Winged Pestilence

These models have really served to show just how fast a painter I'm not as its taken me all day today to get to this stage and he's still not finished. Plus there's the other two to go but we just won't mention that... That doesn't count by the way.

Learning to Fly

This evening saw two things accomplished; the first was a base coat on my Herald of Tzeentch (nothing too exciting there yet so no picture until I know what I'm doing with him) and the second was to finally figure out my Plague Drone wings!!

My Herald is currently a nice and deep pink as his body will be mainly like the Pink Horrors but I want to add some funky colour mixes too but I'm not sure which colours, where on his body or how I'm going to blend so until I get further inspiration he's just going to go pink.

Tactic Analysis: Heralds, Horrors and Flickering Fire

I've read a lot lately about various tactics for the Daemons and one of the recurring tactics I keep seeing is utilising a Herald of Tzeentch, the Divination specialism and a large unit of Horrors. It involves having a level 3 Herald cast Prescience on a unit of at least 16 horrors (therefore generating 3 Warp Charges thanks to the Magic Made Manifest rule) and then bombarding the enemy with the Flickering Fire of Tzeentch at full power (by expending 3 warp charges the amount of attacks becomes the result of 4D6).

Spreading Like Plague

I decided this evening that it's all good and well talking strategy if a large part of my force remains unpainted so that's exactly what I've been doing and I have to start by saying that my painting session didn't exactly go to plan...

Data Stream

Today has been less about the models for me and more about the game and how the Daemons work within it. I've only been able to do this with 40k at the minute because I don't have a WHFB rule book yet.

This thinking came about while I was creating a data file for Battlescribe because there isn't one that I've found yet. I was working on the Heralds (convincing that programme that 4 Heralds are allowed to take one HQ slot was tricky but I've managed it) when I started to think about the best way for this army to function and after some careful thought I've come to two conclusions. The first is that my initial feeling was wrong and that this is NOT a hoard army. It's not exactly a "lets field 5 warriors per unit and still kick ass" army but it's not throwing millions of units at a problem and hoping to overwhelm with sheer numbers either. I'm now thinking that this army is actually somewhere in the middle in that you can still field pretty large units but flooding the battlefield (a la Tyranids) would be way too expensive (in points and pounds). To me the basic army setup is big units that play to the strengths of the factions (i.e. utilising Slannesh's speed, Khorne's strength, Nurgle's resilience and Tzeentch's range). Of course they've added other effects to the units that change how they can be played and to what use each unit is put to but I'll review each unit at a later date.

Pestilent Quandary

Although I've still got my Bloodletters to get through (So help me Khorne I won't let these become the next Horrors) I've been pondering my Plague Drones and what I'm going to do with them. You'd think this would be an easy choice because I've done a lot of Nurgle models (a Great Unclean One, 3 Nurgling bases and 10 Plaguebearers) but there are two reasons that this is different:
1) I want the flies to be distinct from their riders who will obviously be painted like the others.
2) I've never done a wash over the spray paint I'm currently using so I'm worried how it will turn out.

Cost of the Pact

Out of sheer curiosity I added the total basic points costs (i.e. no upgrades of any kind) of all the models I have both finished and unfinished for both 40K and WHFB and quite frankly the results are pretty shocking. The models I have are as follows:

The Fourth Plague Cometh

The Plague Drones; giant flies with rotting corpse riders. If you've read my earlier posts about the new products you'll know that I've been a little unsure on these models as they just looked... Strange. I wasn't sure if I liked them or not but I got some anyway and I actually really like them a lot. They're weird and funky and pretty damn huge (I took a picture of one next to a normal Plaguebearer for comparison). I haven't attached the wings yet and I'm thinking I'll paint the bodies first before I do but they're going to be even bigger when the wings and the riders are attached and I kinda love it.

Setting the Standard

I am still working on my Bloodletters (pesky real life keeps getting in the way) but tonight I've finished off the Standard Bearer. This is a first for me because I never normally use the banners due to the need to decorate them myself but I decided if I was ever going to go for it then this was the perfect opportunity. I therefore eschewed the bleeding icon of Khorne and went for the banner.