Spring Cleaning – Warhammer Fantasy Slaanesh

Following on from the last update I added colours down using Contrast thinned down with Liquitex matte medium, did a detail pass, used the Vallejo ‘Black and White’ paint set for the cloth areas, quick snow base, glued on a few grass tufts and job done. Still need to finish 2 character models and 2 greater demons, and bulk the infantry units up to 20 apiece but can park the project here for now.

Applied the Vallejo Violet Ink wash combined with flow improver (started as a 1:10 ratio but was probably closer to 1:50 by the end…) to all the minis. mostly successful with 2 unusual results. Firstly, when applying to the metal large scale mini and trying to brush off the excess flow improver I managed to strip the paint back to the primer on the right thigh. Mini got dumped in the stripper and I’ll start again and just airbrush. Next, when the wash had dried noticed that it had pulled back some of the paint on the chest of the top-heavy succubus mini. So I’ll drop her from this project (I don’t mean to sound like a prude but the mini is overly gratuitous once all the detail is visible anyhow so happy enough to do without it) and repurpose her later on. So on to the brushwork as soon as I can find some space on my painting bench 🙂

Final zenithal pass with Vallejo 74.016 White Flesh thinned down a little thinner than 1:1 again through the airbrush. The large scale Sophie was intentionally overbrushed as I’m intending on spending a bit more time on her with glazes to tint her skin tone back down a bit.

From memory the next bit is an ink wash and then on to the brushwork…

Another sneaky airbrush pass tonight – this time Vallejo 74.015 Plae Flesh thinned down 1:1 with flow improver was zenithe over all the minis. Should be one more airbrush coat to lighten and I can then move on to the brushwork.

Weapon of choice for this project will be the Vallejo Malefic Flesh paint set thinned down with Vallejo airbrush thinner in somewhere between a 1:1 and 1:2 ratio depending on levels of ambient profanity re blockages and put through an airbrush pointed in the rough direction of the minis.

First up was Vallejo 74.011 Purple Shadow sprayed all over, focusing particularly on spraying each mini from underneath as this will be the shadow colour. Due to the fact I have a really cheap airbrush which was overdue for a solid clean this 2 hour job took about 4 hours to execute. My fault, I know better…

Next up (a couple of days and a good airbrush cleaning later) was Vallejo 74.012 Malefic Flesh thinned in a 1:1 ratio sprayed from a zenithal through to about 45 degree angle to try and layer in a base for the skin tone.

Hit a bit of a wall with assembly so determined to park the unassembled stuff and maybe do a second trance of daemonettes later. So the bit I will be progressing with will be as follows:

• 2 units of 10 mounted daemonettes with command (current edition models);
• 3 units of 6 mounted daemonettes (6th ed metals);
• 2 units of 15 daemonettes with command – current edition plastics with some parts swaps from Shieldwolf Minis Shieldmaiden kit);
• One unit of 16 daemonettes with command  – older 6th ed metals with a command group using Raging Heroes mantis warriors minis;
• one chariot;
• One metal fiend (Appears at a cursory glance to be the same sculpt as the current edition plastics);
• 16 furies – Using Confrontation Morbid Angel minis for these – Yep you know quarantine just got real when Evilstu opened the Confrontation vault…;
• Some assorted Succubus mnis (one Confrontation and 3 Reaper) to use as characters/heralds; and,
• A centrepiece large scale ‘Sophie’ succubus mini from Reaper to act as a Daemon Princess.

May add more in later but going to try and keep this project down to a manageable size if I can and we’re already north of 100 minis as it stands. Anyhow…

Having set to work sorting through a few other bits and pieces I grabbed some of my older slaanesh minis and dumped them in stripper for a week. Spent a good chunk of time today brushing stuff back.

Additionally spent a good deal of yesterday and today rebasing and restoring minis. Progress below. I have another 6 metal daemonette riders to assemble once I print up some more bases to affix them to, another 25 or so plastic daemonette infantry, 13 metal infantry and 5 resin infantry presently soaking so I can brush down the mould release and assemble. Missing a few more parts than I thought so might need to get creative.

Have the Fiend and Keeper of Secrets restored, although I’m not a fan of the head on the keeper of secrets so might try and do something sneaky to mix that up a bit. Will get some suitable proxy minis for more fiends and also need to restore and assemble the confrontation minis I’m using for furies. If I proxy some alternative steeds for the chaos warrior chariot that has found its way into this army then I’ll have a few extra steeds meaning I could kitbash some mounted characters. Will see where I land after a bit more messing around.

Plan is to airbrush all the skintones on the army at the same time for consistency, so I want to get everything assembled and primed before I kick that off.

So there I was quietly minding my own business and mentally running through the last game of 6th ed Warhammer Fantasy that I had played – 2,500 points of beastman vs orcs & goblins, and realised how poor leadership rolls at critical moments had been my downfall (game was still awesome fun so I don’t actually care that I lost BTW 🙂 ). And that took me back to another similar musing I had had about 18 years ago where my Empire army had failed multiple leadership tests and been taken apart piecemeal by a block of skaven rat ogres at a con. Following that game I had wandered around the convention considering an undead army (as they were immune to psychology and could avoid such dice related failings, although they looked a little bit dull to play…) when I saw a retailer with a rack of blisters from a company that I had never heard of, called Rackham, for a game called Confrontation, and immediately fell in love with the sculpts and aesthetic. One of the blisters was for a mini named ‘Gwenlaen the Everproud’. I took one look at the mini and remembered that Chaos models with the mark of Slaanesh were also immune to psychology. I bought Gwenlean to lead my new force and went stalking off for more minis to add to her warband. The next few years I ran the army with limited success, but it was great fun. The Daemon cohort of my army never expanded beyond one block of mounted daemonettes (which I stripped back last year) but I had always meant to add to it and had been picking up cheap minis when they became available (apparently they weren’t a viable/winning army a few years ago and ebay was awash with them…).

So fast forward to today and I had determined that getting my daemonettes painted up to tabletop might be a nice little diversionary project. Also it will give me a bit more practice with the airbrush, which is always nice.

Quick inventory yields the below:

So, minis I have:

• 6th ed Keeper of Secrets (may not be complete…)
• Maybe 66 current edition plastic daemonettes in varying states/conditions ranging between still on the sprue in shrink wrapped plastic through to literally smashed into component parts. I should have enough spares on hand to get by but if not can always kitbash or get creative.
• 20 (i think…) complete current edition plastic mounted daemonettes. Again, won’t really know how things are travelling until I start to repair and restore.
• One metal fiend of Slaanesh
• 13 of the old 6th ed metal daemonettes
• 18 of the old 6th ed metal mounted daemonettes, mostly in need of a fair bit of restoration
• Two chariots
• A command pack of 5 ‘Mantis Warriors’ from Raging Heroes who will act as proxy command for the 6th ed foot daemonettes or get mixed through the other units.
• A large scale ‘Sophie’ metal mini from Reaper who will make a nice proxy Daemon Prince(ss)

So I had a quick flick through the Daemons of Chaos Book on the 9th Edition/Warhammer armies project and with the addition of a few characters and maybe some more proxy fiends this could be a viable (although admittedly slightly one dimensional) list.

I should have enough extra minis on hand from other companies to proxy for character models, which just leaves me short some chaos furies to round the force out. back when I was playing and the minis were somewhat available, I had proxied the Confrontation ‘Undead of Acheron’ minis when they were available and I have managed to procure a couple more in the intervening decades, so I might strip and redo the old ones and even break open some Confrontation blisters (hey, for the price the 6th edition daemonettes are going for second hand nowadays I may as well go the whole way on this one 😉 )

Paint scheme will be easy to sort as I did up a unit of 20 daemonettes last year so will work to tie the theme in with them. refer below. Yeah, still need to work out how to make the bases interesting. And speaking of bases, I will also need to pry the current minis off of those strange one sided bases that the previous owners seem to have affixed them to and make sure I have enough perfectly proportioned right angled bases to use instead #squarebases4life

Broad plan for the army will be to use the 18 old metal mounted daemonettes aas three blocks of 6 fast cavalry to race around and generally annoy. I’m not looking at converting command bits on to these minis so that should work OK. The 20 plastic mounted daemonettes will get fielded as two blocks of 10 with a command group to hopefully give them some punch. And for the infantry I was initially thinking of 5 blocks of 20, but 4 blocks of 25 might be more resilient. Then add characters for buffs, spells and damage dealing and see where we land 🙂