14 Plaguebearers (1200pts)

The Lost and the Damned tome allows for a Nurgle Daemonic Army to have any number of troops from the Chaos Army list, but not vice versa (aside from Nurglings) so strictly speaking this unit of 14 Plaguebearers shouldn't be allowed in a 3rd Edition army of this type. Unless I get a Great Unclean One to lead them.... But for me they fit perfectly into what I'm building here, basically a huge Chaos Nurgle Army of all my favourite miniatures, lumped together in units. This unit comes in at a whopping 1200pts (600pts per 7 Plaguebearers). The high points expense per Plaguebearer is clear; these guys have 1 Nurgle spell per model (!), save of 6 and -1 to hit on combat and comes equipped with a Plaguesword which if wounds, can induce Nurgle's Rot on a character or unit. As always all these additional rules help create such character for the models themselves which in turn helps me when I come to model and paint them. So here's the unit of 14:

In creating this unit, the task was about creating some unique Plaguebearers, based often on the illustrations I have been inspired by, but also a task in combining new and old sculpts together. With some subtle conversions and a range of pastel like skin tones, I hope I have achieved that. 

The skin tones, whilst variable in colour, were the same in process. From a white undercoat a wash of colour was added (sometimes using the new Contrast paints, sometimes an old ink) and I deliberately appplied several colours together whilst wet, so they bled into each other. When dry, subsequent layers of whiter highlights were applied. To stop the skin from looking too chalky, several glazes were then added over the top, usually a combination of reds, purples and greens to represent the various plague that these models should be bearing.

The main character in this unit is the standard bearer, which is a ForgeWorld resin model, that I believe was some kind of Daemon Prince in 40k (I made this model many years ago). I cut off his left arm, which was quite robotic I recall and added a tentacle to carry the banner. The central image on the triptych of the banner is a copy straight from a Fighting Fantasy illustration (more examples here) and the outermost banners from the Lost and the Damned itself. I decided to add a physical head to the main image and banner itself because I had mis-calculated the positioning of the robed figure and couldn't fit in the top of his head!

Here you can see him escorting a couple of Nurglings and you can see the slug like shape of his body, which I like. His base takes up the equivalent of 4 plaguebearers, hence why there is only 10 models after this one to create the 14 man unit.

Next up are a batch of the older Plaguebearer sculpts, some of my favourites. They've been tinkered with a bit to make them a bit more imposing and unique. First up this smiley lad has had a large scythe added to his left hand whilst his right hand keeps his guts in place:

The next fellow came to me a bit battered. Missing his weapon and his face was a bit smashed in. The latter was corrected with a bit of greenstuff and the former with a paper clip bent and then covered in greenstuff and sculpted to look like wood. Hanging from this branch was a large bell, from one of the modern Nurgle plastic kits. A nice combo of old lead and new plastic:

This guy also arrived in a sorry state. He had lost his nose and his weapon was all bent and ruined. So it was the perfect opportunity to recreate the dancing, beating drummer from the Adrian Smith illustration on p.17 of the LatD. A nose cone, a bone and an orc drum were added:

This old plaguebearer, just had a weapon swap, a nicely corroded sword to hint at the Plaguesword that I mentioned above. You can see the purple skin colouring here, which was one of my favourite colour schemes.

The final old model, is this wide mouthed boy, with his attendant Nurgling having a little tug on his innards. 

From here I move onto the newer versions, which have a very different style and in my opinion are slightly less interesting sculpts. Some of them are very angular and blocky in comparison and lack the clarity and detail of the ones above, yet have a darker and less comic appearance. I certainly felt that the models were less interesting to paint, but having less attachment to them, I was much more open to converting them!

First up is this fella, actually one of the nicer sculpts. He has just been given some wings; a flying plaguebearer wielding a dark sword would not be a pleasant vision on the battlefield. 

This bearer of plagues had his sword painted to look as rusty as possible and had the bottom of his legs clipped off, to give the appearance of him sinking into the swamp. Quite a classic facial sculpt though:

For the bulging, foggy eye plaguebearer, a whip was provided with rusty spikes on the end. I actually really like this sculpt too:

This is probably the weakest sculpt in the group, but I quite liked his contemplative chin stroking pose. What else could he be contemplating but the genitalia of a Nurgling?

And finally a pitchfork wielding, long tentacled tongued plaguebearer. I'm never really a fan of the "wave your weapon in the air" type pose, but made the most of it here, by giving him an interesting choice of arms. The tongue is just a plastic Skaven tail poking out of his gob.

These guys total 1200pts as a unit, which gives a running total of 4355pts. A couple of spawn next...

The Enduring Legacy of the Realms of Chaos

Remember those amazing illustrations from the original Realms of Chaos books, by artists such as Adrian Smith, Paul Campbell etal, the ones that provoked so many ideas and fleshed out some of the possibilities and potential within 3rd Edition Realms of Chaos? I still love looking at them today and often feel inspired to try and convert my own miniatures based on the characters depicted within them. But I don't have to so much anymore because the Games Workshop of today (which has more recently seemed like quite a different beast as to what I grew up with) has released some models that are so obviously steeped in and inspired by some of those very illustrations I alluded to earlier.

I rarely venture onto the GW website, so I am somewhat behind the times, but I saw someone else had painted this model (Sloppity Bilepiper) and assumed it was a conversion, but no, this is a bonefide GW release that is clearly based upon some illustrations from GW of the 80's, specifically the Realms of Chaos. I just had to buy it (and make a bit of an adjustment to make it fit a bit better with those illustrations and lose the, quite frankly, ridiculous staff);

The musical element, the dynamic, dancing poses (especially the Nurgling) are just so evocative of those early illustrations, especially the Dance of Death. The older Nurgling I added to Sloppity's hand is a reference to that era.

I had forgotten about my scenic photography backdrop, so I dusted it off (I actually had to and was surprised by the versatility of static grass) and used it again here:

 Before converting and painting this modern model, I just had to reach for my Lost and Damned book and look for the specific illustrations that I saw the link to in these sculpts. The two images were by Adrian Smith and Paul Campbell from the Nurgle pages in the Lost and Damned Realm of Chaos Tome, specifically the Dance of Death and Nurgle Calvalcade pages. Have a look:

So, as I was researching some of this post, I discovered that GW is releasing a game called the Realm of Chaos. It's not aimed for me, but it is nicely reassuring that my favourite era and output of model miniatures is seeing something of a revival for a new generation of gamers/painters. I'm looking forward to some new plastic models to paint and then sit alongside my original lead ones and hope they all are happy lined up alongside each other.

Retinue Table: Dragon Ogre (Shaggoth)

Although this is a relatively modern sculpt from GW, it is one that I've always admired and one that I've longed to paint. I captured this from Ebay a few years ago, painted terribly and in a pretty bad state. So after a good clean up I decided to get to work on it and 3rd Edition Nurglify him a bit. The iconic Dragon Ogre by Ivan Bartleet (see later in the post) with eagle perched on his forearm, has always been an inspirational piece, so I used that to influence my own take. Using an Undead Carrion bird as his pet, giving him a plaguebearer's cyclops eye, hernia issues, with Nurgling playing with intestines and arming him with a a rusty flail; this is what I came up with:.

I've kept the palette decidedly pastelly, to provide some contrast with the dark open wound and tried to create a kind of scabby appearance to the scales on his back by using a range of yellow and orange glazes. As you can imagine it was a bit of a pain to paint, because it's such a hefty model and also because I'm pretty inexperienced of working on such a scale. There are quite a lot of large surface areas of skin, so to add some interest I included some blue veins (which are a bit washed out on the photos).

You can see the blue veins a bit more clearly in this photo.

So this fella was sold as a Dragon Oggre Shaggoth and when I delved into my Lost and Damned tome I noticed that a Level 25 Dragon Ogre was indeed called a Shaggoth. It's 3rd Edition stats come in impressively as:

M WS BS S T W I A Ld Int Cl Wp PV

6 7 4 6 6 7 5 6 10+3 6+2 9+3 9+3 335

And here's a bit of background from p.154:

"When forks of lightning sunder the night sky and the roar of thunder sends children running to their parents in terror, the people of Kislev say that the Dragon Ogres are fighting each other on the peaks of the World's Edge Mountains. A traveller, a mule skinner or miner huddled in a cave to shelter from mountain storms might see the battling Shaggoths and Sharunocks, as the oldest Dragon Ogres are called, silhouetted against the night sky by lightning-flashes. When the lightning falls in the night, as the tales proclaim, the Dragon Ogres are wakened from their death-like slumbers. As they stir they bellow with the thunder rolls and emerge to fight each other for the chance to become a Champion of Chaos."

Imagine having one of these brutes in your Chaos Warband retinue, well that's exactly what I hope will happen when I roll my next warband - it would happen on a roll of a 76 or 77 and then a 1 in 10 chance of him being a level 25 Shaggoth... I'll take some shots with him in an "unrolled" warband soon...

Here are the WIp photos so you can see the conversion work, which was pretty straightforward really:

And the inspiration behind the piece; on the one hand the work of Ivan Bartleet's Dragon Ogre champion from an 80's White Dwarf:

And Adrian Smith's Dragon Ogre Champion illustration from the Lost and the Damned:

A new banner for my blog

 

I've decided to improve my little corner of the web here with some of my own art and a slight change in ambience, trying to make it easier on the eye and a little bit more damned looking. When I first starting blogging, I was entirely unprepared and unoriginal in choosing Les Edwards iconic illustration from the cover of the Lost and the Damned itself. It really is an image that stayed with me from a teenager to a middle aged geek and seemed appropriate for the introduction of this blog of mine.

However as the blog's developed and my influences increased, I started thinking about creating my own unique illustration, based on some of my favourite GW artwork from when I was a kid, particularly that of Adrian Smith and also some of the illustration from Fighting Fantasy which I have already used liberally in miniature projects.

For example the illustration of some Nurgle Warriors, below by Adrian Smith, has the characters facing us head on, in lovely contrasting black and whites, with a somewhat blighted background. But I have a personal dislike of compositions where the legs and feet are completely cut off, it prevents the figures from having the same grounding in their environment.

So I'd kind of decided upon the style (black and white, contrasting tones) with a Nurgle based subject matter - characters face on to the viewer with a dark ambience in the background and starting playing around with some black and white acrylics and inks:

I then decided that I did not want to lose all connections with the Lost and the Damned tome, so I thought about how I could incorporate some of the text from the book into my illustration. The art teacher in me thought instantly of good old Mod-Podge:

 and with a  mirrored photocopy of the opening page of Nurgle from the great book I was able to combine the text onto my background and re-work into it with some additional tones and drips etc.

So what for the illustration itself? I played around with the idea of creating my own Nurgle characters, but I wanted to link back to miniature painting exploits on this blog, perhaps drawing up one of my favourite models or greatest accomplishments. And then it hit me! Having recently completed the collecting and painting of all the original Nurgle Champions I considered working from one of my very own photographs of my very own models, this one in particular:

Below you can see the initial drawing outlined in black pen (and the title of the blog Mod-Podged on)

And then bringing in some further contrasting highlights with some white acrylic washes:

 

I think there's still room for improvement in the contrasting and definition of each drawn figure (although I wish I hadn't worked in A4 size - what a simple mistake - always work larger and scale down!), but I am interested in hearing your thoughts. Cheers in advance!

Ps. How do I resize the image at the top and why have I suddenly lost a load of my comments, I think all those from Google +? All help and comments appreciated (if they show!)