A Daemon Engine with a Crew

 A key feature of this project has been the link between the daemon engines that form the core, and the presence of the infantry supporting them. However, it was only the land raiders and fortifications that offered any real interaction with the cultists which form the bulk.

While coming up with ideas for new additions to the force, it became my goal to create a unit that would more clearly integrate the cultists and the daemon engines. This was the result:

 

I envisioned this daemon engine as a hybrid between a bastion and a defiler, with the cultists operating the armaments from the defensive platform while the machine stalks the battlefield on its legs. The machine's lower half is an unmodified defiler, so my focus was on the construction of the upper platform.

 

The platform floor was created using a bastion upgrade kit, with the gun emplacement parts and a couple of spare internal doors from a land raider forming the walls. I also used a couple of small chains from a bracelet to create barriers in the gaps between them, where they were left open for the weapons.

 

 

I created the battlecannon and its mounting using spare forgefiend parts (which were left over from the helbrutes, nicknamed helsentries, featured here), and used the end of the barrel from the defiler's cannon to provide more of a resemblance.

Conveniently, the fittings for the defiler's secondary weapons are the same size as the slots for the fortification gun emplacements, so they did not require any modifications.

In addition to serving as a defiler, I made it possible to equip the machine as a forgefiend. The front legs can be moved forwards to replace the claws, and I created a couple of extra mountings to attach the forgefiend's cannons using more of the leftover parts.

 

This configuration lacks some stability compared to the defiler, due to the front legs fitting more loosely than the claws and not having the full six legs for support. However, I always value having options for different loadouts when it comes to preparing for a game, as it adds more variety to the lists I can try.

 

With the walking weapon-platform complete, I was left with a number of spare parts to make use of. Most notably among them, the top-half of the deflier (minus secondary weapons). As it happened, this was an opportunity to try a particular conversion that I had been thinking about for a while - which will be the feature of the next post.