but name I think they're doing just fine.

"Perfectly plausible" even though there were hundreds of indications to the contrary, including continued development of model range and growth of Big S role in 40K? Ya don't say.

And yeah, who could have seen that after year of Khorne, then Tzeenth, then Nurgle. They could have, like, always pick the other fourth god for 2019

 Irbis wrote:

 Thadin wrote:
I think that reasoning falls flat, when you consider that they've shown frontal nudity on a model, in quite the close-up.

Redesigned Fiends of Slaanesh are front and center, in pictures all on their own and they have not one, but four pairs of naked breasts out in the open. If that's not Slaanesh imagery, I don't know what is.

They also have piercings and BDSM gear. If morality guardians taught us anything these days, the bloodied harp nailed into still alive victim would cause order of magnitude less protests than abhorrent sight every single human can see by simply lifting his/her shirt. Funny how it works, eh?

But yeah, it's slightly weird, there is very little about it different than the rest of the range, it anything it's the Fiends who are outlier in that mess of ugly shambling zombies last line refresh left...

 ashcroft wrote:
I'm still in shock that the forces of She Who Thirsts are going to be headlining a big box release. I can't imagine anyone saw that coming.

Seeing as when AoS launched it seemed perfectly plausible that they might squat Slaanesh in all but name I think they're doing just fine.

"Perfectly plausible" even though there were hundreds of indications to the contrary, including continued development of model range and growth of Big S role in 40K? Ya don't say.

And yeah, who could have seen that after year of Khorne, then Tzeenth, then Nurgle. They could have, like, always pick the other fourth god for 2019

Yeah! Malice releases in 2019! For the renegade god!

I was never sure why people thought slannesh was gonna be squatted tbh.

 Irbis wrote:
And yeah, who could have seen that after year of Khorne, then Tzeenth, then Nurgle. They could have, like, always pick the other fourth god for 2019

Next year Malal confirmed!

Armored cheriborum always seemed disturbing to me. It's basically a lobotomized baby carcass.

Compared to that, a boob plate is perfectly rational.

The forgeworld noise marine dreads were awesome; also the huge pipe organ backpacks from previous noise marines were cool too. I hope we see some stuff like that.

Fabius bile and Lucius models aren't really sexy and hint at other forms of excess.

 BlaxicanX wrote:

 Trickstick wrote:
I really hate the widespread view that Slaanesh = sex. There is such a wide range of things that a god of excess could cover but people fixate on one tiny bit of it. It happens with all the gods to some extent, like Khorne = blood, but Slaanesh gets pidgeon-holed to an extreme degree. I guess it is just having something a bit rude is titillating to some people, and they fixate on it.

It's a combination of people enjoying fun, and "excess" being an extremely vague theme to go off of. All of the Gods are gods of "excess" because by definition the Chaos Gods represent emotions and concepts taken to their unhealthy extremes.

Sex and drugs are easy targets because they're intuitive examples of human excess, WHILE ALSO not infringing upon the other God's themes in any way.

The aristocracy idea above is the first example I've ever seen of non-sexual Slaanesh that sounds in any way interesting, but it also sounds far more fitting for something like cultists than daemons. Daemons have existed for a trillion years before humanity was ever conceived, very few should look distinctly human. Or wear clothing, for that matter.

But... they use gardening tools and... pipes...

Aren't demons representations of human and eldar psyche, at least in the physical world? Thats why Slaaneshi demons have many simalirities with Eldar and demons are soo... mundane, and fight with swords, and chariots, etc...

If you want to depict the god of excess, field an army of unpainted plastic still in its packaging.

I didn't realise I had full Slaanesh army until now.

 Galas wrote:

Aren't demons representations of human and eldar psyche, at least in the physical world? Thats why Slaaneshi demons have many simalirities with Eldar and demons are soo... mundane, and fight with swords, and chariots, etc...

I do remember reading somewhere that a daemons appearance in 40k chances based on the onlookers races collective psyche. So, say if a human, a hrud and a vespid are looking at the same daemon they all see it differently, with the weird 4th wall breaking fringe logic being that we the players always see the human versions.

Or not, I dunno maybe I'm just misremembering something.

 Excommunicatus wrote:
So you'd make them Vampire Counts in space?

I don't see how themes of nobility are exclusive to vampire counts, and besides, I don't think Vampire counts are 18th century themed, nor Marquis de Sade themed.

Alternatively, one could theme Slaanesh off of a circus or a play. Sort of like evil harlequins, in simple terms.
Thematically you could say that the Harlequins are mocking Slaanesh, or vice versa.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Morgasm the Powerfull wrote:

 Galas wrote:

Aren't demons representations of human and eldar psyche, at least in the physical world? Thats why Slaaneshi demons have many simalirities with Eldar and demons are soo... mundane, and fight with swords, and chariots, etc...

I do remember reading somewhere that a daemons appearance in 40k chances based on the onlookers races collective psyche. So, say if a human, a hrud and a vespid are looking at the same daemon they all see it differently, with the weird 4th wall breaking fringe logic being that we the players always see the human versions.

Or not, I dunno maybe I'm just misremembering something.

That's a cool idea. Silent Hill does something similar, I believe, where the monsters and the locations manifest in different ways depending on the observer.

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:

 Excommunicatus wrote:
So you'd make them Vampire Counts in space?

I don't see how themes of nobility are exclusive to vampire counts, and besides, I don't think Vampire counts are 18th century themed, nor Marquis de Sade themed.

I was imagining a Darkest Dungeon - Crimson Court style. Quite different to Vampire Counts, being more Regency Period, crossed with mosquitoes.

 Trickstick wrote:
I really hate the widespread view that Slaanesh = sex. There is such a wide range of things that a god of excess could cover but people fixate on one tiny bit of it. It happens with all the gods to some extent, like Khorne = blood, but Slaanesh gets pidgeon-holed to an extreme degree. I guess it is just having something a bit rude is titillating to some people, and they fixate on it.

It is nice to see Slaanesh hasn't been squatted. I was afraid of that too when I saw the Sigmar fluff. Hopefully they have some good writers for this new release, which can add some depth to that area of lore.

Slaanesh is sex whether you like it or not nerd! Now man up and put this gag in you mouth! EMBRACE THE MEME!

w1zard wrote:
I always used to think this was because Americans were prudes with hangups around sex that were cultural holdovers from our puritan roots as a country, but apparently this is a thing in Europe as well?

Two things:
a) With sex, the age of the recipient/reader is considered very relevant, much more so than with violence, which is likely related to how pedophilia is bad and all. Most people wouldn't blink at learning an adult watch porn movies, or a violent movies, but much more people would be much more disturbed at an adult showing porn movies to a child, than at an adult showing violent movies to a child.
b) Yeah it's not as bad here, at least with regard to nudity. Check out the Kirikou film series .

New article on Slaanesh daemons, same result. It definitely is deliberate.

Morgasm the Powerfull wrote:

 Galas wrote:

Aren't demons representations of human and eldar psyche, at least in the physical world? Thats why Slaaneshi demons have many simalirities with Eldar and demons are soo... mundane, and fight with swords, and chariots, etc...

I do remember reading somewhere that a daemons appearance in 40k chances based on the onlookers races collective psyche. So, say if a human, a hrud and a vespid are looking at the same daemon they all see it differently, with the weird 4th wall breaking fringe logic being that we the players always see the human versions.

Or not, I dunno maybe I'm just misremembering something.

I don't know about that, but I'm certainly not seeing the human version when I look at Daemonettes.

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:

 Excommunicatus wrote:
So you'd make them Vampire Counts in space?

I don't see how themes of nobility are exclusive to vampire counts, and besides, I don't think Vampire counts are 18th century themed, nor Marquis de Sade themed.

Alternatively, one could theme Slaanesh off of a circus or a play. Sort of like evil harlequins, in simple terms.
Thematically you could say that the Harlequins are mocking Slaanesh, or vice versa.

Just to get the obvious out of the way, if you make Slaaneshis a circus, you'll just invite comments that the circus image is already taken by Nurgle and not fit to depict anything uniquely Slaaneshi. Round and round we go.

That said, my Daemon Princess has a Harlequin doll to play with, so on a more serious note, I'm not sure I'd be happy with tying together the imagery Slaanesh and Harlequins so closely is a good idea. I think Harlequins as a keeper of Eldar lore and a reminder to other Eldar how She who Thirsts came about is exclusively relevant to Eldar, whereas Slaanesh doesn't care which Eldar gets munched. They all taste the same. I picked the Harlequin because the pose made it an easy conversion. I never once thought that Harlequins, of all Eldar, where more relevant to a Slaaneshi model than others.

Plus there is the obvious problem that Daemons as an army have to be cross compatible and without a clown elf army in Age of Sigmar, tying Slaanesh to Harlequin imagery may not be the best.

 bullyboy wrote:
New article on Slaanesh daemons, same result. It definitely is deliberate.

That's alright. I didn't want to see the model anyway that is going to decide whether the box is worth the money to me or not...

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 Trickstick wrote:
I really hate the widespread view that Slaanesh = sex. There is such a wide range of things that a god of excess could cover but people fixate on one tiny bit of it. It happens with all the gods to some extent, like Khorne = blood, but Slaanesh gets pidgeon-holed to an extreme degree. I guess it is just having something a bit rude is titillating to some people, and they fixate on it.

It is nice to see Slaanesh hasn't been squatted. I was afraid of that too when I saw the Sigmar fluff. Hopefully they have some good writers for this new release, which can add some depth to that area of lore.

The problem is how to reflect excess in miniatures. The Harpist is a good start at getting towards music, but what then? We already have Noise Marines. Should we have Music Daemons as well?

-Portray an excess of violence, now you're Khorne.
-Portray an excess of food/gluttony, now you're Nurgle.

What other excesses can be physically represented on a piece of plastic other than sexuality?

It's a modeling problem - although I disagree that an excess of food or gluttony are Nurgle; bloated daemons are corpse gases, not excessive food intake. I can think of a dozen examples of Slaanesh excess, and they could even be modeled - but 40k is a miniature wargame - a WAR game, and every miniature is modeled and posed for combat.

How about a garishly over-painted and made up miniature preening in front of a mirror? What about a sculpted scene where a miniature frozen in the pose of dissecting another creature, with excessive blood spatter, and roping their organs around their neck, wearing their skin? What about a 40k pimp - driven to excesses of gaudy displays of wealth? Or a wild-eyed creature clutching bags of jewels and gems and precious metals?

The list could go on, but all of those scenes of excess, aren't in the realm of "We can pose this for combat" for a war game. Which is why you have titties I suppose.

Only Fiends and Zarakynel have exposed, apparently female, breasts. FWIW.

It's hardly a dominant theme of the minis.

 bullyboy wrote:
New article on Slaanesh daemons, same result. It definitely is deliberate.

Yes, at this point it definitely feels like they're shy of giving it too much focus on the website.

Oddly enough though I found a pic showing the back of the box, and that does focus on the Enrapturess.

 Thadin wrote:
Yeah, I could see it in that way, that it's less 'offensive' since it's beast. However, I don't really see it as GW being shy about showing Slaanesh. Because, as BCB put it, I don't think mommy would buy little Timmy a board game that had figures with nipples showing.

To me, it's just so strange that they didn't show it in detail. A new, unique model that's likely to be a selling-point of the box, that's not shown as the center-piece that it is. To me, that's a marketing mistake and not purposefully hiding slaanesh imagery.

Plenty of nipples if you play Blood Angels - just saying....

Luckily nothing in the preview leads me to believe that Slaaneshi daemons are actually good, so I can only get mildly worked up about GW's apparent prudishness.

PenitentJake wrote:
The forgeworld noise marine dreads were awesome; also the huge pipe organ backpacks from previous noise marines were cool too. I hope we see some stuff like that.

Fabius bile and Lucius models aren't really sexy and hint at other forms of excess.

Not quite the same, but still potentially kick-ass.

I'm kinda confused as to why so many people are saying it's because violence is ok and nudity isn't when the Fiends, which feature nudity, are front and centre and the Herald, which doesn't feature nudity but features violence, is hidden.

And when the Bloodwrack Medusa also has a fully exposed breast too.

Honestly maybe GW's photographer team just dropped the ball and didn't get the photos made - I can't think why as when I saw their studio it was large, well equipped and staffed and thus was long before the recent market explosion so I'd wager it would sitll be a well run machine. IT would explain the lack of media but not really since product photos and basic setups showing a single model shouldn't take them long to produce at all.



It's odd, but eh its not as if they are hiding much - come Sunday it will be out in the wild and photographed by everyone and the model will be up on show on the GW store page with a whole 360view to show it off.

Incompetence is a vastly more likely answer than conspiracy, IMO.

 Excommunicatus wrote:
Incompetence is a vastly more likely answer than conspiracy, IMO.

What if its an incompetent conspiracy?