Among the many projects on my table right now is this fine fellow, Otos: 

 

He joins his brother, Ephialtes, now hells-of painted, probably as painted as I see myself making him. I’d considered going in and throwing a bunch of corrosion and such on joints and between the plates, but I haven’t dabbled much in the rust or corrosion technicals. Actually, I haven’t dabbled in them at all since my Great Unclean One (who could probably use another detail pass at some point, since he represented an early stage in my comprehension of layering).

Anyway, Ephialtes looks and feels great. His sword is magnetized, as is his brother’s, though scenarios where I actually require either are few and far between. Otos is likely to be outfitted similarly to his brother, meaning I’ll usually run him marked Nurgle with the Phlegm ordnance blast. I may see my way fit to occasionally run him marked Slaanesh, though, to get him into a fight faster.

My recent games (which include 3 back-to-back wins, including an unbelievably intense 7-turn nailbiter that started with Kyle the Burning-Eyed’s and my opponent seizing init, drop-podding into our backfield, and nuking my Warpsmith Warlord before he moved) have me moving in a much more mech-heavy direction. Between Ephie, my Forgefiend, and my recently-constructed Maulerfiend (Zombie Dragon from Fantasy), I can manifest a significant quantity of armor and–shocking to a man who started with a footslogging daemon list–guns! The beauty of 7th is that I can still run a solid quantity of 5++ bodies, whether I’m clogging the board with infantry or my preferred method of spewing out Flesh Hounds and Screamers to run the back of the opponent’s battlefield. Otos helps cement this, further increasing the value of my Warpsmith (constructed from the Krom Dragongaze out of Stormclaw) and handling the two key elements of my local meta, which are 3+ saves and folks who rely on numbers to get across the board instead of cover.

Paint-wise, I think Otos is going to have a glossier, wet look (in my mind he’s Slaanesh marked even when the armylist doesn’t depict him that way). In terms of modifications, I cut off all of the spiky bits on the model so that he could appear sleeker than his brother. Primarily due to balance issues, I cast about looking for something to weight his back end (having his forelegs raised and the slight imbalance in how I posed his back right leg relative to the others means he stands fine as long as you rest him backwards as you set him down, but otherwise he’ll tip onto his face); that led me to constructing the silverfish-esque tail section using the discarded claw appendage Soul Grinders come with for when you don’t want the sword hand. I love the way he came out, which is lucky*, and his dreadlocks are similar to those on my Slaanesh prince, but constructed more purposefully and with a greater understanding of how greenstuff works. I’m excited to put this wall of AV 13 (rear 11!) into the face of Loyalist scum and unkillable hiveminds alike!

*Much as I love how he came out, Oltos has the unfortunate distinction of being the worst sculpt I’ve ever purchased from Games Workshop.** That’d be a bummer and a disappointment if he was, say, one marine out of ten; but for a $70 model to be this ill-formed is hard to stomach. The sprues seem as though they’d been shrunk, perhaps through heat exposure at some point in the process; least flash I’d ever seen on models, but it’s hardly compensation when pieces simply don’t fit together and have significant gaps. That’s bad on the legs, where what should be a ball joint looks more like Pacman with an overbite; but it was even worse with the daemon bits, since the model’s so intricately and specifically sculpted. Part of the reason Oltos ended up with dreads is that there are huge gaps in front of and behind his neck and head. I tried getting customer service on the line the day I realized the problems, but they were closed; shooting to talk to someone on Monday. I’ve heard their customer service is great, and I hope that holds true.

**When Stacey saw how poorly he fit together she suggested I just punch out on assembling him at all. Despite the glue-covered fingers and eye-watering dizziness it took, though, Oltos is still one of my boys and I love him.