Flames of the Ruinstorm

 Age of Darkness Ruinstorm Daemon army

The entire Daemonic horde so far!

Earlier in the year I was invited to attend a Horus Heresy weekend event hosted by Greetings from the Warp here in the UK to display my Imperator titan and generally just hang out with the attendees.

Ira Metallum on tour in Irthlingborough!

I was absolutely blown away by the incredible armies in use and the relaxed nature of the narrative weekend. As a result, I was spurred on to get my own army finished so that I could take part myself!

Just one of the gaming halls at Greeting from the Warp - so many amazing armies to see! 

Fast forward about 5 months and here I am with a whole new, fully painted army! 

I wanted to come up with a unique new army to play Horus Heresy 2.0 - I was initially considering using a small number of Daemons alongside some Wordbearers as I'm a big fan of the Gal Vorbak possessed marines. I was having trouble reconciling how I'd be able to push a strong theme, when Games Workshop dropped a PDF army list for Daemons of the Ruinstorm.

The core core units for the army are all heavily fire themed 

I loved the thought of 'unaligned' Daemons just bursting out of the warp to sow fear and destruction for the sake of it! There didn't need to be a cunning ploy or ulterior motive from one of the four cornerstone Chaos powers. As such, I could go wild with a theme as long as the Daemons fit roughly into the unit entries of the army list.

The other units in the army are still flame themed but have their own distinct visual cues

After a little to-ing and fro-ing I decided that the most iconic aspect of chaos would be infernal fire - an element which is traditionally associated with Daemons. I didn't want the theme to be like the Tzeentchian warpfire of change, but actual primal fire, consuming everything and turning the landscape to barren ash.

The Arch Daemon towers over his summoned Fire Daemon minions!

Once I'd settled on a broad theme, I had to decide on the visual cues - unsurprisingly, this involved looking through my miniatures and the GW website to find the models which I could convert into flaming scions of destruction. Almost immediately, I decided to shy away from the traditional bipedal daemon infantry and chose spirit hosts for my lesser daemons.

I wanted the army to represent a burning elemental avalanche rather than a coherent army

As I wanted to steer clear of the traditional Khorne, Slaanesh, Tzeentch and Nurgle themes, the colour scheme I settled on was a really volcanic looking flame colour with the extremities and faces of the fire daemons looking like cooling magma. 

My Daemon Sovereign oversees the ravening horde

Once I had the lesser daemons, I went for a large unit of swarms (in the form of re-based brimstone horrors) and flying beasts which would be represented by huge flaming skulls. The second half of this force is slightly different with their own fleshy, bestial theme but with visual links to the main force with burning brands, mouths and manes as well as molten weapons.

The brute weapons were painted as glowing molten metal

Part 1: Hellish fire

Lesser Ruinstorm Daemons

Even though I'd assembled most of the army before painting it, I chose to start with a single lesser daemon to work out the best colour scheme. After a little trial and error, I settled on a scheme for the main fire daemons. This involved a white undercoat followed by layers of bright yellow, then orange, red and then browns to achieve a really hot and dirty fire. Through the three main colour layers (yellow, orange and red) I mixed in roughly 50:50 fluorescent paints. I also used the fluorescents to add stronger depth to lighter areas although it's worth noting that they are very thin compared to normal acrylics so you will need a strong base colour beneath or mix them with a similar shade before applying them.

My first daemon became the template for all that followed!

As well as getting the actual miniature to look like living flame, I also needed to add OSL (object source lighting) to the bases. I did this sparingly across the miniatures as I didn't want to distance the living flame daemons from their 'fleshy' internally heated brethren so accented the base colours rather than going for super realism.

The daemons in this picture represent two units of 15 troops, forming the core of my army

Even though there are quite a few duplicates within the units, I managed to get each one looking different with posing and hand swaps

Getting the general hue of the daemons consistent was challenging but visually rewarding at the finish line!

Ruinstorm Daemon Swarms

This unit was such an easy pick for me - I'd been looking for something to use the Brimstone Horror miniatures for and this was the perfect opportunity! Brimstone horrors are normally based in twos, so to make them swarms, I just rebased them all in multiples, cutting apart and separating some of the horrors to avoid repeats and making them less uniform. Outside of this the Brimstone horrors were used almost out of the box!

I decided to keep a few horrors back to use as flavour on bases here and there to really tie the larger models into the theme of a rolling horde!

It's a living carpet of fire!!

I'm certain these little guys will be useless on the field, but they look great!

10 bases didn't seem a lot util I started painting tiny teeth and eyes. It got old real quick!

Initially I wanted to avoid cartoony faces, but quickly found that they got lost in the silhouette so had to better define them

The red mouths, white teeth and blue eyes are a bit of a departure from the other daemons, but the strong fire colours meant that they still fit with the rest of the force!

Flying Ruinstorm Daemon Beasts

Although my army contains two units of beasts, they are both distinctly different. This is the first unit which is represented by groups of huge flaming skulls. Akin to a swarm, these fiery apparitions are extremely intimidating when you see the size of them next to normal miniatures! This unit has been given the flying upgrade to separate them from the ground based regular beast unit.

If you asked me which one is my favourite I couldn't tell you. They're all my flaming hideous babies!

For the most part, they are skulls taken from Endless spells, terrain and anywhere else I could find suitable parts in the range! I created a wire armature between the skulls and sculpted them to represent trailing flames and small burning skulls.  On the whole I'm really pleased with how they turned out - they're unique and really quite terrifying!

I enjoyed making each base unique - with only six in the unit, I took my time, posing each one differently

Ruinstorm Daemon Volcanic Behemoth

Another easy pick for the army was this huge magma beast which is based on an Endless Spell from the Age of Sigmar range. Although it didn't make the final cut for my 3000 point list (just losing out to his fire maned Behemoth brother), I still like the model and he'll remain part of the larger force.

Ruinstorm Daemon Cavalry

My Ruinstorm Cavalry were one of the last additions to the army - it took me a while to come up with a new unique unit which would be immediately recognisable as cavalry while still having clear visual links to the other units in the army.

I toyed with using other spirit based Age of Sigmar units but didn't want to lift and shift Nighthaunt units as that just felt lazy. Instead I tried to think up a way of creating something new and unsettling - a sort of progression from the lesser daemons in the host. This is what I came up with!

I decided to base the miniatures on the old ark Eldar Khymerae miniatures as I had a number of them already and as they're supposed to be established warp beasts, they'd form a good starting point! The 'riders' would be an evolution of the spirits, tied to the beasts by the various protuberances between their shoulder blades and anchored with a glowing chaos icon floating above their hunched form.

I started by carefully assembling and basing the beasts (I find Citadel Finecast resin to be extremely fragile, so it took a while to get them all pinned to the bases!). I used a selection of claws, tentacles and horns on each of the beasts to make them all look unique. Once I was happy with them, I began constructing the riders with an aluminium armature and skeletal Bloodletter heads from the Citadel Skulls sprue.

The sculpting was done in layers, bulking out the armature with putty then moving on to adding flames, spears and clawed hands (note that a couple of the beasts were re-used from my collection - some were actually white metal!)

These guys took a few weeks to sculpt as they were quite work intensive! Overall I was pretty happy with how they turned out - the use of bloodletter skulls and S shaped bodies were supposed to be a nod to the more common Khornate daemons without being too overt!

Ruinstorm Daemon Harbinger and attendant retinue 

The Harbinger was based on the Nightbringer miniature which was perfect for a Daemon Prince sized character. A Daemon Harbinger is effectively a combat psyker who is the only summoning unit in the army. Any Daemons which you place in reserve need to be deployed from a warp rift that this model generates. As such he's pretty valuable and comes with the option for 3 daemon attendants which are effectively brutes (a very strong beefy unit). To accompany my Nightbringer conversion, I converted 3 Warhammer Fantasy Kadai Fireborn (another obscure retired unit from Forgeworld). They fit the fire theme perfectly but required some symbol removal, horns and hand swaps to bring them in line. All in all, I think these miniatures turned out really nicely!

Ruinstorm Arch Daemon; Akula, the Burning King!

I added additional horns, a spiked metal halo and collar to the model to make Akula look more traditionally daemonic 

My main centrepiece model is my Lord of war, a towering Arch Daemon. these things are pretty horrific and are supposed to be on par with a Primarch. There was really only one choice for this - an Encarnate Elemental of Fire - an older discontinued Forgeworld Old world daemon.

He's very imposing with his wings spread wide! 

There was a fair amount of conversion work to carry out on this miniature as it had a number of iconography details from Warhammer Fantasy and I also wanted more flames. This would become a common theme, with me taking every opportunity to make use of fire on the army!

Additional fire spirits and swarm horrors were added to the miniature to show that he's not just herding the lesser daemons, but spawning them!

I opted for four huge wings, playing on the fallen angel silhouette

The robes, horns and feathered wings were a deliberate call back to the classic Azazel Daemon prince miniature

The base is scattered with blackened grass, flaming horrors and an unfortunate Blood Angel legionary who is being immolated from the inside

I extended the flames on the robes and merged them into horrors and spirits

I created a new weapon for the miniature as I wasn't keen on the original - a huge onyx scythe with a fiery blade was much more on brand!

The butt of the weapon is a huge flaming brazier

The flames consuming the Blood Angel were sculpted as if they were pouring from his eyes and armour seals

Part 2: The Fire Within

Ruinstorm Daemon Beasts

I settled on the idea of making the second half of the army different from the first - I didn't just want to paint everything yellow and claim they were 'made of fire'. In order to tie in the more bestial elements of the force such as the exceptional Forgeworld Brutes and Hounds of Xaphan, I knew they would need their own theme to stand out, but still maintain some of the themes I'd already established.

My idea for the colour scheme started with the 6 hounds of Xaphan I'd be using for my second unit of Ruinstorm Daemon Beasts. I've always loved the sculpts but never really had a use for them until now - their faces look both wolfish and shark-like to me.

I started looking at sharks for some inspiration and after doing a quick sketch, settled on a scheme which would inform the choices I made for this half if the army's colour scheme. It's unique but also kind of subtle. When you place the daemons together, the fiery mouths and sigils as well as the unified basing really pulls them all together as well as clearly showing that there's some kind of unholy alliance going on!

Ruinstorm Daemon Brutes

One of the few units that I could paint without any conversions were the absolutely beautiful Forgeworld Daemon Brutes. They're so much larger in hand than they look on the website!

Having already established a colour scheme with the beasts, I used roughly the same palette for the Brutes, but instead of the mouths, I used the chaos runes carve into their flesh to show the internal fire animating these ogrish creatures!

In order to draw the eye to their grinning faces, I opted to paint them a clean off-white colour - they look like Oni masks and I think it makes them feel even more sinister! As a final tie-in to their infernal bunk-mates, I used the same molten metal colour scheme which I used on the Arch-daemon's collar and halo. The fluorescent orange really pops and actually looks hot!

Ruinstorm Daemon Bestial Behemoth

This absolute unit of a miniature was originally a greater spined chaos beast (again retired from the Forgeworld line...). I made several modifications to the base model to bring it in line with the army themes. Firstly, I sculpted a flaming mane running all the way down the miniature starting at the head. It's much less subtle than the hounds, but I think it was needed for the Behemoth as it needed to make a statement - and oh boy does he make a statement!

As I'm sure it hasn't escaped your attention, I also added two sets of daemonic horns to his head - I think the sculpt needed them to really g=frame the head - without them, I think the eye could just be carried away down the back of the miniature with the bright flames.

The final thing I added to the model was a newly sculpted tail. It's quite small compared to the rest of the miniature, but I wanted to tie this big boy in with the beast hounds as if he were some kind of pack alpha. I find all of these little changes sell the theme and bring your models together!

Ruinstorm Daemon Sovereign; Kranshar the Pyre Fiend

I knew from the get-go that my Daemon Sovereign would be based on the iconic Be'lakor miniature. I loved the original and I love this exquisite new plastic kit. Honestly this is one of the best kits out there - everyone should own it - go buy it now and you will cry joyful tears of blood for your new plastic master of mayhem! Ahem...

I made some minor changes to the miniature, removing the chains from the wings and the rocks jutting from the base. I did use them to begin with but decided that they detracted from he theme and just didn't feel right. It was a pain removing them (especially from the wings as I wanted to leave the metal ring piercings in place) but it was worth the effort in the end.

I re-sculpted the sword flames to make it fit in with the fire across the rest of the army and also added some flames coming from the palm of his open hand. I extended the jutting rocks and lava to the edge of the base to really accentuate the damaging effect that he was having on the environment around him - literally causing volcanic upheaval!

The paint scheme for this miniature incorporated some elements from the living flame daemons as well as redistributed skin tones from the hounds and brutes in his 'side' of the army (the fleshy blue boys!) I feel the purple wings was a bold choice, but I wanted him to be distinctly different to the Arch Daemon - he needed to stand out and not appear like another subservient entity. This army is a coalition rather than a monarchy!

Summoning Template and Objective Markers

Finally (because I always go a bit made with a theme!) I decided to make some extras to accompany my army. I was required to bring 6 objective markers for scenarios at the event and I really wanted to make a custom warp rift template for the Harbinger's summoning spell!

The flaming objectives were made from transparent resin flame markers. These were simply painted with some transparent paint to bring them in line with the army and based. Easy peasy!

The portal was a little more involved - I began by cutting out a template for the flaming portal in transparent plastic then attached it to the correct template (an official 3" blast marker) with UV resin, which I also used to bulk out the flat sides of the portal. 

Once the UV resin was fully cured, I used thick acrylic gel medium to create the fire ripple texture and left it for a couple of days to dry!

The medium starts out opaque white and eventually goes clear once it's fully cured.

I use this gel medium for all sorts of things - it's pretty expensive to buy a pot, but it does go quite a long way! It's also pretty forgiving so you can peel it off if you don't like how it looks! I use it for water effects, ice, gunky chemical pools and other strange textures. Experiment with it and have some fun!

Once it was fully cured, I simply panted it to match the objectives using tamiya clear paints and some washes!

I hope you've enjoyed this little delve into flaming damnation - I'll be back soon with some more daemons, taking the army to an absolutely monstrous 5.5 thousand points!