In part two of our interview with the design team behind the new Emperor’s Children miniatures, the gang explains how they created an army of singular egotists.
WarCom: The Emperor’s Children are all about excess and pride, which can be quite intangible concepts. How did you represent these in the miniatures?
Filip: Posing is key to the Emperor’s Children range as you can tell so much about a character from how they hold themselves.
Maxime: Pride and arrogance really come across that way, but their power armour helps set them apart. The undersuit shows more in the Emperor’s Children than in any other faction – a lot more of the mid section is showing, and the armour at the top of the thighs is also cut away.
Filip: This creates a slender silhouette, and it allows for more motion and agility in the posing, making them more dynamic – fitting for a faction known for speed, agility and martial prowess.
Maxime: The fact that they are more exposed conveys a lot too – if they do get injured, perhaps that’s just another of the sensations they’re seeking?
Filip: We created a visual hierarchy through the armour, where generally the higher up the ranks you go the less armour you’re wearing – though there are some exceptions to that, as the Emperor’s Children is full of egotists and esoteric individuals.
Maxime: They tend to the androgynous and elongated, which let us explore some poses and attitudes beyond what you’d expect from Chaos Space Marines. If you want to show pride, you straighten up and puff out your chest, so the pose of the Lord Exultant really exemplified this attitude.
Filip: Some of these marines also have high-heel motifs built into their armour, and while the design of the kits lends them some extra height, the posing gives them the illusion of even more height as they are less tensed and compact than their peers.
Noise Marines
Maxime: Noise Marines are equivalents to Havocs: long-range support fighters who plant themselves in the ground with heavier poses, and armour that feels more substantial with raised gorgets. We put a lot of work into designing the screamer pistols, sonic blasters and blastmasters.
These are weapons – not instruments – so they needed to feel threatening, with the instrumental elements there to add textures. The dials, levers, tuning parts and gargoyle muzzles lend them that sonic element, while the rest of the design is centered on being guns.
We wanted to ensure they had a lot of options across the kit, from swappable muzzles to backpacks and shoulder pads. They’re more detailed than the Tormentors and Infractors as they’re the elites. You could imagine that these particular Chaos Space Marines have been around since the Horus Heresy, fighting alongside Fulgrim himself
Flawless Blades
Filip: The Flawless Blades are arrogant warriors who battle for the direct entertainment of daemonic patrons. There’s a lot of bare skin here, with necks and abdomens exposed – one even has fabric stapled directly to his bare skin.
Maxime: They aren’t wearing gloves, a detail I really like. When you go to war with weapons like this, your hands are one of the first things you protect, but these guys want unfettered access to the sensations of duelling, and have the arrogance to do so without protection.
Filip: They’re out primarily to show off and have fun, in the Emperor’s Children sense of the word... None of them are posed as if they’re in combat; instead they’re all either flourishing, or locking eyes with their next opponent.
The heads are a blend between Space Marines and Daemons, as they go through a lot of extreme body modifications in their worship of Slaanesh. Some even have flayed skin or eyes peeled open like the most infamous Emperor’s Children artwork. The goal was to make them all feel like individual characters, and to the end we made as many pieces interchangeable as we could, to give people the freedom to craft their own arrogant warriors. There are also some quite subtle daemon faces in the armour alongside warped Slaanesh symbols, as well as injection ports on the side of their thighs.
Maxime: We don’t want just to design everything as combat related – they have drug injectors but also little flasks which could contain more substances or maybe even perfume to enhance their senses. These little oddities make the universe feel more complete, telling us more about their character beyond them being combatants.
Tormentors and Infractors
Maxime: Before this release, Noise Marines were the core infantry alongside Chaos Space Marine Legionaries. Tormentors and Infractors now become the core infantry of the Emperor’s Children. Getting the tone and balance of the armour right was a real challenge: we had to convey that they were Chaos Space Marines, to give a wider range of movement to the wearer, and to reference the Mk.VI Corvus pattern power armour.
There are five poses, which show off that increased range of motion and agility. To help with customisation, all the arms, shoulder pads, backpacks and helmets are interchangeable to break up the silhouettes.There are all sorts of pouches, drug injectors, grenades that you can attach to personalise them even more, while the blank shoulder pads let you add some freehand or transfers to push them even further.
The heads without helmets were the most fun parts to design – mutated heads, leather masks with studded spikes, all that debauched stuff. Some helmets are classic Chaos Space Marine designs with a touch of Slaaneshi flavour, while others are very Emperor’s Children-coded with smooth shapes and that open-mouthed speaker design. There are also some pure MkVI ‘beakie’ helmets… with modifications
There are three Icons of Excess in the kit – two Emperor’s Children icons and one Slaanesh icon. These are designed to be mounted on a backpack, but they also have recessed details on the back for you to mount them on your vehicles.
We’ll have a separate article all about the design of the Daemon Primarch of Slaanesh tomorrow. Everything will be available to pre-order on Saturday!
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