A Legion Thirty-Five Years in the Making

I am Frank Thompson. I just turned 49 and have been fooling around with toy soldiers for nearly forty years. I started with the second edition Warhammer Fantasy Battle back in like '85. By "started" I mean I started collecting models and painting some to a questionable standard. I don't believe I actually found an opponent and played a game until I was using the third edition hardcover and Warhammer Armies.

Then in '88, just starting high school and living in the mid-West, I acquired Slaves to Darkness and my tiny mind was blown. The crazy in that book left deep impressions, the scars of which I carry still.

I loved everything in that book, but it was Slaanesh and his/her wild color schemes made without reason or constraint that really pulled me in. I managed to cobble together enough models to play a modest chaos army, but what I really wanted was to assemble a Legion. 

The daemonic legions as described in Slaves to Darkness were a far cry at what Games Workshop settled on later. Balance between them and "ordinary" mortal armies was abandoned entirely, and the madness and power levels of the forces turned up to eleven. Slaves to Darkness included quite a bit of daemon vs daemon art but had only a single page in the color section (yes, only one section was in color) showed a Daemonic Legion battle in progress. It was, of course, glorious, and I have always wanted to build one and settle scores on behalf of the gods themselves on the table.

But I was a mere teenager, my funds were limited, and in the midwestern US the acquisition of proper Realm of Chaos daemon models was problematic. At most, I cobbled together a unit of Daemonettes, a couple of Fiends, and single lovely Keeper of Secrets. Oh, I had plenty of champions and beastmen and monsters, but these were all the extras in a Daemonic Legion army, or "Auxiliaries" as Slaves to Darkness called them. Then I went off to college, started playing more and more 40k, and eventually went off to the military, and in the process lost most of my toys. I recovered that single Keeper from my folk's place years later and he lurked in a box niggling at me.


About a decade ago, I restarted this childhood quest with a good deal more patience and significantly more funds. The Keeper and his handful of followers were stripped bare, trades were arranged, and purchases made. This past year I concluded that I had enough to begin the great work.

Slaves to Darkness and The Lost and the Damned lay out very different rules for Daemonic Legions. There is a clear departure from the "battles as ritual" vision in Slaves to Darkness and the "Chaos Mashup" vision of The Lost and the Damned. This divergence is vast enough that there is significant adaptation required to fight Khorne or Slaanesh Legions against Nurgle or Tzeentch. For the most part I have chosen to remain 'true' to the vision of "battles as ritual" in Slaves to Darkness, because it puts the daemons front and center and leans into the otherworldly nature of the engagements. It is also more restrictive than what The Lost and the Damned lays out, so could be easily adapted to that format if desired, while doing so in reverse would be difficult or even impossible. With all that in mind, I plan to build the daemonic core of the Legion for this challenge. My goal, Slaanesh willing, is to nearly max out the lesser daemon allocation for the Legion and top it with a solid spread of hero/commander models.

Greater Daemons of Slaanesh = x3 Keepers of Secrets, one with the Rod of Command (Free)
Lesser Daemon Infantry = x6 units of 6 Daemonettes (600 points each)
Lesser Daemon Cavalry = x2 units of 6 Daemonettes on Mounts of Slaanesh (720 points each)
Daemonic Beasts = x3 units of 6 Fiends of Slaanesh (240 points each)

Spawn Pack = x1 unit of 6 spawn and a Daemonette 'handler (700 points)
Daemon Princes = x1 Slaaneshi Daemon Prince (810 points)

Yes, gentle reader you read correctly, greater daemons are free of charge in a daemonic legion. Keeping that in mind, this will come out to 7750 points of Slaaneshi daemons, leaving me 250 points to buff up the character models with magical toys for a total Legion value of 8000 points. As an alternative a Champion could soak up that final 250 points, but I want mortals for the Legion to be an expansion project down the road or maybe a future OWAC.

For the purposes of this year's Old World Army Challenge, I will be building a total of 5860 points of models...
x30 daemonettes (another six who are already done and painted and will join the new ones, pic below)
x12 Daemonettes on Mounts of Slaanesh (very much the pride of this collection as they were absurdly difficult to find)
x12 Fiends of Slaanesh (I still need to find five more of these to finish a final third unit, they may have to come post-challenge)
x1 Keeper of Secrets with a Battle Standard (the other two are already painted but may be getting converted time permitting, pic below)
x1 Daemon Prince (he is a gorgeously odd minotaur conversion)
x1 Daemonette as Spawn handler (her six spawn are already done and awaiting her, but are Hasslefree sculpts I converted, not old lead)

So, to sum up, this will be (to quote Slaves to Darkness page 172) "in short, no petty collection of mortals squabbling on an insignificant battlefield." (I shall leave that role to my fellow challengers 😜) but rather "an instrument of a Chaos god's will, wielded in the eons-old struggles of the gods." ...And it shall be glorious.

Lastly I have taken the Overlords desire for creepy and horror themes to heart and provide this swarm of Advanced Heroquest Giant Spiders skittering across a grimy dungeon floor.