Welcome back, Dear Reader, to my ongoing hobby and competitive progress series for 2025. Last time around I was taking inventory of my year so far, checking my progress, and planning for the rest of the year. This past week I was going to get in 2-3 practice games with the new army, get some painting done, and kick off the second half of the year with my sprint to the WCW.
Then my wife tested positive for COVID last week and that kind of derailed things. The good news is that Bryce and I avoided getting it, this is because we are Built Different*, according to medical science. The bad news is that this meant that for the sake of the people around me, I had to cancel or postpone my games and largely stay inside, trapped with nothing but articles to write and painting to do.
*Possibly incorrectly
This is a rough hit to my plans to stay on top of comp play but as of this week my plan is to jump back into the saddle and prep for the Ettin GT at the end of the month. I won’t have my Emperor’s Children done in time for that but at the very least I can do some things for it, and keep working on my EC. My biggest concern right now is painting a varied army of them – I had a great conversation with Norman and Paulie Wallis on our Patron-exclusive podcast this week about the paint meta and my plans for the WCW; one of my big concerns is that I don’t want to paint three winged daemon princes for my army.
The good news is that my good buddy and much better Warhammer player John Lennon released his list this week for the WTC and he’s running Emperor’s Children, and it’s a much more varied list than I was expecting. I don’t want to paint three daemon princes but two and two Maulerfiends? Much more doable.
Of this, I already have Lucius, a Rhino, a Lord Exultant, and a unit of Tormentors done, plus the odd model here and there like a noise marine and a couple of Infractors. Plus a winged Daemon Prince – I’ll talk about him in a bit. My general plan is to work toward this, while possibly swapping out one maulerfiend and the daemon prince for something else. I’m not 100% sure yet, but it’ll almost certainly make the list worse. A non-winged Daemon prince is also an option… I don’t want to do another set of wings, haha.
Hobby Progress
It is unfortunately a light week, but I’m happy to say that I finally finished my first winged daemon prince. I have a little bit of touching up work to do on him still – things that only became visible in photos that will now bother me until they are fixed – but I’m very happy with how he turned out. The wings were a massive pain in the ass, but very much worth it as they’re very striking visually and the yellow/orange coloring goes very well with the bright pink and black of the armor.
The wings were very much a huge pain in the ass, with each one taking several days to do, but the end result is very much worth it. As a reminder, here’s the version from before:
And the completed version after:
To be clear, I think I actually prefer the flat orange aesthetically, but it’s not nearly as striking or as eye-catching as the leopard spots and I think they’re a much better play for best painted, and I think this was absolutely the right call.
I’m also starting the plans for my display board for this army, and I think the general theme will be putting them on Aeldari ruins, with a large circular platform in the middle of the board. I’ve already started theming for that with the Daemon Prince’s base:
I’m really happy with how that piece on the base turned out, and it’s largely how I’m thinking about my display board thematically. I need something relatively easy to transport for my Emperor’s Children, and will likely take a similar approach to what I did with my Night Lords last year, where I used the same display board I built for my Black Legion:
That one’s pretty barebones but it looks alright. It’s definitely crowded up there in a way that I expect my next one will be – that size is about the max I can fit in one of the suitcases I own. The other key element is that the terrain pieces stack on top of it, and are easily stowed for travel. I’ll need to do the same thing with my next display board.
In similar fashion, here’s what I’m thinking:
The idea is a large circular Eldar ruin – likely carved out of foam – with some more vegetation, using the Eldar ruins from the death world forest terrain kit. Those are still pretty easy to find these days because everyone hated that terrain kit, but I think it has charm. I’ll magnetize those pieces for easy transport. I’ll order the picture frame in the next week or so but I don’t imagine I’ll start on this one for a while yet.
Next Week: Actual Practice
That wraps up this week’s update, but check back in next week when I cover at least one and hopefully two practice games – I’d like to get in at least one with my Emperor’s Children and another with Death Guard just to stay on top of things there – and then continue my hobby progress by knocking out a noise marine or two.
See you next Thursday.
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