woensdag 30 mei 2012

A plague on all your houses!

Ever since getting to know Warhammer 40k, one of the things that has intrigued me endlessly were the 4 malicious powers of Chaos! I have had several armies for both Fantasy and 40k but never were those armies of the dark gods...

So when Tomsche was selling a batch of Chaos Space marine stuff this was the time to turn to the dark side!
His deal included a mix of Space and Spikey Marines, a Land Raider, a Predator, some female deamons to be used as Daemonettes, a winged daemon, a Forgeworld Slaanesh Dreadnought and Lucius the Eternal.

As you can see his interest was towards A Slaanesh Marine army, but I had some different plans though! NURGLE!!!

I further bulked out my current batch of Chaos with a set of Marines from the Black Reach set and two Rhino's I had, one from my Orks army and one from never completed Space Wolves. And I also had that Greater Daemon of Nurgle I had bought from Creepy Andy a long time ago.

And so I set out to make myself a Plague Marine army, not just green Chaos Marines...no I wanted propper diseased Nurgle Marines!

Here's what I got:



 First up is my Vindicator, I was on a budget and decided to make one of my own. All you can see from the toy tank I started with are the wheels, all the rest is plasticard, scraps, parts from model tanks, bitsbox junk, green stuff and molten plastic! It turned out somewhat bigger than the original Vindicator but I don't mind.
I will probably change the driver as this one looks silly and too "Astartes"


 Two Rhino's and a Predator, all heavily converted to sport scabs, buboes and other fleshy, itchy goodness.
I tried to incorporate the Nurgle symbol on every vehicle somewhere rather than just paint it on.


Ah yes, the Land Raider! What a machine...I just love the look of a Raider especially when it's Nurgled up like this one! As with all vehicles it was painted in obvious green and then all of the diseased parts were picked out with fleshy tones to give them a pox-riddled appearance.


Here's all my infantry guys (correction, not all, still have some awaiting finishing touches). As said, these guys were made up of mixed Chaos and regular Marine sets and then Nurglified. I can't say I like every single model I've made but in general they have the right look and that's what counts!


This one is the Space Marine Captain model from the Black Reach box. Not sure how he will serve me though, originally made as a Chaos Lord but may be degraded to a unit champion instead! How treacherous it is to serve the Dark Lords!!!


Some of the Plague Marines with the Typhus model, I think this is the model why I wanted Nurgle Marines in the first place. He is one of my favourite models in the 40k range and I bought him way before I even started a Nurgle force. He will serve as my Lord as he can be used in many ways and just looks too cool to pass up!


More Marines with an Icon of Nurgle, so when I get some lesser daemons I already have the icons to summon them. I don't like the look and price of the current Plaguebearers so I'm waiting for plastics or will buy alternatives for them. But not something that is on my priority list.


This is the Dreadnought out of the Black Reach set, albeit heavily converted. Dreadnoughts are cool models and since I got one from the set it was one of the first things I converted into Nurgle to include in my army!
I was even able to get some different weapon sets and so I made the guns and combat arm removable and interchangeable so it can be used in various ways.


The entire force as it is now. Everything is painted up and ready for battle, I can field a Land Raider, two Rhino's, a Vindicator, Predator, Dreadnought, about 26 Marines, 6 terminators, a Greater Daemon and a Chaos Lord.
And that is not where the fun will end, I still have a Defiler to finish and am working on a scratchbuilt Daemon Prince to wreak some havoc!

In the future I hope to expand my army by including some Bikers and Obliterators. But first I must get these rotters on the table for their first battle to see how they fare.

For a split second I thought about selling the entire army off but I think I would come to regret that!
These Guys are like an itch, you can't help scratching but once it's gone you miss it!!!

zaterdag 12 mei 2012

Might makes right!

Still working on my Ogre Kingdoms army and after much fiddling with Ogres and the Slaughtermaster/Butcher I felt like tackling the Tyrant/Bruiser to lead my army!


This was the Tyrant model I got with my army, nice model but one of my least favourite, I especially dislike the head that comes with this model. So that meant it was conversion-time and although a simple head swap would have been easy, It was soon clear I had other plans!


I chose not to use the great mace weapon although I like it very much, it has that perfect Ogre feel, and still it was sidelined! So what started out as a head-swap was now gonna be a head-weapon-gutplate-swap with some lower arm additions (the lower arms are attached to the mace and I did'nt want to cut it up as it would be of great use in the future!)


So here we are, same basic model with repositioned right arm, new gutplate, Mournfang Cavalry champion head and Ironfist. Some greenstuff was required to fill up gaps and to make the new gear fit!

 As with the mace, I like the brutal and powerful looking weapons the Ogres use and when I started this model I wanted just that! My first thought was a hammer and I stuck with that...by cutting up and glueing together several Ironfists and a gutplate I was able to make a big hammer that even resembled the Great Maw! I'm still thinking of making an opening in the middle somehow so unfortunate targets get pounded and swallowed up in the "Mawcrusher"!



 I remembered having some toys lying aroud of skeletal beasts and one of them was a mammoth. The mammoth tusks were perfect to use as a trophy rack and fit the Ogre theme really well. Chains or rope will be wrapped around the tusks and adorned with several bits and bobs. This adds a lot of height and power to an already impressive leader!


Here is a comparison between the Tyrant and the Ogres. Much more bulky, slightly higher and the Mawcrusher looks like it could pulp even an Ogre in one blow! The Tyrant model will get a more scenic base that will elevate it furter above the regular models in the army.


 And now some finished models, starting with the Butcher. This model is pretty much how I got it and left unchanged as I really like the look of these slaughtering Ogres. I wanted to show that of and thus came in some blood, a little more blood and finally lots of blood! It tried to apply the blood so it looked like the Butcher gobbled up bloody parts and blood ran out of it's mouth, spilling everywhere...



And finally the backbone of the Ogre Kingdoms army, the Ogres itself. I didn't want to paint them up in regular fleshy colours so instead I used a more grisly Necromantic flesh basecoat. Didn't want to copy the bloody hands out of the rulebook either but blood was a must-have so I picked up were I left of with the butcher and so bloody gore was used differently on every model in the form of splatters and drips from impacts, slashes, bites, etc...

I'm really pleased with this start, I hope to get more done soon. Right now I 'm painting up both Leadbelchers and Ironguts and glueing the Ironblaster and Mournfang Cavalry.

So lets say I've still got a job as big as an Ogres belly ahead of me!