40k Nurgle: Blue or Green?

This weekend I got some painting time. I cracked on with my plague marine unit, getting lots of details finished. All that needs doing now, in addition to bases, is weapons and eyes.

The problem is do I go blue or green?

I quickly threw some paint on my two plasma gunners to get an instant reaction… but I can't make up my mind!

So, I've decided to open it up to the viewing public – yes, you get to choose what colour the eyes and plasma coils on my Plague Marine army get to be!

Here is the first model showcasing the BLUE. As you can see it has not been painted to a finished standard, I've just slapped on some base colour and got a couple of highlights in. You should be able to get a feel for it from that.

This is the model showing the GREEN plasma option. Similarly he is not nearly finished but the colour helps indicate what the final look will be.

There is an alternative.

How about green eyes and blue plasma, or blue eyes and green plasma? Thanks to the wonders of Photoshop we can get a sneak peek at how that might look…

And that's it. Take a look to the column on the right hand side of the blog – you should find a poll at the top where you can vote blue or green and have an input into my army. Maybe you'd rather see a different colour entirely!

Plague Marine Progress

I promised you folks some pretty pictures after a week of musings and I'm kind of delivering today. Progress of my Plague Marines has been slow thanks to real life, but here we are – not sure you could call these guys pretty though.

It was during my prep for our latest game that I discovered the lack of finished grunts in this army. I was packing my figures in my case (that I would go on to leave at home on the day) when I noticed how few of my Plague Marines had more than an initial coat of pain on them. Having just spent weeks converting and painting my Nurgle Heldrake and Forgefiend I thought I should stop with the big models and go back to the essentials.

It's funny now that I see these guys photographed up close and personal the paint job looks quite messy when, on the table top, they look rather crisp and defined.

I used my Vallejo English Uniform as the main colour for the armour, accompanied by lashing of GW brown wash (whatever it's called these days) and adding white to the base colour for highlights. The rusted metallic parts were basecoated in GW Scorched Brown with PP Oily Steel and GW Bestial Brown dabbed over it here and there. A final coat of brown wash seals everything in nicely.

Obviously the weapons need looking at but I want to spend some time on them, rather than being an afterthought.

The burning question however is, what colour to do plasma coils and eyes?… green or blue?

Typhus' Musings: Plague Marine Army Lists

For those of you who like to see pretty pictures of painted miniatures…they are coming. Paint has been applied to models recently after a couple of weeks break, so stay tuned. In the meantime more gaming thoughts.

I've spent the last week musing over the Plague Marine performances against Bull's Dark Angels, scrutinising each unit in an attempt to devise something totally effective and completely evil. For the purposes of this particular musing I will be using 2000 points as a game size.


LIST 1

Here's the list I used in the last game:


Typhus

Plague Marines x8, plasma guns x2, power axe x1

Plague Zombies x35

Heldrake

Forgefiend

Defiler


Land Raider, extra armour, dozer blade, dirge caster

(Iron Warrior Allies)

Sorcerer, Psych Lvl 3

Chaos Marines x7, plasma gun x1, power axe x1, Rhino, extra armour, dozer blade

Chaos Marines x7, plasma gun x1, power axe x1, Rhino, extra armour, dozer blade

Predator, Lascannon sponsons, extra armour

As you can see I've drifted away from an all-Nurgle list in order to cram more models (and Heavy Support) in there. The Iron Warrior allies also allow some cheaper troops in there to support the Plague Marines and zombies. On the day it worked pretty well – an IW unit rolled up and pinched the relic objective while the big units were thrown into Bull's face to deal with.

LIST 2

Based upon my findings over the last week I composed this next list as an opener. It pretty much takes my favourite units and duplicates them. There's not a lot of heavy weapons that I can bring to bear but certainly a lot of models:

Typhus

Terminators x7
Mark of Nurgle, Veterans of the long war, heavy flamer, twin lightning claws x1, gift of mutation

Plague Marines x7
Veterans of the long war, plasma gun x2, power axe x1, gift of mutation
Rhino, dozer blade, dirge caster

Plague Marines x7
Veterans of the long war, plasma gun x2, power axe x1, gift of mutation
Rhino, dozer blade, dirge caster

Plague Zombies x35

Plague Zombies x35

Heldrake

Heldrake

Forgefiend

Forgefiend

I love this list. It may never win a tournament but it's very fluffy with all those units of 7 (or multiples of) and has 96 models in it. Between the zombies and the Heldrakes chaos will ensue, maybe even enough for the Plague marines to do their thing. By giving everyone the Veterans bonus they have Hatred towards Space Marines which will no doubt help. It is troop heavy and light on the heavy weapons, so cracking vehicles may be an issue but I'd be happy taking this to a tournament for a laugh.

LIST 3

This list picks up on some of the things I've been talking about but stays very much Nurgle:

Chaos Lord
Mark of nurgle, sigil of corruption, gift of mutation, power weapon, veterans of the long war

Daemon Prince
Mark of nurgle, wings, armour, brand of skalathrax

Hellbrute, twin-linked lascannon, missile launcher

Hellbrute, reaper autocannon

Hellbrute, reaper autocannon

Plague Marines x7
Plasma gun x2, power axe x1, Rhino, havoc launcher

Plague Marines x7
Plasma gun x2, power axe x1, Rhino, havoc launcher

Plague Marines x7
Plasma gun x2, power axe x1, Rhino, havoc launcher

Heldrake

Forgefiend

Predator, twin-linked lascannon, lascannon sponsons

The Daemon Prince with his wings and Brand becomes a mini Heldrake and the two can support each other (until they get shot down). The Hellbrutes could be thrown out there with the Forgefiend to create multiple high-threat targets so that the solid core of Plague Marines can get on with things.

I don't think any one of these lists is the finished article but I do like elements of each. Going all-out with one particular chaos god is always going to be expensive pointswise, but things like chaos cultists and the plague zombies can help there. Of course we have the imminent new Daemons codex which will make a great addition to the Chaos Marine book, so maybe I should hang on for a little while before committing to a list just yet.