[Giant Fossil Penguin]

Ever since I saw someone, somewhere on a forum (this idea I'm putting forwards is very much NOT my idea; I'm really not that creative:laugh suggest that Living Saints are, to a certain point of view, Daemon Princes of the God-Emperor, I've been really exercised about how you would represent an army of Imperial Angels.
First off, Codex: Chaos Daemons is the basis. There might be arguments for others, but for me, C:CD gives all of the special rules that represent creatures made form the warp and emotion. My biggest stumbling-block, other than not having the talent to really pull this off if I attempted it, is just what you would use to take the place of the Daemons.
EG: Bloodletters as-is aren't in, but what Imperial unit would take its place? Not Astartes- to me, their sheer hardiness makes them Nurgle-alikes. Maybe Sisters? Maybe even Silent Sisters?
The Marks of Chaos would also have to be re-defined:
Khorne- this is the martial might and martial honour of the God-Emperor.:threaten:
Slaanesh- this is angels so driven by the perfection of the God-Emperor's ideals that they are on the foe before they can respond, striving for perfection so that none can stand before them.:wild:
Nurgle- these are the Angels that, birthed by the grit and determination of the God-Emperor to succeed, will not fall or give up, marching implacably towards the foe.:headbutt:
Tzeentch- this is the Angels that have been gifted/birthed by the God-Emperor's psychic might, tapping in to a portion of his power to aid all Imperial citizens in danger.:wacko:
So, what Imperial unit would take the place of a Daemon unit, and why? Please, the main guideline is that we can't make-up a new unit- it has to be one that already exists in a loyalist Imperial Codex.
Am I making any sense whatsoever? If I am just treading old ground, then I apologise; I would beg for a link and then I'll go away, promise:angel:.

GFP:good:

 

[normtheunsavoury]

This is a really cool idea, definately worth watching!
I would have to have a good think about it though, if I can come up with anything I'll post it asap!

-edit-
not sure where they would fit but Legion of the Damned have to be in there somewhere!

 

[Giant Fossil Penguin]

Maybe the LotD could be some sort of uber-Astartes Angel? Each one could be a Beast of Nurgle replacement, as long as the consensus was that Astartes should be the Nurgle/Plaguebearer replacements. That, of course means that there are only a few of them at any one time- maybe too few. Hmmm. So, instead, maybe the LotD should be the Astartes representatives in the prospective list and take the place of Plaguebearers?

GFP

 

[Supersonic Banana]

bloodletters>death company?
soul grinders>penitent engine?
seekers>rough riders?
plague bearers>arco-flagellants?
beasts of nurgle>ogryns?

 

[gen.ahab]

I once had the idea that if the emperor could, if he were to die and become a god, create "good" daemons but thats a interesting thought. I like the concept of a "Daemons of Order" codex.

 

[Giant Fossil Penguin]

I'm endeavouring to make the unit selections something not too obvious; so I wouldn't put Astartes as Bloodletters, for example. I do like the idea of Beasts of Nurgle being represented by Ogryns, however, and the Rough Riders as Seekers ha promise.
For Bloodletters, I was thinking of Silent Sisters (although I suppose we should really use Celestians); this would give the psychic resistance that Khorne engenders, as well as the unit being fair useful in combat.
For Daemonettes, I really like Death Cult Assassins; they are really fast and lithe, and could you imagine the damage a whole group of them would cause?
For Plaguebearers, well I've already said that I'd put Astartes here; this is all about their ability to soak up punishment, although the speed and CC ability doesn't really fit.
Horrors, I'd probably go with IG Psycher Battlesquads; a fair number of them, weak in CC, but scary psychically.

Fiends I would use Penitent Engines for. Bloodcrushers could possibly be Dreadnoughts, although they do seem to fit better in the Soul Grinder slot. Flesh Hounds? Screamers?

GFP

 

[Khargoth]

Your idea is on a good track, but slightly flawed.

Your ideas for the 'good' versions of the Chaos Gods are still the Chaos Gods themselves; They are pride, desire, hope and self-preservation. Other warp gods no doubt exist personifying other emotional traits; the Chaos Gods are the rawest and purest, thus the most powerful.

Khorne - many mistake him for the personification of anger. Without pride there is no anger, pride is the desire to be the best and the strongest, and make it known to everyone. Khorne cares not where the blood flows from, when it flows in his name it shows he is strong. Daemons that represent the Emperor's pride are still Khornate.

Tzeentch - Hope. The feeling that things will be different, that despite the odds things can be changed for the better. 'Better' is subjective, so Tzeench only cares that things change. Daemons tapping into the Emperor's psychic might to help others would want to step in and alter things.

Slannesh - Desire. Very simple and self-explanatory. If you want something, take it. Take all of it. If you want to be a good musician, don't just want that, want to be the best there has ever been. Warriors wanting to reflect the Emperor's perfection expressing a desire.

Nurgle - The engrained instinct to avoid death, to live on no matter what. Our drives to keep things also empower him, as does the determination to never give up.

If you wanted to do 'Angels' you'd have to find genuinely positive emotions to theme them around. Love is an obvious one, Angels from that god would have powers that heal their allies and protect them from harm, as well as preventing the enemy from doing harm. Possibly Tzeentch for this one, with Sisters of Battle models.

Trust - very unified, with powers that benefit the group as a whole and would work in large squads. Khorne rules with Space Marine models.

Humbleness - putting other's needs before your own, doing what needs to be done despite your own feelings. Nurgle rules, possibly Ogryn models.

Slannesh is a tricky one though...

 

[TheSpore]

i really think this is an intresting idea i like actually but one complaint

if you proxy in SM models they show haveing gun daemons have no range besides zteench. anyway

just use mostly inq. models

 

[normtheunsavoury]

Your idea is on a good track, but slightly flawed.

Your ideas for the 'good' versions of the Chaos Gods are still the Chaos Gods themselves; They are pride, desire, hope and self-preservation. Other warp gods no doubt exist personifying other emotional traits; the Chaos Gods are the rawest and purest, thus the most powerful.

Khorne - many mistake him for the personification of anger. Without pride there is no anger, pride is the desire to be the best and the strongest, and make it known to everyone. Khorne cares not where the blood flows from, when it flows in his name it shows he is strong. Daemons that represent the Emperor's pride are still Khornate.

Tzeentch - Hope. The feeling that things will be different, that despite the odds things can be changed for the better. 'Better' is subjective, so Tzeench only cares that things change. Daemons tapping into the Emperor's psychic might to help others would want to step in and alter things.

Slannesh - Desire. Very simple and self-explanatory. If you want something, take it. Take all of it. If you want to be a good musician, don't just want that, want to be the best there has ever been. Warriors wanting to reflect the Emperor's perfection expressing a desire.

Nurgle - The engrained instinct to avoid death, to live on no matter what. Our drives to keep things also empower him, as does the determination to never give up.

If you wanted to do 'Angels' you'd have to find genuinely positive emotions to theme them around. Love is an obvious one, Angels from that god would have powers that heal their allies and protect them from harm, as well as preventing the enemy from doing harm. Possibly Tzeentch for this one, with Sisters of Battle models.

Trust - very unified, with powers that benefit the group as a whole and would work in large squads. Khorne rules with Space Marine models.

Humbleness - putting other's needs before your own, doing what needs to be done despite your own feelings. Nurgle rules, possibly Ogryn models.

Slannesh is a tricky one though...

I don't see the idea as flawed at all, in fact I think the Emperor matches all of the above very well indeed.
The Emperor was very far from humble, he was definately not trust worthy!
The Emperor, if you look at it in these terms was possibly the greatest Chaos Warrior the galaxy has ever seen.
Trying to create "good" version of Chaos using the Emperor doesn't work because he wasn't a good guy. He fits all of the examples you have given above the only real difference is that He opposed Chaos.
So, should he become a god within the warp His Angels/Daemons would still reflect those aspects they would just be in opposition to Chaos.

As for Space Marines being modeled with guns, simply swap them for close combat weapons, chainswords, power fists and power swords would do the trick!

 

[Khargoth]

I don't see the idea as flawed at all, in fact I think the Emperor matches all of the above very well indeed.
The Emperor was very far from humble, he was definately not trust worthy!
The Emperor, if you look at it in these terms was possibly the greatest Chaos Warrior the galaxy has ever seen.
Trying to create "good" version of Chaos using the Emperor doesn't work because he wasn't a good guy. He fits all of the examples you have given above the only real difference is that He opposed Chaos.
So, should he become a god within the warp His Angels/Daemons would still reflect those aspects they would just be in opposition to Chaos.

Well that's the question, are they Imperial Daemons, which seems kind of questionable (I guess you could have a Radical Inquisitor running the whole thing), or are they Warp Angels; benevolent warp entities born of positive emotions?

 

[admiraldick]

whilst i can see what you're getting at, i would say that the concept doesn't make a lot of sense.

Living Saints are incredibly unusual (much like cannonisation of a living person in the Catholic Church). there have only been a handful ever recorded. i would seriously doubt that there would be more than one of them in the galaxy at any one time. you might as well have an army of Ecclesiarchs.

so, if we leave that concept behind, it looks like you are either trying to achieve a 'supernatural' army of manifestations of the Emperor's Divine will (similar in nature to Chaos Daemons) or simply having an army of particularly zealous members of the Imperial Cult.

and both of these have logical problems: the former is probably the best concept, but it doesn't make much sense as the Emperor is not like the Chaos gods. if he does indeed exert and influence over the 40kiverse, the its in miraculous events and through his faithful, not in tangible manifestations. the latter is even more problematic, because it might as well just be an Ecclesiarchy force, or something equally mundane.

 

[Giant Fossil Penguin]

I don't see why there would never be an army of 'Angels' that are formed from the might of the God-Emperor. The galaxy is a huge place, and 10,000 years+ is a very long time; plenty of opportunity for this to have occurred.
Besides, I don't see why there not being any fluff about this type of thing is being brought up as a stumbling block. This idea is an exercise in creativity, in trying to re-badge the C:CD 'dex, but with Imperial warp-beings. The actualities of the Emperor are utterly unimportant, as this is all stuff that I want to make up whole-cloth; be he a good guy or bad guy, god or bad-ass psyker, it doesn't matter.
If people really think that there is a good discussion about wether or not Imperial 'Angels' could ever relly exist, then maybe we should start a seperate thread for this? I'd really like this one to be resereved for the re-badging of Chaos Daemons to Imperial Angels.

To that end, and to get back OT, where would we put the Living Saints? Whilst my idea was spurred by them being compared to Daemon Princes, maybe they would be better placed as Heralds? Hell, maybe they could be both; the Heralds are more like super-Daemons, whilst the Princes would be characters such as Celestine, Imperial warriors who's faith and fury in the eyes of the God-Emperor, has seen them raised up to beyond mortality? Now that I try to systematise this idea, I find I'm confusing myself!

GFP

 

[normtheunsavoury]

Maybe go with Living Saints as Heralds and have the Daemon Princes represented as Primarchs.
They were the Emperors greatest so maybe put some of the dead Primarchs to some use, risen again to finish the job they started.
Ferrus Manus, Dorn and Sanguinius risen again as Angel/Daemon Princes would be awesome!

 

[GrimzagGorwazza]

I like the idea of using a chaos army to create someting pro imperial, heckit's been done the other way a lot with traitor guard. I do think that just replacing the demon models with standing figures wouldn't really do the concept justice. i would try to look beyond the fluff of each demon to the overall rules and limit myself to former saints, the imperium has had a lot of them. I'm not suggesting you naim them all but try to keep the angellic/saintly imagery that you get from the sisters of battle army and more recently the blood angels and carry it across.
As none of the demons in the book have a 3+ save i would hesitate in including any power armour toting models as it's only going to end in confusion.
i'd use sisters repentia for bloodletters, maybe cherubs (converted with the mechanical parts hidden or removed)or angels (death cult assassins with the new blood angels wings converted onto them) for furies.

The trick will be finding lightly armoured models which don't have much in the way of shooting attacks, i'd have a loot at the witch and wych models to see wether you could use them for anything. Maybe with head swaps. For the demon princes or harder hitting individuals i'd look through the range of 40k inquisitors and preachers, maybe try to build some sort of uber angel.

If you really browse the miniatures lists online you should be able to come up with a very visual stunning army. But i think the inclusion of power armour models would just confuse issues. There are acceptions, i mean the seraphim armour doesn't look anywhere near as bulky as their space marine counterparts so you could probabley get away with it but everyone knows SM have a 3+ save and without converting they are just going to look like space marines even with a fancy paintjob.

 

[Khargoth]

The trick will be finding lightly armoured models which don't have much in the way of shooting attacks, i'd have a loot at the witch and wych models to see wether you could use them for anything. Maybe with head swaps. For the demon princes or harder hitting individuals i'd look through the range of 40k inquisitors and preachers, maybe try to build some sort of uber angel.

If you really browse the miniatures lists online you should be able to come up with a very visual stunning army. But i think the inclusion of power armour models would just confuse issues. There are acceptions, i mean the seraphim armour doesn't look anywhere near as bulky as their space marine counterparts so you could probabley get away with it but everyone knows SM have a 3+ save and without converting they are just going to look like space marines even with a fancy paintjob.

Well fingers crossed Penguin intends on doing some hefty conversions rather than straight proxies. Possibly do mix and match, use bare torsos and arms, robed legs and Space Marine shoulderguards with SM weaponry.

 

[admiraldick]

@ Giant Fossil Penguin: it sounds like we've got off on the wrong foot here. i'm not against you idea, and i'm certainly not anti-creativity. i'm sorry if it sounded like i was coming down on your idea. i wasn't. i was just trying to point out that the theme you had chosen for your army wasn't the strongest, and that perhaps a stronger one might be better.

I don't see why there would never be an army of 'Angels' that are formed from the might of the God-Emperor. The galaxy is a huge place, and 10,000 years+ is a very long time; plenty of opportunity for this to have occurred.

i'm not sure i said 'it would never happen'. just that it seemed illogical, because that's not how the Emperor works. of course the universe is big enough to accept all things, from Hello Kitty marines, to free-love Tau, to daisy faced Necrons, to Star Wars Stormtrooper IG Companies and the whole of the Warhammer world.

you are free to be as creative as you see fit.

i was simply pointing out, that in the context of the game the 'theme' didn't make much sense.

Besides, I don't see why there not being any fluff about this type of thing is being brought up as a stumbling block. This idea is an exercise in creativity, in trying to re-badge the C:CD 'dex, but with Imperial warp-beings.

and that's cool. i totally see what you are aiming for and i'd love to support you in it. good daemons, is a pretty cool idea. in fact, up until the release of the Realms of Chaos books (when Chaos was invented), you good have good or evil daemons.

the problem, as i've stated before, it that the theme behind that army doesn't seem in keeping with the background at all. that is not to say that it can't exist unless it has been previously mentioned in the background, but that new concepts shouldn't fly in the face of established ones, unless you are not attempting to create something from the 40k univese.

and as you have repeatedly stated that you want an 'imperial', and not simply 'good', army, it sounds like you want something that is inkeeping with the game universe, and hence you have to restrict yourself to its concepts.

The actualities of the Emperor are utterly unimportant,

if that is true, then you do not want 'imperial' anything. and i think that that is your biggest stumbling block in theme.

you should drop any notion of the emperor and simply say you want an army of good daemons/angels.

If people really think that there is a good discussion about wether or not Imperial 'Angels' could ever relly exist, then maybe we should start a seperate thread for this? I'd really like this one to be resereved for the re-badging of Chaos Daemons to Imperial Angels.

we are discussing your rebranding. the two discussions are inexorably linked.

To that end, and to get back OT, where would we put the Living Saints?

ok. lets start over.

i don't think that the idea of the Emperor manifesting his power on the battlefield makes much sense. but to demonstrate that i am actually trying to help you in this creative endevour, might i suggest an alternative:

what if the 'angels' were not manifestations of the Emperor, but the sancified souls of those that he had saved, returned to aid in some task?

if we assume that a Living Saint, is someone who has recieved a particular blessing of power from the Emperor (which i'm not sure they are, but i don't think that's pivotal at the moment), then they would be more like a Greater Daemon, who has been joined in battle by the souls of the holy, who would be played as lesser daemons.

if however, you see the Living Saint as being nothing more than mortal (as the Living Saint status is given to them by the Ministorum, not the Emperor) then a Herald would probably be a better option.