The Warriors of Chaos who follow Nurgle are more inclined than other Champions to ride Chariots. This is partly because carts and wagons form the Nurgle cavalcade, and chariots give an appropriate sense of pageantry. Another reason may be that Champions of Nurgle often pick up uncomfortable debilitating diseases which make it difficult to walk or ride a horse. Chariots are often larger and more like wagons or carts than those associated with other Powers. Chariots may carry banners, flags or other decorative features and may have additional non-combatant crew such as Nurglings....
Straight out of the Lost and the Damned and a nice bit of writing to create a context for me to make my own Chariots of Nurgle. I chose a couple of obese and mutated, plastic Nurgle characters to ride my chariots, thinking these figures would find it hard to slog on foot or mount a horse and I deliberately chose a plague cart as one of the vehicles to match the description in the above caption. Hence why there is also a fair amount of decoration on the chariot itself. The non-combatant crew for me are a couple of Chaos Dwarf drivers (one of whom is on a step to be able to see out of the chariot!) as I recall reading somewhere that they were often pursuaded to do so.
The draught animals are quite the mixture for each chariot. Below is made of a Gorkamorka mutant steed and I have added a skeletal head and painted it in a zebra scheme. The Gorkamorka head has been transferred to the plastic steed and a reptilian tail too, to keep the scaly texture.
The Chariot itself is modified slightly, an old Orc Man-Mangler facial emblem has been added at the front (a nice hefty chunk of lead on an otherwise plastic model) and I went to town on the weathering with Astrogranite applied to the bare plastic prior to undercoating to create a rusty texture before the appropriate rusty oranges and brown colours were washed on. The metallic scratching you can see in places was simply added with a pencil.
The other chariot also has the Chaos Dwarf driver with whip, but this time is pulled by a Reaper Bones model (I know not the name). For me this acts as a draught animal that has been turned to a Spawn and yet is still devoted to, and loved by, the Champion in the Chariot. Slow, writhing progress across a battlefield. A jewellery chain was wrapped through it's gaping mouth and re-attached to the underside of the plague cart to show how it is pulled. The design of the plague-cart, I think, is perfect for a chariot of Nurgle.
It took quite some time to paint all of the eyes on this beast.
Lots of weathering washes on the wooden frame of the cart, and a mutated Chaos Dwarf.
A close-up of the modern plastic Nurgle miniature, they really are pretty impressive sculpts. You can see me attempting to get some dappling on his numerous tentacles here:
And finally the WIP photo that shows the kitbashing/converting/texturing and choice of models before they were painted up:
So that's another 500pts to the army, now standing at a total of 5125pts, with some Diseased Flagellants up next...
