On Last-Minute Centerpiece Models

A Last Minute Nemesis Daemon for Crusade. Artist: me.

For the most part, I'm very excited to really sink my teeth into the new-ish tenth edition of Warhammer: 40,000. I was never really a big fan of either 8th or 9th, though I did really, truly enjoy 9th edition's Crusade mechanics.

9th edition didn't get real rules for the Imperial Guard until like six minutes before 10th came out, so when my gaming group proposed starting a Crusade, it was a rare opportunity to start a new army. I liked the Grey Knights crusade rules (in particular, the cool Nemesis Daemon that could show up to help your enemies against you), and I wanted a small army, so Grey Knights seemed like a natural fit--except I'm not really a huge fan of their models or colour scheme. I wound up kitbashing a small pre-heresy-themed Thousand Sons army (just two minimum-sized squads and a pair of characters got me up to 25PL like that).

It was the day before my first game when I realized I'd forgotten to actually make a model for my Nemesis daemon, despite crowing to all of my friends about how cool the rules were for it, so in a panic, I threw together Alariel of the Myrid Lies up there at kind of the last minute.

I wanted him to be unique, and also not to clash with any particular theme or colour scheme of my opponent (the coolest thing about Nemesis daemons is that they're a model you make that your opponent gets to play with--how often does that happen?), but also didn't have time or a budget to build and paint any of the greater daemons.

What I wound up doing was grabbing the Changeling from my local hobby store and literally just gluing him on top of a bunch of ghosty gals from Age of Sigmar that a friend had got me for my birthday. Roughly the right size and shape for some kind of daemon HQ unit (I think I wound up using the Herald of Tzeentch on chariot rules).

Kitbash before painting. Note the Changeling precariously leaning against that water bottle.

I only had a matter of minutes to paint it and get to bed by bedtime, so I airbrushed him sold black (vallejo black primer), then white kind of at random (Daler Rowney FW White Ink). Over that, again, pretty much randomly, Daler Rowney FW Marine Blue and Daler Rowney FW Emerald Green.

What I got was one of the most finicky, fragile, untransportable models in my entire collection (that sat out 5/6 Crusade games, annoyingly) but that I still look back fondly on--my random, panicked airbrushing (I am still very much a novice with that thing) juuuuust passes as a spooky ghostly glow in good lighting. My intent had been to go back and add in more details, or repaint it entirely, but instead I left it as a kind of memento to poor planning and time management that reminded me of my college days.