My Alternative Bloodletters and My Daemon Army Progress!

Old School here with my version of Bloodletters for my side project Daemon Army. Also included in this post will be some of the other items new and old that will become a part of this project.

So, the reason I have never really messed with Daemons before is that I despise the majority of the model range. The models are either goofy looking, out of date or really expensive and most of them are at least two of those three things, but as a Chaos Marines player, I have a ton of stuff that could easily transfer across both books. This led me to start looking at the Fantasy line, as there are great armies there that I will likely never invest in (I'm Ogres for life, dammit!), but plenty of stuff that I could use to showcase a great range and with some subtle conversions, I could really make something pretty cool and have fun playing it.

The Beastmen have always been one of my favorite plastic kits. They cost just as much as a box of Bloodletters, but lack the goofyness I see in the letters (just my own opinion). For painting, I wanted to go with a more subtle and less vibrant paint style than the average daemon army, so I went with strong shading, brass weapons (Khorne blessed them with the weapons of the first wars!) and some barbed wire on some bases and almost every goat rocks a red shoulder pad for some 40k flair!

The box gives me enough models to field the sacred number of eight and still have two models to swap for the musician or icon, which is perfect! I plan to build one more box of these guys and painting them for a full 16 bloodletters with some options.

Sticking to troops choices, I have started conversion work on a box of ghouls to turn into Plague Bearers. I have made them taller with green stuff bellies and big horns. There is still a lot of work to do green-stuff-wise on the, but I like them so far. This is a case of Goofy meets Expensive - The current Plague Bearers are Silly Looking and cost a lot of money, while these will look as close to the codex art as possible for much less (just a little elbow grease!)

Then there are the 21 (7x3) Nurgling bases (each with seven Nurglings!) that I recently completed. Nurglings are good for manipulating your FOC for grouping purposes and with the unpainted ones that I have in the bits box, I have enough to fill 6 troop slots with them if I wanted (which will just be ridiculous and funny, thanks CVinton!)

Another great thing about the army is that it will allow me to whip out some of my old favorites, like these two models I built and painted about two and a half years ago! I pulled them out for a CSM game about a week ago and the "ooohs and awes" I got really made me want to get them on the table even more.

These guys will be super stars in this army! The Forge World Berzerkers on Juggernaughts! I built these bad boys the day the plastic juggers came out and I had to wedge them into the Space Wolves Count As idea, though I never really enjoyed fielding that army. Now I can bring them back as blood crushers. Profile-wise, the 3+/5++ still works and I avoid fielding the silly Bloodletter riders. More importantly, when the Angron I am building is finished, the eight of them (soooon precious, sooon) will form as his World Eater escort and his most trusted warriors!

Then there are the Soul Grinders ...

Personally, I don't like the daemon part of the Grinder kit and the defiler kit is too expensive to just reserve for the CSM. This one is CVinton's old Night Lords Defiler, which I will further defile and assign a legion paint scheme very soon!

The other is my Khorne mini-Brass Scorpion that I built three years ago and painted two years ago, which will see more table time now as a Phlegm Grinder and he should fit in well with Angron and the Khorne models in the army!

Finally, today I am picking up the first of my fiends ...

Why? GW Fiends breach the Expensive, Goofy Looking categories and though the models are newer, they also hover dangerously close to the out of date look of the older fiends. Also, Vampire Counts-As is a funny pun! All joking aside, these models are amazing and I really just want to find a way to put them on the table and making them Fiends will ensure they see plenty of table time!

Well, folks hate it or love it, that's what I am tackling while I am tweeking the last of my Chaos Marines. I love the opportunity to field something different. This project has even given me some other evil-themed ideas for different models, like the Oblits I started the other day.

Anyway, thanks for reading, comments are always welcome!