Warhammer Daemon Prince review

Daemon Princes were formerly mortal Champions of Chaos who have been elevated to daemonhood by the Chaos Gods. They have bartered their humanity for unearthly power and immortality.

In order to attract the attention of their patrons, Chaos Champions have to perform great and terrible deeds. They sacrifice enemies and allies alike for their ambitions and risk their demise at the hands of both their foes and gods.

While Daemon Princes come in various shapes, most are of hulking stature, displaying numerous mutations such as horns and wings. Even more notable are the supernatural powers they wield, some of which are associated with their patron god. What they maintain of their former selves are the driving ambition and ruthless cunning which helped them earn their ultimate reward.

First impressions

The thing that surprised me most upon opening the new Daemon Prince box was that there were only 2 sprues in there. Having seen the pics of all the possible builds I was expecting more.

Also there doesn’t seem to be that many components on the sprues, so I’m amazed at the level of variety that has been achieved through such a small number of parts.

You can see the two sprues by clicking the thumbnails below:

On closer inspection

After taking a thorough look around the sprues, I found that although there are not a large number of components the way that they are used is quite intelligent. Whilst using the same back, you can each of the different chest options as the basis for either a Warhammer 40,000 Daemon Prince, or Warhammer Fantasy Daemon Prince, this core then determines which options you add from that point onwards.

There are a host of options included, most obviously a huge pair of wings, but there are also weapon options, extra armour plates and a tail. In fact, referring to both the Daemons of Chaos Army Book and the Chaos Daemons Codex, the only option that isn’t really covered is Daemonic Robes. I feel this is a job well done, the robes would have been very difficult to sculpt as an add-on as they would need to cover the bulk of the model so we could never realistically have expected these.

In general the model was very easy to build, with large points of contact between individual parts, this is particularly important for the wings otherwise they would be a nightmare to hold in place while the glue set.

The only issue I had with building the Daemon prince was that the body didn’t quite fit together perfectly and the tiny distortion this created meant that the raised sword arm got in the way of the wings slightly. This was rectified by shaving off a little of the outside of the models right chest but was a little annoying.

The model could easily represent a Khorne, Slaanesh or Tzeentch Daemon Prince, the only power that it wouldn’t look right as a Daemon Prince for is Nurgle. This is to be understandable as a Nurgle Daemon Prince would require unique components for almost the whole model.

It’s a good looking kit and you can easily field a couple of these guys in a single army without them looking too samey. The only real issues I have is that there are few posing options, the legs are in a fixed stance and the arms lock in a single position. This isn’t too much of an issue as there are different arm options, which are fixed at different angels and the legs can be modified through the addition of armour plates.

However, whilst discussing the model’s appearance, I have to say that there is some small undefinable aspect to this kit that just doesn’t set me alight, it’s not anything I can put my finger on and I’m sure it’s an entirely personal thing but I had to mention it.

Summary

The Daemon Prince kit is intelligently designed and provides a multitude of options using a small number of easy to work with components.

It is also a good looking kit, that looks suitably daemonic and could easily represent a Khorne, Slaanesh or Tzeentch Daemon Prince straight out of the box.

However there is some small undefinable aspect to this kit that just doesn’t set me alight so, even though it does what it sets out to do extremely well, a possible 9/10 becomes…

Overall score: 8/10