Mestopheles & The Daemon Legions of Hell:

WFB 3000pt Daemon Force

With all the excitement and anticipation of the release of the new Daemon Army for WFB and 40k I wanted to start a new project that would I hope be slightly different to the ‘average’ army I was used to painting. When I say average, I mean in terms of painting techniques, colours, basing and normally for me no consideration of a theme or background story.

Research

I have always had a keen interest in medieval history, especially in Christian medieval belief and

doctrine around damnation, hell and repentance, the bedrock of medieval society. Therefore My new daemon army I decided would have a medieval theme of classic view of hell and damnation.

I decided to construct my army choices around the Christian notion of the 7 Deadly Sins, Dante’s story of retribution from his book ‘Inferno’ and the artist Hieronymus Bosch’s visions of hell from the 14^th Century. All deep gloomy stuff I hear you say. And you would be right – but it does give an amazing insight in to the religious folklore and iconology of evil. I used books and the Internet extensively and managed to find the original Christian symbols for each of the deadly sins that I used on banners.

As well as the construction of the army I also wanted to create a daemonic centre piece/scenery showing the Greater Daemon’s throne room, with scantly clad ladies, gimps, skulls, fire pits, etc

Army Choice

Once I received my copy of the Army Book for Daemons I began to create my force. I thought I might as well go for 3000pts (you know me I cant do things small!!). At this I chose my units according to the sins they could symbolise. I also wanted a force that was hard, fast and frightening as all good forces of evil should. So no weak units here!! I also picked the models I liked the look of or thought I would enjoy painting

Therefore my chosen units are:

Painting

I was concerned originally about the mixture of different chaos Gods and how I was going to paint an army that was uniformed or cohesive. Therefore I elected to use three main colours in the army to bring each faction together – red, bronze and black in various shades and uses. I also felt the volcanic scenic bases would also contribute to the overall cohesiveness of the army. That said I also where possible tried to include ‘fire and brimstone’ on the models themselves with flaming weapons, body parts, tentacles, etc.

Basing & Movement Trays

What has made a huge difference to this army has been the terrific volcanic scenic bases from www.foundationsofwar.co.uk. The owner and sculptor Tim from Foundations of War collaborated with me in creating these bases specifically for this army as well as casting much of the scenery I used for the daemonic centrepiece. Tim also kindly made the edging for the movement trays after I asked him to cast them for me. As an extra feature I created small plaques for each movement tray with the name of the deadly sin that unit represents written in Latin. I think the whole effect is excellent.

Overall Look

Overall I am thrilled with how this army has come together and believe it is one of my better efforts. I’m not the greatest painter in the world but I have thoroughly enjoyed planning, researching, painting and basing this army and look forward to fielding it against some mortal force that needs converting to the dark side!! This project has really stretched my skills and it has been a joy to do

What’s next? Well the next WHFB project is my 3000pt Lizard army which again Tim from Foundation and I are planning using new scenic bases and movement trays. We are hoping that I the job look good to get it published in a war games magazine. So fingers crossed and wish us luck!

By Andy Culhum

You can find Andy's superb Deamon Army in the Gallery section - ED