How do you solve a problem like a diminutive flying devil that is half swarm in all the wrong places?

Those closely following my Realms of Chaos Slaaneshi warband development will know that I have a very useful familiar. They will also know that it has some very strange characteristics.

The fullpost can be read here but to summaries the familiar is a half breed daemon/scorpion swarm. Parts of its body are wholly swarm, other parts slightly swarm like. Further it has two heads one of which is a goats. And it can fly. Now I’m sure we can all imagine exactly how this looks and in a rpg this would be fine, I’ve got to represent this on the table and I really didn’t know how to do this using vintage citadel as I like to.

Being a half breed means you average out the stats of the two parts but take on all the special rules of both. The rules for swarms clear sate that the swarm is represented by ten models on a 5cm round base. The rules are unclear if this is 5cm radius or 5cm diameter mentioning both! I suspect radius because fitting ten swarm size figures on a 5cm diameter base is crowded. The ten figures may represent one dog each ten rats or one hundred scorpions. They also represent the swarms wounds, removing a figure whenever the swarm takes wounds. So even the rules make it clear that representing a swarm of scorpions on a 1:1 basis is not possible. This got me thinking.

Looking good, should I just go for it and base them properly?

Instead of representing a daemon that was part swarm what about a swarm where each individual scorpion was part daemon. Then I also remembered my epic collection. With my first warband battle rapidly approaching and no solution to my familiar problem in place I decided to try out a test base of epic fiends. In 28mm they are about the same size as the scorpions sold for swarm bases, they are half daemon/half scorpion to look at and they came out in 1990 so are contemporary to the RoC rules. I used five because that's how many wounds the familiar has. I’m not yet sure I want to commit these fine models that are a good proportion of my epic fiends to something else. I do however think they fit the bill and work quite well. Oh and I dropped the goat head, i should try and work that back in because that is an extra attack.

In action helping summon an undead horde.

Dadhammer moment, Wilfy agrees the familiar looks sort of cool.