Daemons are sure to be all the rage in Warhammer at the moment as they have brand new rules for both Warhammer Fantasy and Warhammer 40,000 as of March 2, so I thought I’d revisit a conversion I did a few years ago for my hobby article this week.
Here’s how I converted my Daemon Prince Of Slaanesh back when the model was first released.
As soon as Games Workshop announced the plastic Daemon Prince kit back in the summer of 2010 I immediately knew one thing I wanted to do with it: make a serpentine Slaanesh Prince. Since the Trygon kit had been released several months earlier the tail of that large monster was the first conversion bit that sprang to mind. I immediately set about obtaining one so that when my advance ordered Daemon Prince kit arrived I’d already have what I needed to complete the conversion.
I didn’t want to hack up my Trygon or buy a whole one just for this project, so I bought just the part I needed. These days you can get the part from Spikey Bits. I already had tons of other useful bits as I’ve been collecting all things Chaos for decades.
For this particular conversion project I used parts from the following Games Workshop kits:
– Chaos Daemon Prince
– Tyranid Trygon
– Chaos Spawn
– Chaos Space Marine Defiler
– Chaos Vehicle Accessory Sprue
Additionally, you will need a hobby knife, hobby saw, hobby clippers, Kneadatite, and plastic cement.
The work-in-progress photo below shows what parts were used throughout the conversion. Each part is labeled clearly with the name of the source kit. Parts that are not labeled come with the Daemon Prince boxed set.
Here’s the same photo without the labels to make it easier to see the model as a whole. Notice that I did not use the entire Trygon tail. The top of it was too wide to match up with the torso of the Daemon Prince. I also did not use some of the end of the tail. Instead I used a part from the Chaos Spawn kit on the end of the tail. There are lots of great parts that could be used there and I wanted to modify it so that my finished model did not end up looking too much like a Trygon. I used a hobby saw to cut through the thicker parts of the Trygon tail.
Below you can see the finished Daemon Prince after painting. I’ve used a lot of greys, purples, golds and turquoise colors in keeping with the resplendent nature of Slaanesh. The crab-like claw is a classic and iconic Slaaneshi mutation established in GW imagery long ago, so I just had to include that in my conversion.
The sword and pauldrons (shoulder pads) have been painted with a two-stage edge highlights to give the appearance of glowing magical power. I’ll be covering two stage edge highlighting in another article in the near future.
Here’s the left profile of the model. Notice how the tassets (thigh armor) from the Daemon Prince have been used on the hip area on both sides of the model. These not only look cool, but it helps cover up the join between the Trygon tail and the Daemon Prince Torso. I used a little bit of Kneadatite (“Green Stuff”) in the join between the torso and tail.
My advance order for the Daemon Prince arrived the Thursday before release date in August of 2010. Back then GW used to ship your advance order to your home on or by release date and it was common to get kits a little bit early.
I was so excited about this project that I finished building the conversion shown here that night! Painting was completed by that Sunday and I immediately sent off my photos of it to Games Workshop’s What’s New Today blog after which the model appeared on their blog just days later on Friday, August 13.
You can see that GW blog post displaying my Daemon Prince and Daemon models by other hobbyists at this link. You might see some additional fun ideas for finishing your Daemons there. There was also an interesting conversion recently shown on Spikey Bits using a Necron Canoptek Wraith as part of a Daemon Prince.
I’ve had so many nice comments about this model since I completed it and I continue to get positive feedback about it as it’s currently on display at the Games Workshop Bowie Battle Bunker in Maryland. I’m hoping to find time to do other conversions with the Daemon Prince kit. It’s very versatile and there’s no limit to the amount of cool concepts that can be converted from it.
