Ideas for Daemon Princes and a Keeper of Secrets

by | Jul 17, 2013

It's a banner month for me in terms of planning out purchases. I've mapped out a future Eldar army I'll be doing some work on (My 2 Warlocks are converted to ride jetbikes, but the greenstuff work isn't done, I'll be working on my paint scheme on them soon), and made some decisions about my Inquisitorial force (I have my counts-as Coteaz conversion almost done too, more on this later in the week). The Inquisitor project is intended to only require a few purchases, it is primarily me converting up an HQ, most of my troops, and their transports from existing bits in my collection. I will just need half a box of Wyches, an ebayed assassin, and a Dreadknight.

Now, I am also thinking about my other, other army, Daemons. I currently have 3 Nurgle Heralds, 20 Plaguebearers, a Great Unclean One, 2 Nurgle Daemon Princes, 10 Daemonettes, 10 Bloodletters, and 10 Pink Horrors, plus a Tzeentch Herald. This isn't exactly a cogent list in and of itself. I am planning to get more Plaguebearers (I'm also eventually going to get 3 Plague Toads to use as beasts), some day I'll probably get some of those Plague Drones, but I honestly don't love their rules. This is expensive and makes a relatively weak mono-nurgle list. Honestly, I'd love to try out one of the monster mash lists, as I love the idea of a list that fits in a small space and is relatively tough. Plus, I'd like to be able to play against the list, and owning an army does force you to think about the play style for that list.

So, where to start? I have 2 units of Plaguebearers, I can do them, or 10 PB and 10 Pink Horrors to fulfill minimum troops. I may add more here later, but first I'm going to figure out the monster portion of the list. In the first place, I want an HQ that is both fast and effective, and since its the Daemons book, it should be a Greater Daemon that unlocks Princes. The best all-around Prince is the Slaanesh one, so of course it makes sense to pick a Keeper of Secrets.




This is the OG Keeper of Secrets. Its basically a bull headed 4 arm humanoid, it was large in scale for the game at the time. Its tiny now and wouldn't work for my purposes, it would feel like modeling for advantage.
I..buh...its perfect! I mean really, it has 4 arms, cloven feet, a bull's head, and its wearing chainmail. You just need to add leather pants and sculpt the hooks into claws, and you've got a Keeper of Secrets. In fact...
It appears Dyslexic Dragon on the BoLS forum did exactly that! I definitely love the model, this is the direction I am looking in, a pretty direct version of the classic model.
BigEdu over on Ordo Australis (note its in Spanish) also did a version on this theme.


Now, Using another Beastmen unit, I can do an aesthetically similar conversion and take the decent Beastmen Minataur model and give it wings, along with potentially giving it another arm, a claw, etc. The best part of these is you get 3 in a box, so you just need 3 sets of wings and some creativity.


Now, I also want a Lord of Change, my current thought is getting one and making a mold of its head, and magnetising a spot on the model so I can make it Fateweaver when I need to. I haven't decided whether I'll buy the GW model, a 3rd party model, or what. I don't think there's much I could use in the GW product line to represent this. As a result this is slightly lower priority than the other option, which gives me the large portion of a solid list for less than 150. Now, I have another way to get around paying so much for Daemon Princes: Ushabti. Damn WFB, your intermediate scale of characters is perfect for 40k monsters.




 This model just has so much potential for a 1k sons Daemon, from the birdlike features to the Egyptian iconography and scrolls. Even better you can bulk them up with things to ensure they are Daemon Prince scale.

Whigman on Dakka Dakka posted this size comparison for your reference.

And Drewhammer deftly demonstrates the modelling opportunities here.

Although, I really want a Vrock from Ultraforge, it's just $85, so its not in my current budget.

 The best part about the daemon princes is I can get 6 princes ready for only about 100 bucks, plus some conversion bits. This would make my back bench for Daemons ridiculous, and assuming I eventually get a 3rd nurgle DP, would allow me to field 9 DP's in an apocalypse game. Would be amusing to say the least, as they would be 2500+ points on their own!

So that covers my thinking in terms of some new conversion projects for my Daemons. The only army left for me to sketch out in my current queue is Tau and my Necron/Ork force, which I haven't even really looked into yet. This is probably a multiple year project!