Like many people, I imagine, I’ve been working on some daemonkin. I’m a fairly deliberate (slow) painter so this edition they’ll probably be used as allies. Troops seem a good starting point for an army collection so I began with some bloodletters.
I messed around with various schemes for their horns and blades and for the latter opted for a plain look, for which I used Vallejo’s glossy black paint. I experimented with blade highlights, but in the end decided I liked them best just black with a bit of shine. The primer didn’t quite look right in a couple of small sections on some their swords, but I was able to camouflage this pretty well, I think, with Blood for the Blood God technical paint. (I love that stuff!)
Here are two more — the bloodreaper upgrade character for the unit and a daemon with an instrument of chaos. I found that I liked using gloss lacquer on their tongues, so I went back over the models I had already completed and added that detail.
The World War Two Soviet infantryman is a 28mm metal Warlord Games piece. I included him for scale and because I finished him not too long ago. Playing with the miniatures, one forgets sometimes how big some of these monsters would really be until you put them beside a miniature of an average-sized man and use a bit of imagination. Heck, the horn is larger than poor Pyotr here!
So far I have nine bloodletters finished, which means to complete the box and the unit I only need to finish one more with a banner. When I run them as a unit of daemonkin bloodletters I’ll probably keep them cheap and use a minimum squad of eight without upgrades. So in that sense they are done now. However both in Codex: Khorne Daemonkin and the base rules referring to chaos daemons, one can take some of the possible upgrades for free when a unit is summoned, assuming you have the models on hand. So I thought I’d make sure I did. 🙂
My next daemon project after getting the Banner of Blood done will probably be a resin Herald of Khorne I have for a cheap HQ. I could just as easily use the bloodreaper that is posing with Private Pyotr as a herald. Since I have the herald model though, I might as well paint him.
I had a chance last night to play my small but painted Khorne force as an allied detachment and they did pretty well. I considered waiting until August 8th (a very auspicious date for the Blood God!) but more than three weeks is far too long to keep the dog-headed god waiting for his tally of skulls.
They deep struck into the battle with pinpoint accuracy right in the middle of a Shrine to Khorne, but then you’d expect nothing less would you? The daemons spread out, seeking victims only to be greeted by a withering barrage of tank and autocannon fire. Only the herald survived and him with one arm. He clamored up a short plateau, coming to grips with the Guard heavy weapon team. His preternatural reflexes did him little good though what with the rough terrain and the claymore-style mine booby traps, rock falls, and one particularly vicious guardsman with a serrated knife. Still, it was alright because of course “Khorne cares not from whence the blood flows so long as it flows.”
Ann's Immaterium 
11 responses to “Bloodletters”
[…] and my huge mountain of unpainted plastic hasn’t gone anywhere, so I turned my attention to these guys, who are one of my many unfinished […]
LikeLike
I thank you and the bloodletters thank you. You’ve got them all giddy with happiness that someone thinks they are Evil-with-a-capital-E, though personally I think they are simply misunderstood and are actually pretty nice guys. 🙂
LikeLike
Very realistic feel about those demons. Makes you feel uneasy, they are plain evil. Good work.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thank you. I tried a few different things with the horns. My first attempt looked pretty good to me under bright light, but then once I put it on the table I noticed that one could barely tell that the skin and horns were different. So I used some lighter highlights to try and bring them out and give them a little variety instead of having them all look exactly the same.
Current projects: painting the banner and putting together a resin herald of Khorne. 🙂
LikeLike
Looking good. Really like the horns, the darker colour looks good. I can understand the red fatigue and wanting to switch it up. And they will still look good standing next to brighter / mixed in with if you want brighter red khorne units. Look forward to seeing the banner 🙂
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thank you. That’s how I’ve always though of Khorne — brutal and business-like but just a touch of the baroque. I wasn’t sure how the red/brown/orange look would do, but so far I sort of like it. I like the bright red look too, it is is just that is how everyone I’ve ever met, who plays bloodletters, has painted them and I wanted to do something different. Besides, my power armor guys will probably sport a fair amount of red so I wanted to switch things up.
I play at a number of game stores, which in their terrain selection range from pretty sparse to down right amazing with new stuff cropping up all the time. The steps with the Khornate symbol was something that I had never seen before at that game store and given that I was debuting my allied force I could think of nothing more appropriate to plunk down. I was gratified too when they deep struck in, I put them right in the middle of the symbol and they got an “on target”. They didn’t stick around long (I love how the blood tithe game mechanic encourages game mechanics to equal fluff) though they did make another appearance two turns latter as Codex: Chaos Daemon bloodletters courtesy of my weirdboy, who also loves all things Khorne.
LikeLike
Nice one – I definitely prefer your more natural orangey red to that harsh brightness of the studio miniatures. Loving the swords too, looks brutal and businesslike – which is just how the Blood God likes them! Looking forward to seeing the rest of your Khornate forces
As an aside I keep seeing little bits of terrain in the background of your pictures (see for instance that huge Khornate symbol in the picture above). You seem to play on some amazing looking boards 🙂
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thanks. No, it is just the lighting. I did experiment on making the bloodreaper’s warts more khorne red than orangey, but that was it.
LikeLike
Nice painting. Is it just the lighting in the last photo or did you go to the trouble of doing slightly different colours for the skin across the unit?
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thank you very much. 🙂 I was going to go with the ubiquitous red that I’ve seen a lot of people use, but I decided I wanted something a bit different so I went with a red-brown with orangey highlights.
LikeLike
Nice job Ann, they look great! Those swords look cool and I love the horns & flesh tone you went with – cracking!
LikeLiked by 1 person