Here be Daemons!

Actually being home on a weekend with no other plans, I seized the moment to see what Da Masta Cheef was up too. Turns out he was available and we agreed to a 1225 pt game, to which he chose to deploy his Exodite Eldar. Having never had the chance to battle against this warhost, I decided to return the favor and not use my status-quo armies or armylists (Space Wolves or Orks) and instead use one my smaller armies. I chose to field a Daemon army, as I have never used the codex before and wanted to give them a spin in these waning days of the 5^th edition. Plus I recently put the only finished model in this army in my display cabinet and he’s been whispering dark thoughts to me ever since…

The 1^st thing ye might notice, is that my Daemons are all very old models. I have a lot of the newer ones, just not assembled yet. I have opted to keep them on the square bases, as this doesn’t seem to make a damn bit of difference in 40K, but a huge difference in WHFB, and I want the option to use this army for both systems.

Expecting to have to quickly build a few boxes of plastic models, to make up for deficiencies in the army list, I was quite surprised to discover just how expensive these units are! In fact, I had to leave some models behind including the only painted model in the army (Skippy the Bloodthirster) as I decided to go to a theme. Knowing that I was facing elder, and having recently read up on Slaanesh’s…um, relationship…with the elder, I decided to stick with a Slaaneshi theme for the most part.

So here’s what the dark gods mustered for my warhost:

# of models in unit	Unit Type	Unit name	WS	BS	S	T	W	I	A	Ld	Save	Points
1	HQ	She who Milks -Keeper of Secrets	8	4	7	6	4	10	6	10	4+	285
		Transfixing Gaze, Soporitic Mist, Pavane of Slaanesh, Daemonic Gaze, Unholy Might
13	TROOPS	Daemonettes	4	4	4	4	1	4	1	8	3+	182
10	TROOPS	Plague Bearers	4	4	4	4	1	4	1	8	3+	180
		Icon, Instrument
13	TROOPS	Pink Horrors	2	3	3	3	1	3	1	10	4+	256
		Icon, Bolt of Change
5	ELITES	Friends fo Slaanesh	4	0	5	4	2	5	5	10	5+	150
4	ELITE	Flamer of Tzeentch	4	4	4	4	1	4	2	9	2+	170
		Bolt of Tzeentch
TOTAL
46												1223

46  Models @ 1223 pts

I came up with the name She Who Milks while sticking the cow head onto my old-school Keeper of Secrets. Must’ve been the teat, and the words ‘She who Thirsts’ echoing in my head after reading Path of the Renegade.  Knowing that Da Masta Cheef and I share a similar twisted sense of humor I ran with it!. (update: here's his exodite list for this battle. )

Assembling my motley, unpainted Daemon host, it was off to the mortal realm of Bristol, where the unsuspecting souls waited to be harvested…

Speaking of their unpainted condition, and to dive a bit into the history of my Daemon collection,  I must touch upon the origins of my chaos collection. I was introduced to Realms of Chaos in art school. Two of my roommates had the books, the original tomes Realms of Chaos Slave to Darkness and Lost & the Damned, and I was sucked in by the amazing art and stories contained within. Understand that this was ’94, and although I had been a 40K player since January ’89, I really had no idea that these books contained so much 40K info. Well these roommates and I started a Friday night Realms of Chaos campaign, and I quickly found myself with a small Nurgle army. In fact that roommate’s paint jobs are still on the Nurgle faction, I just never got around to cleaning them up! The only model that I put any paint on is the Keeper of Secrets, and that’s only base coated.

 Fast forward almost 2 decades later, and here I am with more Daemons than marines (count me in with the legions of players who dislikes the current Chaos Codex –they took away my daemons!) but for some reason, I just never tried to play with Codex Daemons; until now! Perhaps it was the indecision about the bases? Or maybe I was under the assumption that I didn’t have enough models or something? Who knows! All I know is, that I have a surprisingly big army just waiting to terrorize denizens of the 41st millenium!

It was an objective battle and Dawn of War. The Exodites had left the security of their Maiden World and were investigating the ruins of an Imperial settlement. Clearly something was not right here… soon the forms of Daemonettes  of Slaanesh, Pink Horrors fo Tzeentch and a Keeper of Secrets, the unspeakable She Who Milks materialized into the mortal realm to claim these unguarded Exodite souls.

I quickly learned about the quirky nature of daemonic materialization. !st lesson, don’t put your models that can’t shoot directly in front of the guns! In this pic you can see the Daemonettes standing firmly before the unit of guardians. As you can see by the final pic, I was down to the one Daemonette, and figured I would charge in. I got some kills, but they beat her back into the warp.

She Who Milks made quick work of this unit here, and feasted unquenchingly on the soul of the Dire Avengers and the Exodite Farseer.

Not before they blade-stormed half of my Pink Horrors away (surprisingly good shooting attacks those horrors have BTW). I consolidated She who Milks into this cover

(in hindsight, a bad idea) as the wraithguard, represented here in the form of guardians on cold-ones (hey, they’re not Exodites without their lizards, right?) came onto the field.

They were able to spot her and blasted away 3 of her wounds! Enraged, and probably a bit turned on actually, she jumped out, used Pavane of Slaanesh to pull the exodites closer, then charged in and butchered them all! It was that or be shot to death, right? On the next round, the Warlock was crushed by the love offered by the nurturing bosom of She who Milks. 

During all this (and I didn’t snap photos everywhere as I wasn’t planning at the time to get this in-depth with this battle-report, after all my minis are unpainted! But I digress) the unit that we voted the MVP of the Exodites, the guys who shot and tore apart the Daemonettes, blasted away my Flamers of Tzeentch, returned to the objective and shot away the final wound of She who Milks! Screaming with orgasmic joys, she was shunted back into the warp on a carpet of fresh Eldar souls. My Plague Bearers had arrived, took out another squad of Guardians before plunging into this MVP unit and eliminating them. 

 Over on the other side of the table my Fiends of Slaanesh (or Friends, as Cheef’s Swooping Hawks were to discover that they were) had been whittled down by a lot fire before killing the Swooping Hawks and being killed themselves by Cheef’s Autarch on Jetbike –ur, I mean, Griffen.  The Autarch was killed by the only accurate shot fired all game by a Pink Horror with Bolt of Change and destroyed.

So here it was, a game I thought I would lose when it started. My die rolls were terrible in the 1^st few Rounds while the Cheef;s were strong. But we reached this point where I had 2 scoring units on objectives and he had no scoring units left. The Swooping Hawks quickly blasted the Pink Horrors away, before plunging into the Plague Bearers to contest it. I killed a good number of them, but this is how turn 7 ended, as a complete sprawling melee, other wise known as a draw!

It was a good, and exiting match, and fun 1^st outing for my daemons. I would like to try them again, and build the rest of the army. It’s fairly small army and ought to be quick to paint, but with my time so limited I think I will stay focused on the Wolves and the models on my painting table for now. This also serves as great show case for Cheef's brilliantly painted models, and I hope he's inspired to expand this army a bit more (I think he needs Rangers, they fit well with the Exodites and are supported by the background. And they kick ass!)

Awesome game Cheef, let’s do it again soon!

Book Review: Path of the Renegade

When I found out that a novel by Andy Chambers was finally coming out from the Black Library, I was very excited. For those who do not know who Andy Chambers is, he was one of the most influential members of the Warhammer 40,000 game studio back in the '90s during the final years of 1st edition until the launch of 4th edition 40K in 2004. I would have thought his return to writing 40K background would've been tyranid focused considering how much influence he had on their design and background, but I was pleasantly surprised to find he was doing a book (the 1st of a trilogy no less!) on the Dark Eldar.

The Dark Eldar were hinted at, eluded too, and simply mysterious until they were rapidly launched upon the gaming world with the onset of Warhammer 40,000 3rd edition. In fact the starter set came with a ton of the plastic foot troops. However their background was left quite vague, essentially summed up as 'mean pirate elves who will steal your family and make them fight to the death for their amusement in their hidden web-way city. ...did we mention that they were mean? Oh, and they have lots of spikes!'  In fact, the Warhammer 40,000 community was somewhat confused: were the Dark Eldar the 'Slaaneshi Eldar, or a new twist on Eldar Pirates?' My good friend, 'the Doctor' and I were working on a 40k Fanzine back in the late '90s and had the honored privilege of interviewing Rick Priestly (the All-Father of Warhammer) and directly asked him this question to which his seemly confused response was...'The Dark Eldar ARE the Slaaneshi Eldar." Which led into a discussion about the lack of background that made any sense for the early 3rd edition 40K Codex's.

So, many years later, and even many years after Andy Chambers has since left GW (I heard he got married and moved to Cali!) the new Dark Eldar book arrives with a wealth of background, and finally, everything makes sense! Without simply repeating it all here, the previously mentioned question is dealt with, in fact the background fits so well that all of the established Eldar lore since the '87 Rogue Trader book finally makes sense! If you're a gamer, and have this Codex, I would encourage you to re-read it. And then pick up Path-of-the-Renegade.

What a deliciously vile book! Everything you could expect or want from a Dark Eldar book! Torture! Pain! Deception! Convoluted plots and treachery afoot throughout! And Mr. Chamber builds on the background extraordinarily well. So well in fact, that a non-gamer could pick this book up and comprehend the Dark Eldar, Craftworld Eldar (from the Dark Eldar perspective at least) and, much to my delightful surprise, the Exodite Eldar(! ) without ever playing a game of Warhammer 40,000!

The plot, summed up as vaguely as I can in an attempt to reduce any spoilers, is that a few ambitious Archons, essentially 'nobles' in the caste system of the Dark Eldar society, are eager to remove from power Asdrubael Vect, the ruler of the Dark Eldar who officially goes by the title of The Tyrant (if only our leaders were this honest!LOL...ahem...). I will reveal nothing more about the plot, only that a crucial element of it requires a raid on an Eldar Exodite Maiden-World.

The Exodites have very little background in 40k. So much so that only models in Epic scale have ever been produced. It's one of the 'missing' armies for 40k, which is essentially, at least in the beginning, Warhammer Fantasy Battle in space. Using that analogous approach, Exodites would essentially be Wood Elves in Space. This is actually not as silly as it sounds, in fact the epic models were quite inspiring and I know many people who have attempted model-conversions of Exodites, as they seem to fascinate a lot of eldar players and modelers alike. I could be wrong, but I believe Andy Chambers had a role in the creation of the Exodites back in the day when Epic 40K (Space Marine, as it was called at the time) when he wrote his first White Dwarf article on the Knight Titans. If you want to learn more about the Exodites, you need to pick up this book about Dark Eldar! If you want to learn more about Dark Eldar and their evil city Commorragh, pick up this book! If you want to know more about the Dark Eldar connection with Slaanesh ('She who thirsts') than pick up this book!

• Did I like it? Heck yeah! This was an even faster read for me than Atlas Infernal!
• Was it hard to put down? It really was. Granted, with my life-style, I read most of this in airports and hotel rooms. Andy has a very fluid writing style, and I found it almost comforting.
• Could I care about the characters? Oddly, yes. But it's made clear quite early on that only a fool would expect anyone to come out of this book alive, but I was glad -and actually surprised to a degree- to see who the survivors actually were...
• Did the writer truly grasp how the 'world' of the 41st millennium works in the sense that it doesn't betray or retcon previously established (as I know it) lore? Um, yeah. In fact, very few people know it better! Even though I think the bulk of this 'new' Dark Eldar background was written, officially, after he left GW, I can't help but wonder how much of it was truly figured out by the design team back in the '90s...regardless, he did a great job with it!
• Was I being talked down too? Honestly, no.
• How predictable is this story? Not very. It was constantly changing with all it's wicked little plots...

Now, what should I read after this? I'm tempted to give Gav Thorpe's Eldar Path books a try. I'm curious to know if Andy Chambers path and Gav's path will cross at some point...