Daemons are big!

It's summer and since I live in southern California (in the Valley, no less) it gets way hot out here. Seriously, it has no business being this hot. It's just uncalled for. This puts a real damper on my painting process, as it's so hot and dry that my paint pots will usually dry up rather quickly upon opening them. Mixing paints becomes very difficult, as the small bowl I use to mix also dries up before I get any decent amount of paint on the miniature. Paints go on chunkier and thicker, which really really sucks.


So, in an attempt to salvage at least some of my time, I decided to focus on assembling the box of Daemons that I got a little bit ago. My first discovery? They're huge.




above, you'll see one of my Dark Angels Space Marines squaring off against The Masque. Now she's a slight bit taller than the rest of the Daemonettes, but not by much. For the most part, the Daemonettes are rather proportional until you get to the legs. Their legs are very long, which will make them stand eye-to-eye with a Space Marine, or sometimes taller depending on the pose. I'm ok with this, seeing as there is a remarkable difference in how frail they look in comparison to said marine ... so it's not a total WTF.



Skulltaker is a big daemon. He's significantly larger than even the other Bloodletters. I was rather surprised at how large he is.




Ok, Epidemius really takes the cake for big daemons. Sitting on his palanquin he's just huge. Awesome for the imagery with him being Nurgle, but still more than I expected.




The new Juggernauts are absolutely awesome, but the Bloodletters that are riding them? An absolute pain in the ass to get them to stay up there. Their legs just stop in the middle of the Juggernaut's torso! It looks like they should be resting against the beast's hips, but the Bloodletter's not long enough! I ended up finding some bolts that barely stick out of the Juggernaut's sides and decided to use them like pegs for his feet. With him precariously perched up there, gluing this thing together was a real chore ... but what can I say? Look at the outcome! It looks glorious! He's gonna run that poor marine through!

Ammael to Brother Remiel: Don't shoot at the giant metal Rhino-Dog. Aim at the fleshy thing riding it. Raise your Bolter, aim higher! Remiel! Ai- ... A quick prayer to the Emperor for Remiel, formerly of the glorious Third Company. We move onward.

Dark Reapers

Dark Reapers. Restricted to 5-man squads, they still work really well against Marines and Marine equivalents. They get two shots each, high strength and ignore Power Armor. This is enough to make them a nightmare and a priority target for Space Marine players. I fitted my Exarch with the Eldar Missile Launcher (yes, I'll make a Hurricane Launcher variant as well ... later) because he's the only infantry unit that can carry a vehicle-mounted weapon... and not on an anti-grav platform either. That's a whole different class of badass, people. Anyways, this Exarch is rather selfish when it comes to his Exarch abilities. The other Exarchs at least have one ability that carries over to the squad they're attached to. Not this guy; Fast shot allows HIM to shoot twice, and Crack Shot allows HIM to reroll to hit (and ignores cover saves). Frankly, he doesn't give a damn about really teaching the other Dark Reapers. He's more of a "watch and learn" guy.


So, primering the models black does a lot of my work for me as now I only had to highlight in grays for the black armor. Bone colors were done with foundation paints (Khemri Brown, I think), then hit with a brown wash, and then worked back up to bone using multiple layers of a glazed Bleached Bone. The glaze was made by watering down the Bleached Bone paint, then adding the tiniest amount of PVA glue (Elmer's to us Americans) to make sure the solution doesn't separate into the cracks like a wash. The guns were made with Liche Purple, then worked up with first a Warlock Purple glaze, then a 3:1 Warlock Purple-Bleached Bone glaze. Dark Reaper Hair was simply Liche Purple, followed by a black wash, then picked out with Liche Purple again for the highlights. I didn't want the hair to stand out too much, otherwise I would have lightened up the highlights some more.

Rebasing the Dark Angels

Ok, the theme I'm looking for with the Dark Angels is a ruined and forgotten Fortress Monastary on a jungle/swamp world. For their bases, I envisioned a white marble tiled floor that has seen mud, algae and rain for decades without attention ... and the occasional bit of crumbled infrastructure. I think overall that I did rather well in achieving that.


They're made using tile-shaped plasticard that has been cut and filed into discs to sit atop the standard GW bases. These were then primered in white, then drenched with a very very thin wash of black and while still wet touched here and there with another thinned down wash of brown green. The touching here and there made uneven spreads of color which gave it an interesting and real look. I allowed the discs to dry like this, giving the tiles an appearance of old dried dirt and water. The larger bases had rocks and bits of sprue painted gray and drybrushed with white.


This is also what I'm planning the interior to look like for the Terrain Table that's well down the road for the Dark Angels. That table will actually show the fallen and crumbled Fortress Monastary with the jungle/swamp exterior. ...although before I get started on that, I still need to finish the Eldar Terrain Table in the Autumn forest theme...