Foolish Rambling and a first game with Daemons

I spent a little time over the weekend rummaging through my chaos collection. I still have a good few units to add to the chaos warriors army, but it was the daemons I was looking at. I played my first game with the new army book the other night, just a 1500 point trial, and I wanted to see what unpainted options I had lurking in the lead mines. Yes, some of them really are lead, I have had them for some time!

The army I used in the first game was very light on hitty options, being mostly Tzeentch horrors, flamers and screamers. I did use a pair of big stoppers, a pair of Nurgle spawn stepped in as proxies. And I had lots of little nurglings bounding about, a unit of daemonettes, a Slaanesh herald and another of my chaos spawn proxied as a Tzeentch herald on disc.

The herald on disc rolled three sixes on his first attempt at a metal spell, took out a Khorne bloodcrusher, then was sucked back in to the Realm of Chaos for his efforts, no doubt the Blood god had a hand in this. I was a little surprised that there is not a dedicated miscast table for daemons, they have their own rules for most everything else! The remaining Tzeentch daemons did a good job at removing skirmishers and even a giant through shooting/slashing attacks, with a little help from those pesky Nurglings. But eventually the daemons had to face up to heavily armoured chaos troops. While the Beasts of nurgle were able to slow them down, there was nothing in my army that could take them down. I knew this going into the game, so despite the defeat came out of it with a renewed determination to bolster the army. Hence the searching of the lead mines.

I have already started prepping a unit of plastic Slaanesh seekers, but obviously these are light, fast troops and I am looking for something with a little more punch. I did find the remnants of Azazel the Daemon Prince, minus his head, tail and wings. So, my first build was a wingless Slaanesh daemon prince. I suppose this would be my general, though I have more Tzeentch troops than anything, so possibly not the best choice. Having said that, I am not a tournament player and the random nature of the army is one of the appealing factors to me playing it, so I see no reason why not. In any case, it's the army standard bearer who has a bigger influence on avoiding the dreaded double 6 roll (get this on a break test and the whole unit goes "pouufff").

Looking through my collection, I found plenty more devotees of the Dark Prince. There are enough bits to build some Fiends and I have enough plastic daemonettes for another unit. So it may be that Slaanesh will rise and eclipse his brothers by the time the army is finished. I think the fact that I am coming to a new army book with an army practically ready to play helps fan the flames of enthusiasm. My Vampire Counts army has started and stalled twice in the past couple of years, each time I look at a mass block of zombies or skeletons I fail my painting (terror) test and choose something a bit less voluminous. The search also revealed some very old (and very bad) attempts with green stuff to build chaos spawn. I am hoping to rescue these and practise my sculpting on a couple of Beasts of Nurgle. I do also have something in mind to use as a soul grinder, but something more in keeping with the fantasy background, not the official model.

Looking further ahead, I might be tempted to spend a bit of money on the army. So far my only expenditure has been on the book, all the other items I have had for many years. I am not particularly keen on the look of all the new models, but I think the flaming chariot has a better chance than anything else of inclusion. I quite like the idea of keeping the army mostly Tzeentch and Slaanesh, it gives a good contrast to the brute force of the chaos warriors army and requires a different approach to how I tackle my enemies. After all, if I wanted to just run up to them and smash them in the face, then I would stick with the warriors. Most tempting of all is this fine figure from Pegaso Models (on a side note, I will be looking at more alternative models in a future post). It's 54mm and so should be about the right scale to be used as a daemon prince. I have wanted to try my hand at something like this for some time, and I do have a birthday coming up, so maybe the moons have aligned and the wallet will be opened briefly, doors of Moria style. To buy, or not to buy, that is the question? Well, they do say that a fool and his money are easily parted.