The Beard Bunker

Greetings fellow devotees of the Plague Father, even as I become more immune to our bloated lord's latest and most irritating creation I nonetheless serve him. By painting some of his most devoted servants, the Plague Marines of the corrupted Astartes. These are powerfully hard to photograph well... Yes, the latest "God Squad" of the Graven Star chapter of Word Bearers are complete and ready to share their special presents with you all! First, lets have a little natter about the Plague Marines kit and what I did with it. Once I realised how I was going to incorporate the various elite squads into the army I knew I wanted to use the Plague Marine kit to represent the Grandfather's chosen. Trouble is, the Plague Marines are... how can I put this politely... a little cartoony in places? Having a good hard stare at the sprue pictures I figured I could "dial them back down to 11" and make it so that they looked like they fitted in with the more restrained normal ...

 Welcome, my fellow acolytes of the Unspeakable Powers, to this most Tainted of Thursdays. In fact, speaking of taint... can you smell that? And is that... chanting? Counting?

"UUURRRRHHHHEEWWWWWWW... GET IT AWAY FROM ME" These are the exact words Em used when I showed her the model I used to test out the new special effects paints from Games Workshop. This is him - I think someone should go visit the 'special' Doctor. I really love this model, but not being either a Nurgle or Choas player I've never really had an excuse to paint him. Until now! The sculpt, the details and the pose all really sit well with me. It's a reasonably straight forward model but it still has such a dominating presence for me. Also, it only has two skulls on it! I'm serious, you might have an infection there. With the paint job I wanted to have a bit of a play with the new paints and decided this chap would work really well looking like he's just been dredged up from the bottom of a lake. The skin was base coated in Tallern Flesh/Thunderhawk Blue. then I kept adding Dwarf Flesh and Pallid Wych Flesh until it was pure Wych Flesh...

Eyup all, realised it has been a while since anyone has seen any progress on my Nurgle army for the campaign so here it is! So far it is mostly metalwork that has been achieved. This is slow for me I know but a combination of RealLife TM and commission projects (for those that don't know that's how I try to make a living!) have gotten in the way. The metalwork is just Jeff-Rust (see here for an explanation of method) the cloth and woodwork is going to be treated the same as the sorcerer as will the bone. The rotting heads will be painted as accurately as I can (and I'm a biomedical scientist) so that is plenty of disgusting reference material in my future. Ironic yaaay! Currently debating with myself (always a curious argument) about the banner, I kinda want it to be drab and raggedey but I don't want the design to vanish into the background. Design-wise I'm thinking the traditional triple fly icon of Nurgle but colours... This could take thought.....

And so it begins... The first model of my Nurgle Warriors of Chaos army and it's magic... Well, a sorcerer at any rate.This charming (if a little drippy) chap is Lothar Pneumophilus, Sorcerer of Nurgle and one of the powers behind my Chaos Lord's throne. The model has had no modifications of any sort as he is a splendid sculpt. The only addition is the wee nurgling chap at the front representing the Warrior Familiar that he has in the list. I actually auditioned Nurglings that I had lying around to see which looked best. My wife and flatmates giving me very odd looks as I ran "Nurgling Idol". Painting started with the clothing. I intend to use what I call "Andy Green" - named for Andy of Lair of the Breviks fame - for the main army colour. This colour starts with a basecoat of Charadon Granite so every piece of cloth was basecoated in one go. I intended to use Charadon Granite as the basis for all of the colours on the model to bind it together. ...

Greetings fellow bunker dwellers, 'tis I, the Pirate Viking, with the first models of my "Insert cool campaign name here" Nurgle army. The first thing that should strike you is that the armour looks a bit, um, ragged. This is for a reason, I want these guys in corroded armour and by attacking them with a dremel for a while I create texture for the Jeffrust to work with. The second thing might be the lack of a banner, shields or a couple of heads. The first element is just to make it easier to paint the standard bearer. The solid plastic banner is a big ol' slice of win but it is somewhat large and gets in the way of the brushwork. The same problem informs the leaving of the shields until later. The lack of heads is because I am eagerly awaiting a parcel from a Polish company by the name of Puppetswar . This will contain some suitably gribbly-wibbly heads to adorn five out of 14 models in each of the units. Should provide some icky character. With the banner ...

Greetings all, I have been musing about the units in my army and how they relate to one another. From this I have built the backstory of my Nurgle host. Essentially it breaks the army down into two parts, a cultist host and a classic Northern wastes warrior contingent. The (slightly icky) backstory is as follows: There were two elements of the plague ridden army that choked the Old World that year, the worshippers of the Flylord and the elite followers of a Nurgle Warlord Gyles Pestilens. The Flylord was the many blessed former Sigmarite priest in Averland who saw the truth of Nurgle during an outbreak of the red pox. He had lost faith in Sigmar's power when first the Orc raiders had swept across the region and then the plague followed. He began to preach not the mercy of the hammer and the two-tailed comet but instead the acceptance of fate and the tolerance of the afflicted. His words and the passing of the plague from the region swayed the people and a plague cult began...