Daemonic Incursion - Herald of Tzeentch on chariot

Howdy folks!  My name is Josh, and I will be sharing some hobby love here from time to time.  If you want to know more about me, you can check out my recently resurrected blog here.  I am in no way attempting to give myself a shameless plug, but if you want to know more about my long history in wargaming, it may be worth a read.

Anyways, on to the good stuff!  One of the several projects I have been working on recently is a Chaos Daemon army.  This originally started as a fantasy army for an escalation league that was being hosted by my LGS.  Fast forward to now, and the Daemons are primarily used for 40k and my army is coming together nicely.

Two of the last 3 models I have to add before calling the army finished are Heralds of Tzeentch mounted on chariots.  As many of you probably know, GW does not make a model for this particular unit.  Within the last month or so, GW released a model of a horror mounted on a disc (which is part of what this unit entails) as part of their most recent wave of Daemon releases, but I had already bought what I needed to make my own.

The Herald is an HQ unit for the Daemons, and he can be equipped in several different ways to make him better at certain tasks.  I personally use him as a transport vehicle destroyer (Str 8 AP1 Assault1 shot) as well as an elite infantry killer (Str 5 AP3 Assault3).  He can fire both weapons in his shooting phase, and can even target different units with each weapon.  Pretty nifty!  When he is equipped with a chariot, as I have chosen to do, he counts as a jet bike.  This means he can zip across the board quickly and get to where he is needed the most.  He can also be used to contest objectives in the later parts of the game.

The Herald of Tzeentch on a chariot unit is composed of a Herald, a Disc of Tzeentch and two Screamers of Tzeentch.  For the Herald, I used GamesWorkshops new Sorcerer of Tzeentch model, a new Storms of Magic release for Warriors of Chaos.  The Sorcerer is pretty daemonic looking, so I thought it would be fitting to use as my Herald.

For the disc, you can either use the newly released Herald of Tzeentch model on a disc from GamesWorkshop, or you can use a different Sorcerer from the Warhammer Fantasy Warriors of Chaos line that also comes with a disc.  I went with a homebrew solution, and glued two flying stand bases together, and then added the spiky points to it by cutting up an old Rhino Dozerblade.

The screamers (Manta ray like creatures pulling the disc) are a unit of their own, and are official GamesWorkshop models.  They are pretty expensive to purchase, so look to find them for a good deal through a trade or on ebay.

All components to this model are available in one form or another, so the project here is bringing the three required components together to make one single unit.

I like to spend as little money as I can get away with, so most of my favorite projects are spawns of left over bits, or cheap online bits sellers.

Here it is, in all of its' daemonic glory:

As you can tell, it is a pretty simple model to make.

The hardest part was getting the correct tension in the chains.

I love to build/hobby just about as much as I enjoy playing the game, so I tend to go out of my way to create a fun project when I can.

I like to add little touches where I can as well.  For example, this character mostly zips around the board hurling daemonic bolts of death, so I swapped out his had holding a sword for one summoning some killy death.  As I mentioned above, I will be making two of these guys as well, so I want to do as much as possible to have the models look unique.

I think I'll wrap this one up here to keep it short and sweet, but in my next post, I will make a tutorial on how to make one of these for yourself while I build my second one.

Until next time,
Happy Modeling!

Josh