Using the new Games Workshop Daemon Army

Well had an opportunity to try out the new Daemon Army and it confirmed my suspicion that it just didn't feel right. Fundamentally it felt beardy to choose the separate Chaos God forces in one army, when you have a themed army then you know you get some pretty rubbish troops sometimes but they possibly have a really strong theme that makes up for this. So if you had a Nurgle army then you might take Nurglings even though they are a bit of a waste of space to boost the theme element.

The battle was a straight forward pitched battle with 2000 points, which to be honest is the way that we normally play, against a new Vampire Counts army. For a General I went with a Great Unclean One, and then a herald of Tzeentch amongst some pink horrors and a Herald of Slannesh on a Chariot. Slannesh Demonettes, Plaguebearers, pink horrors, Fiend of Slannesh, chaos furies, and Screamers made up my force.

Things started off okay, and probably got too cocky but in essence the battle dissolved into a slog fest in the middle, which gradually sucked in more and more troops. With neither side running but losing men to instability then it was attritional. I lost my Great Unclean One on the last turn and that handed a Narrow Victory to the Undead. A major problem was that I had failed to realise that the Wight King was also the Battle Standard Bearer, it was a very ethereal banner and not visible in the real world, and I should have tried to take it out earlier.

The other major point was I should have tried to take out the skeleton unit and not allowed any rebuilds since I never managed to defeat the unit. It was a good game but slightly frustrating since we had had to take units from our Slannesh, Nurgle and Tzeenth armies to make the force, and Games Workshop has written three characterful armies that we have spent along time building up out of the game. In my opinion an all Daemon army did not offer enough to warrant this.

Averland General

I use this guy as my general for the Averland Empire army. He is one of the Averland metal mercenaries that Citadel made for Mordheim, but I can't see them on the site anymore. He makes a great general since the cut and quality of his clothes is so much better than the rest of the troops. Equipped with a great weapon, he can do some serious damage but is not too expensive points wise.

Empire Averland Swordsmen

So I have nearly finished the unit of Averland swordsmen but there is basing to finish off with static grass and tidying up, but these five are respectable. The standard bearer uses a basic Games Workshop swordsmen body (now old style) and I have added a standard bearer arm from the Knights set and a head and pistol arm from the militia set. The size is a little wrong since Games Workshop made them bigger but with two larger arms and a head this is slightly mor balanced. Also its a pretty simple paint job on the standard but with the repeating yellow and black of the Averland Black Fire Pass guard it works well.

New Games Workshop Deamons

Well have just read the May White Dwarf. I haven't got it for awhile since the quality has been a bit iffy, but wanted to see what they up to with the new Deamon army list. I liked the fact that they had articles for both Warhammer and 40k using Daemon lists, and it helped since the 40k used Dark Angels.

I have a 40k Chaos list mainly based on Chaos marines and wouldn't be using the new Codex anyway.

But the Warhammer list was another matter, and must admit that I was rather peeved by the way that the list has gone, with from what I understand the only option being to have an all Chaos Warriors or an all Demon army list. Well that buggers up my Slannesh army which is based on the Hordes concept, and has a mix of Warriors and Deamons, and I would imagine most of brothers lists who has armies for Nurgle , Tzeentch and Khorne.

The Chaos Warriors armies are not characterful enough in my opinion on their own. All you can do is change the colour scheme, whereas with some Demonettes thrown in or a flamer unit you can tell which Chaos God they support. Well I think we will ignore that one but we will use the revised instability rules. The old ones were so bad anyway that we treated it the same as the Undead rules. Oh look my entire unit just disappeared, glad I spent £70 and 2 months painting them!!

These photos show efforts to convert cheaper Ebay Games Workshop bought figures into something half decent again. Basic Empire swordsmen as they came, basically with big slapshes of blue paint all over them.

Figure cleaned up and bits from various sprues added, such as the militia sprue, to add some individuality. Then properly based.

Finished Empire swordsmen, in Averland colours, of black and yellow, with unit sheild of red and gold Maltese Cross. Now only 20 more to do!!

Dark Angels Chaplain Asmodai

Have posted this guy before but just trying picasa out as a method to upload pics as Blogger is so slow.