In the sixth OWAC, I joined to realize my decades long desire to build and paint up a daemonic legion of Slaanesh like I had seen in the unsurpassed tome 'Realm of Chaos Slaves to Darkness'. In my adolescence, I had seen the artwork and small pictures of grand daemonic battles and was enthralled. The introduction for this chapter of 'Slaves to Darkness' said it all.
The fact the text above effectively declared that such an army was unfit to be fielded against other mortal Warhammer armies deterred me not one bit. What did deter me was the difficulty in both finding the appropriate models and affording them if they could be found. And so, this dream was left tucked away never realized but for a handful of models. That was until my adult self indulged in the urge to gather the models again and attempt to make it real. This time I had more funds, more skill, and above all...more patience. By 2023, I was ready and the OWAC welcomed me aboard with my gratuitous pile of daemonic lead to undertake the challenge of OWAC VI.
That effort was successful and a daemonic legion of Slaanesh, in the original 'Realm of Chaos Slaves to Darkness' style, came into being. If you are interested in that effort, and the tale of how it was created peruse my posts from OWAC VI here, http://oldworldarmychallenge.
In my OWAC VI wrap up post I calculated that the entire legion as it stood then would comfortably play about 7,000 points, which is even sillier than it sounds when you consider that the greater daemons are free, and there are already four Keepers of Secrets. The careful observer will also notice that in my army pic there are hardly any mortal models, and yet there are various mortals and monsters in the Realm of Chaos pics at the beginning of my post. This was deliberate as the point of that project was to build the backbone of the legion, which is of course daemonic. Mortals supporting daemonic legions is well established in the lore at the time and the army list itself. The inclusion of various mortals and monsters really dials up the chaotic elements of legion battles both in art and on the table, and it is these models which are the focus of my OWAC VIII project.
And now a short history lesson...Realm of Chaos was published in the grim darkness of the late 1980s. In fact it, was two hardback volumes, but those two volumes were not published as a set. The first, 'Slaves to Darkness' was published in 1988, and the second, 'The Lost and the Damned' followed in 1990. This trivia matters because the way Games Workshop chose to handle daemonic legion games changed dramatically in those two years. In 'Slaves to Darkness' the focus of legion battles was entirely on the daemons. The mortals were there as support, and it was not possible to field a legion that wasn't mostly daemonic models. 'The Lost and the Damned' was entirely another matter. Legion battles in that book were presented as a way to get all of a player's chaos models on the table at the same time, with as little restriction as possible. This buffet style of legion battle even allowed any chaos units from Warhammer 40,000 and there was no limitation of the proportions of any of these things, so daemons could be a quite minor supporting role in the actual army. All that was required was a greater daemon model to act as the general. While I do appreciate the desire to allow players to field whatever they have, I feel it loses a great deal of flavor and theme from the games by not requiring the daemons to be the stars of the show. I explain all this to point out that my legion has been constructed from the 'Slaves to Darkness' daemonic list, and as a result the mortals and monsters are far more restricted than what was possible in 'The Lost and the Damned'.
Mortals can appear in a 'Slaves to Darkness' daemonic legion in three ways. The first and least diverse are inducted members of the legion proper, the Chaos Legionnaires. Legionnaires are once-mortal warriors made immortal by their chaos power for the express purpose of fighting in that power's legions. They never truly die, being resurrected after each battle to fight again. This is also their curse.
The second type of mortal in a legion are the champions of chaos. Each legion is allowed to include a fixed number of champions, but no two champions are going to be quite the same. They can be quite new to the chaos path or great heroes on the edge of daemonhood themselves. They can even bring their most powerful followers from their warbands to fight along side them, if they so desire. These provide interesting character models in what is otherwise an army devoid of characters outside of massive greater daemons and daemon princes.
The last and most diverse method of including mortals in a legion are the auxiliaries. The auxiliaries are in many ways like an ally contingent in a 'normal' Warhammer Fantasy Battle army. They are sub-forces of aligned troops which are not daemons or champions of the chaos god whose legion they serve. 'Slaves to Darkness' groups auxiliaries into several groups; Spawn packs, Undead, Independent Daemons, Creatures of Chaos, Minotaurs, and daemonic contingents dedicated to other chaos powers.
As is written in 'Slaves to Darkness', "No more than one-third of the total points of a daemonic army can be allocated to auxiliary forces." Therefore with the 6,500-7'000 points I already assembled for my Slaaneshi Legion, I can add approximately 3,000-3,300 points of mortals and monsters in this OWAC. When we speak of points within a daemonic legion I feel I must point out how complex points in 'Slaves to Darkness' daemonic army lists are. It is quite possibly the most random and complex that Games Workshop has published (although Rogue Trader era Orks are a plausible rival). Points in a daemonic legion can vary wildly for a given mortal model or unit. A Slaaneshi Champion can cost as little as 60 or as much as 300-400 points, and a dragon from the Creatures of Chaos allowance can range from 250 to 750. A minotaur hero can be bought for 200-300 points as an auxiliary character model, or the same model could appear as a follower in a Champion's warband for just 30 points if one was rolling very lucky. As such, the exact composition of the mortals and monsters I will be adding to my legion is something we will explore together as the challenge progresses. As I progress, rest assured that each contingent of mortal followers or monstrous creatures will be explained in detail. I will cover both their composition and role in the army, and their points value (or points range if they are among the more random elements of the legion), as well as how I went about creating and painting them.
In this picture above, you can see the models I have assembled for this year's OWAC. At the very least I will be adding an Undead contingent, units of minotaurs and harpies, and slaaneshi legionnaires. In addition, if fortune favors my painting there may be Slaaneshi champions and their chosen followers, chaos spawn and other chaos creatures. If I manage to exceed my own ambitions, I have gathered models for another dozen Fiends of Slaanesh and have parts for more spawn as creativity strikes. Lastly, as a taster, in the past year as I was gathering the models for this challenge, I couldn't resist painting these...
These models are not a part of my OWAC VIII effort, but they are part of the legion. The pair of Jabberwocks are old metal, one is a Ral Partha sculpt. The other is the old Citadel sculpt. They are unmodified. They each cost 200 points to include as part of the Creatures of Chaos allowance in the Auxiliaries section. The zoat is not a normally available model, either in the army list, or the model itself. I gently converted an old lead Limited Edition Zoat figure by using a plastic skaven banner, the sword off of a lead slaaneshi champion. I then added a proper slaaneshi icon to the banner, which I made using the dark arts of 3d printing, and finally I gave him a mohawk from bits of plastic. To include a zoat a champion would have to roll it as a follower in his warband, which is comically unlikely (100 on a d100, followed by a 4 on a d4, and finally a 10 on a d10). Presuming this miracle occurred, it would cost 30 points to bring him along with the champion to a legion battle.
I hope these three models give you readers a sense of how diverse and weird the mortals and monsters portion of a daemonic legion is going to be. Good luck to my fellow challengers. May your muses sing clearly and your brushes stay pointy.
Your last project was a fantastic one and I'm glad you're back for a sequel. The introduction was an interesting read, keep up the good work!
ReplyDeleteThanks. I think this time round is going to be weirder than the first time.
DeleteThat's a brilliant history lesson, thanks. I kinda skipped on Chaos armies until 5th or 6th ed, and my dream of a Tzeentchian Warriors/Beasts of Chaos army never got completed because the army books kept changing faster than the project moved. (I still have many of the models somewhere?) So seeing your project come together from OWAC to OWAC gives me a little of the satisfactionI would have got from doing my project. Except that yours is much better painted than mine would have been, and sexier (because, Slaanesh!)
ReplyDeleteBest of luck for this season.