Preparing for War…

So after my first 6th Edition experience at the weekend I had a lot to think about. I have three and a half weeks until the full on rematch against Bull and his Dark Angels. From the moment I returned home on Sunday I have been list building and have got to a point where I have something I like. I'm not going to divulge the content of this uber list – Bull reads the blog too and I would like to leave a surprise or two for him on the day!

The other bit of cool news is that Bull had a belated birthday present for me (I haven't seen him for some time). It was of course 40k related and will probably feature in the game… more on this later. After all the building done in the last few weeks I was keen to get some paint onto models. The remainder of squad one got a basecoat to help encourage me to get them finished.

The fly in this particular ointment is that I have decided to save the cost of a Power Fist in this squad and replace with a Power Axe – this means my lovely painted champion will take a seat on the subs bench. He will, however, be replaced by the new Chaos Champion model that was part of my gift from Bull – he has a Power Axe and with a bit of greenstuff will fit in nicely!

The Terminators got some base colour and the two Power Weapon guys got their greenstuff finished, ready for undercoating.

The Terminator Champion got a little more love. I started to get him painted up as he could be a key character in the army and I really like the model. I'm looking forward to getting this unit finished – it will look awesome.

I mentioned my gift from Bull and it was a corker!

Forgefiend!!

This model is enormous and was fun to put together, if a bit fiddly. The firepower output has a lot of potential for something approaching a daemonic Dreadnought. It is only BS 3 but the volume of shot should make up for this.

I had the foresight to have some magnets on hand while building him so that I can swap out the guns if needed in the future.

I can see me purchasing another one of these in the near future!

Happy Halloween!!

(Previous Nurgle developments here…)

The Nurgle army creeps on…

Not a lot of progress this week and to add injury to illness my beautiful 27" iMac died on Wednesday evening which has hampered blog updating. Luckily I shouldn't have to find another £2k to replace it – hopefully it should just be a hard drive replace. Needless to say it has been a traumatic week and I'm having to update the blog from work.

The Terminators above had some greenstuff added. In most cases it's to blend the 'clean' elements with the Nurgle resin bits or to just Nurgle everything up more. The Champion had some of the rotting skulls removed from his armour – I felt he was being overshadowed by the volume of dead heads decorating his gear and it was moving attention away from his actual head.

I also added a resin basing bit to each base. Now I can add my basing sand and get these guys sprayed and painted.

The final three Plague Marines from squad 1 got some attention. More greenstuff Nurglization done and these guys are almost ready to be sprayed and painted too. I'm hoping that if I can get one unit complete quite quickly it will encourage me to crack on with the second unit.

The Plague Lord did have some more work done to him after the last update. I added some greenstuff 'skin' around his innards to help close it all in a bit. I used a method illustrated in a tutorial I found and flagged up the other week. Whilst very thin greenstuff is a pain to manipulate and use, the end result is excellent. I also added extra rot to his armour and a bone/horn coming out of his knee.

I'm pretty happy with this part now, I just need to give his cloak and head some attention and then I can move on to his weapon. Looking forward to painting this guy up.

40k Dark (Nurgle) Vengeance Lord – Part 1

It's pretty much a shared opinion across the community that the Dark Vengeance models are rather lovely. They're also rather limited edition, or at least rather costly to replace, so it makes no sense on paper for me to hack them up into pieces. Yet that is exactly what I'm doing!

You've already seen my 'tweaking' of the Chosen into something more Nurgle-ish. Not a lot of hacking up, more a case of adding some contagion. Now it was time for the Lord to go under the knife for a comparatively extreme makeover.

Once he had been stuck to his weighted base and had had his cloak and arms added I took the rather insane step of hacking off his beautiful daemon sword – a scythe is much more appropriate for a Lord of Nurgle. I then went to town on his cloak with the dremel. The main point of this was to remove the detail from the cloak, make the edges ragged and make the whole thing look a lot more worn.

When I put the tools down he looked like he'd been savaged. Needless to say I was feeling rather nervous as I was way past the point of no return – had I just trashed a lovely model?

Next day, keen to prove I'd made the right decision, I ploughed on with the greenstuffing. I gave him some rolls of fat and added bits of mutation here and there. I also put a piece of plastic rod in place to form the basis of the scythe, which would be added later. I wanted to give the impression of him being bloated without going too far as he has a relatively small head and I didn't want him looking like a cast member from Beetlejuice. However, being the Lord of my Plague Marine army he had to look the part. A very tricky balance.

Rather than building my confidence in the decision-making process, covering up all the lovely armour in greenstuff made me very nervous indeed. Still, once you start out on this road you have to see it through.

I had a bit of a revelation overnight after adding the greenstuff – I would drill a massive hole in his body! And so I did. I then rolled out sausages of greenstuff and literally stuffed them into the wound. I filled the gaps with various sized balls of greenstuff which I also dotted about his torso. Things were finally starting to improve. It seemed that the devil is in the details and by adding little bits here and there I could give the impression of rot and disease without the need to go over the top with bulk.

Still lots of work to do and I want to add more details, given that he is the main character in the army.

Stay tuned for more…

40k Researching the Rot…

With not much time available for building and painting recently I've taken to the internet to do some research and find some inspiration for my growing ranks of rotting space marines.

The research started almost by accident when I downloaded Flight of the Eisenstein (above) on my iPad. Despite having the book in printed form for some years I never got around to reading past the first chapter so thought a shiny digital version might do the trick. I finished it this weekend and have to say I thoroughly enjoyed it… finally.

The thing about building a Nurgle-based army is that it has an easy entry level, it's very forgiving. You can absolutely stuff up a conversion or paint job on your models and it can have the opposite effect – you could even drop your plastic models in the fire and the resulting blobby mess would still look very much in character (to a point of course). It also allows the more experienced modeller to go to town and the internet is awash with examples – you may have seen some of these before. I thought I'd highlight a few that caught my attention.

This fella is stunning. I found it on the Santa Cruz Warhammer site and included a step-by-step.

Another top-drawer model that I found on Toycutter. Although not really a gaming piece it oozes inspiration.

Toycutter finds another superbly painted shelf-sitter. This time, not so much rot just a bit of mutation and grubbiness.

This model leads a rather awesome and unique army of converted Death Guard marines.

This rather wicked looking fellow comes from Pega mini design. This has been done by a very talented sculptor and I love the way that he has totally overhauled a standard mini.

This Nurgle Lord is an original sculpt by Andres at Steeldragon and very impressive indeed!

I love the simplicity of this Nurgle Champion conversion based upon the WHFB plastic model.

The paint job on these Nurgle Havocs is great and the use of the older armour is a cracking idea.

And last, but by no means least, we have Svartmetall over at Relic News who, over a period of nearly 3 years, posted a host of Nurgle conversion ideas – with excellent use of greenstuff. After reading through this I feel the need to up my game!

As for my own Plague Marines they all have pennies in their bases now. I also started to convert the Lord model from the Dark Vengeance box set, hacking away his power sword (which felt like desecration) to be replaced by a scythe.

40k Revised list and thoughts…

After the list building last time and some very useful feedback my starter list for my Plague Marines has evolved.


Chaos Lord Mark of Nurgle, Sigil of Corruption, Power Weapon, Plasma Pistol, Mutation

Terminators x5
Mark of Nurgle / Heavy Flamer / Combi-Flamer / 2x Power Fist / Twin Lightning Claws

Hellbrute

Plague Marines x7
Flamer x2 / Power Axe

Plague Marine x7
Meltagun x2 / Power Fist

Cultists x14
Mark of Nurgle / Stubber

Cultist x14
Mark of Nurgle / Flamer

Chaos Bike x3
Mark of Nurgle / Meltagun x2 / Power Weapon

Obliterator x2
Mark of Nurgle

Obliterator x2
Mark of Nurgle

Either Heldrake or Forgefiend


The Lord is as per the previous post with the addition of  a Mutation roll on the Chaos Boon table for giggles and to (hopefully) give him a bit of a boost. I started building the model last night and took the Dremel to his cloak making it look much more appropriate for a lord of decay. I want to swap out his sword for a scythe and then give him as much disease and infection as I can get away with.

I've swapped the Power Sword in the first Plague Marine squad for a Power Axe – their I3 coming to my attention and meaning that most enemies will strike the champion first so I might as well make the most of any attacks I get. I would like to bump up the numbers here but I'm out of Forgeworld bits and I would have to take them up to 14-man squads.

I've bumped up the number of Cultists to 14 (again, sticking to the 'magic' nurgle number 7 in my list). I did contemplate upping them to 21 each but I only have a handful of Guardsmen to bulk out the Dark Vengeance models and, as mentioned previously, I don't want to spend any extra money if poss.

I do like the idea of having a host of Nurgle bikers – I always have – but the work involved in building them would mean I wouldn't get a game for quite some time so I'll stick with 3 for now. The use of meltaguns in this unit is up for debate, testing in games will help me decide if they are the right special weapon choice.

The rest is pretty much as before. I like the idea of squads of Plague Marines, Cultists and Obliterators banding together to support each other and go for objectives, while the rest of the army goes on the offensive.

This list is pretty much at the point where it needs to be playtested and if I know Bull it'll be against Orks. The last list he fielded against my old Blood Angels was full of Dreads and lots of bodies so we'll see. Need to build and paint some more first.

Have a good weekend all – we're off to Centre Parcs in Suffolk with my brother, his wife and my neice so no hobby-time till next week!

40k Nurgle List Thoughts…

There hasn't been much progress on the modelling side of things as real life gets in the way.

I've been mulling over the new Chaos Codex and at the point where I started putting pen to paper and get some list building done. The trick would be can I make a Chaos list (for my new Nurgle army) that doesn't involve buying any new models. I do have a lot of bits after years on the wrong side of the warp so if I could utilise what I have without spending that would be superb.

I decided to stick with the 1500 points limit of old. This would give me a better chance of avoiding new purchases whilst having an army of sufficient size for a decent game.

My first list looks like this –

Chaos Lord (new purchase)
Terminator Armour / Mark of Nurgle / Twin Lightning Claws

Terminators x5
Mark of Nurgle / Heavy Flamer / Combi-Flamer / 2x Power Fist / Twin Lightning Claws

Plague Marines x7
Flamer x2 / Power Weapon

Plague Marine x7
Meltagun x2 / Power Fist

Cultists x10
Mark of Nurgle / Stubber

Cultist x10
Mark of Nurgle / Flamer

Chaos Bike x3
Mark of Nurgle / Meltagun x2 / Power Weapon

Obliterator x2
Mark of Nurgle

Obliterator x2
Mark of Nurgle

Hellbrute

Either Heldrake or Forgefiend (new purchase)


Now, having not played Chaos in 5th or 6th Edition I'm sure you folks can pick holes in this list. I understand things are more objectives based and having limited Troop choices could be an issue. However, I like the flavour of it and it will probably form the basis of my list and I will tweak accordingly as my mood changes.

You will also notice the possibility of a Heldrake in the list… after my scathing rant about the model! I am still not a big fan now that I have seen more of it, however, it is good on paper and I have seen some great illustrations of it in the codex and like the concept of it. I decided that the only way I can get around my dislike of it is to get the model and turn it into something I think is cool. We will see how this goes. I'm also hoping that Nurgling it up will make it better (imo).

It was a few hours later that I realised I still had the Chaos Lord from the Dark Vengeance box set so, rather than buy a Terminator Lord, I could Nurgle this guy up and use him something like this…

Chaos Lord
Mark of Nurgle, Sigil of Corruption, Power Weapon, Plasma Pistol

…or do I use him as a Sorceror? So many choices!!

Nurgle's Rot Takes Hold…

There hasn't been a lot of progress since returning from holiday. This has been mainly due to having a fair amount of visitors… and the new WoW expansion of course.


The arrival of the new Chaos codex at the weekend was a breath of fresh air. Not only did I order a physical copy I also downloaded the digital version too. Now, whilst on holiday I bought a digital copy of the latest White Dwarf and found it quite good. Unfortunately this did not translate quite so well to the full-blown codex. The new book can be quite confusing anyway and takes a while to acclimatise to the layout and page order. Because of the smaller viewing area available on the iPad the digital version is even more confusing and involves lots of clicking to get to the info you're looking for. It's kind of like a Chaos mini-website. When the post arrived and I got to see the physical book things got easier and my digital experience was improved, now that I know where to look for info.

Anyway, I managed to put a couple of sample lists together for my Dark Vengeance Plague Marines which was fun. A game or two of 40k are certainly on the cards – I'm very happy with the new codex. I am reluctant to buy any new models at the moment but a Forgefiend looks like a necessity (I did receive some GW vouchers for my birthday – thank you Chris and Jen – so this will help tremendously).

There hasn't been any more painting. The colour was added to the Hellbrute (above) before I went away and he's been sitting patiently for a while now.

I spent yesterday evening building the models I needed for my two Plague Marine units. I had all the bits lying around so it was just a case of sticking them together.

At least now I can see the scope of the painting required and can set a timetable accordingly. It also means that I could, in an extreme case, have a game with the unpainted models in order to learn the new rules.

In the week I had taken my Nurgle Terminators off their resin bases and stuck them to plastic bases. They need a bit of greenstuff to make them more Nurgly and pennies in the bases but pretty much good to go.

Having read the new codex and learned that all Chaos Champions HAVE to challenge and accept challenges, the Power Fist on my Termie Champ didn't seem so clever. I hacked the dual Lightning Claws off one of the Dark Vengenace Chosen and added them. Some greenstuff to hide the gaps and infect the claws and he will be ready for his new paint job.

The Dark Vengeance Lord gets Nurgled next…

Nurgle progess…

Work continued on the Nurgle marines right up to the night before my holiday.

The armour had a continuous cycle of highlight, shadow wash applied until things were where they needed to be.

The metallic elements had Boltgun Metal randomly applied to the Scorched Brown basecoat. I then added random Bestial Brown but in quite a sparse fashion. Finally another coat of Scorched Brown was randomly applied followed by a Devlan Mud wash. It looks rather like bronze in the photo, but it's quite a flat colour in reality.

The Nurgle marines had a similar treatment applied. The next step was to paint certain areas as fleshy. The basecoat was Dark Flesh – a couple of thinner coats to get good solid coverage over the Black. I then applied a couple of highlights, adding more white to the base colour each time.


In the mean time, there is something much bigger and nastier waiting in the wings…

Nurgle Hellbrute!!!

The progress continues here…