The Big Baddie Returns

A few years ago, I was looking through the second edition Chaos Codex. Described within were the rules for a daemon character called Doombreed. This powerful Daemon Prince was one of Khorne's first servants and was rewarded for ravaging the nations of Earth. He is described as carrying an Axe of Khorne and a Rod of Khorne, a twisted rod with the mark of Khorne at its head. Elsewhere, he is described as wearing a cloak adorned with the skulls of his vanquished enemies. 

Since there has never been a model for Doombreed, I thought he made a good candidate for a project, and shown here is the result. The base model is Skarbrand, with wings from a Tyranid Hive Tyrant. Like other hobbyists I've spoken to, I thought Skarbrand's axes were a little small and held in a very idiosyncratic fashion, so I lengthened the haft of the axe in his right hand, wrapping the pin with wraps of green stuff. The rod is made from the staff from a Skaven Verminlord. The Verminlord's hand looked suitable, so I simply needed to marry the wrists together.  This was then topped with an icon from the Lord of Skulls kit. Moving to his face, I added a daemonic-looking beard with some little pieces of green stuff. I then modified his stance a little by heating up the legs with a hairdryer (be super careful if you want to try this!) and bent his right leg so he could have one foot higher up on the base rocks. The rocks themselves are made from slabs of cork. Doombreed is supposed to have a collar of Khorne, but this was tricky to execute, so I gave him a sort of "halo" across his shoulders instead. Finally, the cloak is made from green stuff, and I then glued skulls on, having first cut them down so they had a lower profile. 

For painting, the cloak was kept separately, allowing me to paint both sides of it and paint his back. The cloak was difficult to paint, because I wanted to do blending for the cloth, but the skulls made it difficult to do exactly was I would like. Still, eventually, after also drybrushing the skulls, the cloak looked ready. Once both the cloak and body were painted, I glued the cloak on and attached it to his shoulders with more green stuff. A couple of offcuts from a sprue were added as buckles on his shoulders. I then had to paint the new section of green stuff to match the cloak, and overall, it looks great. 

I am very pleased with the overall results, even if the project took far too long: three years, if you can believe that!

So say hello to one of the first Daemon Princes, the immortal Doombreed! Blood for the Blood God!