Angels Of Disease - Nurgle Daemons WIP (updated July 29)

[Svartmetall]

Well, I think I've finally got to the stage where I can legitimately say I have a second army on the go. Oddly enough it's Nurgle (bit of a departure for me, I know) but instead of the armoured miscreants of the Fourteenth Legion this time the spotlight is on the purely Daemonic followers of great Father Nurgle. I've had the idea simmering in the back of my mind to make a Nurgle Daemons army ever since Codex: Chaos Daemons came out, but literally in the last two weeks or so the inspiration has hit me hard and I figured it was time to just go ahead and start work on it.


First off, HQ - I've had a Great Unclean One assembled for a while, and added a few little touches to customise him somewhat including a toothed maw on his giant plaguesword:

...and expanding his torn, bloated gut so he has somewhat less of a melon-shaped torso and drags directly along the ground more, to better give an impression of weight; I'm also considering adding a big monocerotic horn to him, since that's such an iconic Nurgle feature. Here he is in his current state, based and basecoated:


I actually like the colours on the back of the model's own box:

...and will be using this as the guide to my own colour scheme by and large, with some small variations. Here's another shot, showing more of the work on the belly area, extending it down to the ground over a greater area and adding more torn skin with innards peeking through:

I'm hoping that the extra work I did on his belly is sufficiently well blended in that you wouldn't even know something had been done there unless you saw it next to an out-of-the-box Great Unclean One; as always, a good conversion shouldn't look like a conversion at all. There will also be at least one Nurgling added to his base, sitting on the rock to his right...and is it wrong that every time I think of Nurglings now, I hear the Happy Tree Friends theme...?*


I have Epidemius sitting in his box ready for assemblage, so I'll probably do what I always do with a new model I've not used before; which is blu-tack him together and then stare at him for a bit to work out what if anything to do to the model to make it a little more individual. For the Heavy Support Daemon Princes I'm planning to use two of the Daemon Prince Of Nurgle models, since once you get past (i.e. replace) the DUURRRR! heads there's a ton of really nice detail on those guys.


Now Plaguebearers are obviously the bread and butter of any Nurgle Daemons army, and the Angels Of Disease will be no exception. I've already touched on the customisation I've done on the Plaguebearers to make them more unique in the Death Guard thread but I figure that bears repeating here since this is what that work now has the most bearing on. I added a cyclopean eye to every model, both to give them more immediate character on the table and also to make them more correct fluff-wise:

Eyes are very important on any model with an exposed head, as they're the main point of contact character-wise; the eyes on the current Plaguebearer models are often very small, and sometimes very odd shapes, so I much prefer them with a nice big eye like this.

I've also added some rotting guts oozing out, replaced most of the weapons with more convincing and individual-looking items than the rather odd triangular things they come with out of the box, and in some cases thickened up the legs a little where I found them to be too weedy and spindly-looking; here's the initial test squad of 5 Plaguebearers pre-painting:


Here's the colour scheme they've had for the best part of two years, which I've grown more and more dissatisfied with as time has gone on (see the Death Guard thread for more on the in-progress revamping of pretty much everything to do with my painting):


I wanted to use a much earthier and richer palette on them, much like that on the Great Unclean One, so here's the paint test model for the Plaguebearers in his current basecoated state:

The pic itself is a little dark, for some reason, but straight away you can see that he's a lot earthier and more solid-looking, where the old paint scheme was kind of porcelain-like. If you see what I mean. Here he is next to the Great Unclean One to show the unity of the scheme:

Since a Plaguebearer is a lot smaller than a Great Unclean One it will get less light and therefore run the risk of coming out darker for a given set of colours, so I may make them one step lighter colour-wise to allow for that. I'm varying the foundation colour across the model since I want the basic skin tone to vary like the Great Unclean One's colour scheme; I figure that'll make the Plaguebearers a lot more interesting as a unit when there's 7 of them all with individual patterns of markings on their hide.

More - as I've been saying for over 3 years with my Death Guard, and will now have to start getting used to saying with these guys - when I have it




* Seriously. I actually have this mental image of happy little Nurglings cavorting around to that song. I may need professional help...

[Meyerm]

The Great Unclean one looks great!

[Richter]

You have permanently seared into my mind the image of a Nurgling dancing to that song.

Also, the individually different Plaguebearers sounds wicked.

[Svartmetall]

Update time...this army's going to progress in a vastly more organised fashion than the ever-growing horde that is Pandemic since, rather than using the 'ooh! Shiny!' approach to building models & units that has characterised Pandemic's chaotic growth, I've actually nailed myself down to working out a specific 1,000-point list and building that. And yes, I'm anal enough to have made a tick-them-off sheet for the building process

So...the latest additions are the final two Plaguebearers to make up the first Troops squad of 7. In addition to exposed hanging guts, this guy has the ornate sword from the old-school metal Chaos Lord (or possibly Sorceror, not sure right now), sharpened via judicious filing to make it look more credibly dangerous:


And this guy's had his left arm cut off and re-posed much lower, with a club from the Ogre Battalion sprue replacing the original triangular sword:


I figure the more variety in the Plaguebearers' weapons, the better. I used two pieces of armature wire to attach the arm for a more secure joint; it was fun to sculpt the flesh around the re-positioned arm, giving the idea of an exposed humerus with rotting flesh peeling off around it. Should be fun to paint


I also made up the bases for the Nurglings, which was interesting as I've never made any Swarm beasties before...


Note the use of at least 3 different eras of Nurgling model here; thanks to the miracle of eBay I've managed to get my mitts upon several old-school Nurgling models, and it seemed a good plan to mix them all up for more variety.


And since it's been a pretty tough week in work this week, I succumbed to the lure of retail therapy and treated myself to these guys:


The plan is, since Beasts of Nurgle are apparently a bit rubbish, to build them up as Plague Riders (I also bought the Plague Rider Plaguebearer models) using the Bloodcrusher rules to give bigger builds of the army a little more punch.


As always, more when I have it...

[holyknight]

your plaguebearers look really menacing and awesome. i shudder in fear and awe of your disgusting warriors of death! :P

is that club/mace from the orges?

[Meyerm]

Rusted weapons always look good on Nurgle armies. I suggest you do it, but how to do it is something I don't know.

[Svartmetall]

A brief update once again...I have discovered that I am a very slow painter, or at least it certainly seems that way to me. Here's the first Plaguebearer squad, based and undercoated:

Early days yet, colour-wise, but this should give you some idea of where I'm aiming in terms of the overall look and feel. I also replaced the Ogre club on the arm-replacement model with a curved dagger for that "I'm gonna stab you in the guts" look - it just seemed to suit the pose better. The club will be appearing on another model, though, as it's too nice not to use.


And some of the Nurglings, also based and basecoated:

Rather than use the variegated 'animal hide' look that I'm using on the Plaguebearers (inspired by the sight of a piebald horse while watching 'Game Of Thrones', in fact), I'm using one single base colour on each Nurgling to give each one its own hue. I want to see how much I can do with washes alone, as trying to do full paint schemes for each individual Nurgling would be a lot of work and I've seen people get great results with just one or two basic paint colours and the rest done with washes.


This, by the way, is the 1,000-point list I'm building - a basic Tally list to get me started on the path of Daemons armies:


HQ
• Great Unclean One – Breath of Chaos
190 points
• Epidemius, the Tallyman of Nurgle
110 points

TROOPS
• 7 Plaguebearers
105 points
• 7 Plaguebearers
105 points
• 7 Plaguebearers
105 points
• 5 Nurglings
65 points

HEAVY SUPPORT
• Daemon Prince - Mark of Nurgle, Iron Hide, Daemonic Gaze
160 points
• Daemon Prince - Mark of Nurgle, Iron Hide, Daemonic Gaze
160 points

TOTAL:
1,000 points

Nothing too fancy, but should be a serviceable list to get me going. I think I (finally) worked out yesterday how I want to do the leg armour on my Obliterators, however, so the next update may well be back in the realm of Pandemic...

[[MaGiC]]

I love to look at your thread Svart

That army sounds good, but they would be wooped by GK hehe they have a great psychic power towards Nurgle (they have to take an initiativ test rather than toughness test and it's not a wound they just get removed with no saves allowed beat that!)

[Svartmetall]

Brief update - doing two armies at once is proving more difficult than I'd thought, but fun too (since it gives you a greater variety of subject matter, and thereby makes it easier to find something relevant to whatever mood you may happen to be in). Here are the first four members of Plaguebearer Squad 2, converted and ready for basing & painting:


I love the spiky Orc club on the guy on the right. Once the next three are done it'll be basing & painting time again; then on Saturday I'll be acquiring a couple of Finecast Daemon Princes of Nurgle to be the Heavy Support contingent for the army, since being in resin will make those models a hell of a lot easier to convert

As always, more when I have it...

[verybad]

Always enjoy looking at your conversions Svartmetall. looking at your last post, it made me thing, these guys probably just pick up weapons where they see them, a pickaxe or shovel or even a large wrench crudely crafted into a mace type of weapon would look cool for them too. Too bad they don't use ranged weapoons as a blunderbuss would be perfect.

[Svartmetall]

Here are the three Plaguebearers to complete Squad Two, with the models from the Plaguebearer Command box making an appearance:


Detail shots of each (for some reason the relief of the GS work shows up more clearly and sharply without the flash, even though I prefer the overall light balance with the flash. Sigh. I suck at photography):

On the Bellringer I tried a bell at the back of the original pair first of all, but it didn't look right and was barely visible from the front, so I just sculpted one hanging down from inside the largest one; I still like the skull-on-a-stick beater for the bells, which should look nice as a character detail when painted (it'll be a solid brass skull since using an actual skull to hit metal bells with would be dumb as it'd shatter almost immediately, and you'd have to keep replacing it with a new one).

The really anal thing is that if you look closely you can see that the bell I sculpted in has pretty much half the volume of the large one, making it sound an octave higher...and the one at the back is about half way between the two, for the tritone. So he hits the middle one first, then the small one at the bottom and then the middle one at the back to make the Black Sabbath riff. Yes, I actually worked that out. And yes, I get that attached to my fluff

And the standard/icon bearer:

I guess they put the Undivided icon on the model since the Plaguebearer Command box came out with the Chaos Daemons army release to use with Daemons armies as a whole, not just Nurgle ones; but this is a pure Nurgle army so the Nurgle icon was the one I wanted, and a bit of cutting and pinning later this was the result. Note the long scaled finger of the original model, extended into a snake-like appendage curling up and around the pole before sticking out through to top; and this seemed like a good place for the Ogre club to re-appear.

And now a group shot of Squad Two:


I may well start on Epidemius next, since I've been putting him off as a multi-part metal model that's almost certainly going to be a pain in the arse to assemble; sadly no sign of a Finecast Epidemius, or I'd have sold this one on Ebay and bought a Finecast one just for ease of assembly. Oh well, I'll almost certainly make a few customising touches to him, too, so I guess it's time to break out the pinning wire - I have a feeling he's going to need as much pinning as the Great Unclean One did...



As always, more when I have it.

[Svartmetall]

OK, things are weird right now since I've moved to a different department in work and am trying to adjust to extremely early starts having been a total night owl all my life (I'm very nocturnal by nature). This is really hard for me, I'm pretty disorientated and I feel like I've got jetlag all the time at the moment, which is obviously having an effect on my ability to get much done. Bleh...mornings suck.

Anyway, here's the final Plaguebearer squad:

...which means that all the Troops models are now converted and assembled. A couple of the Nurglings aren't painted yet, and the second two Plaguebearer squads still need basing first, but it's definitely starting to feel like I'm getting there now.

Construction-wise all that's left to do now for this 1,000-point version of the Angels army list is Epidemius - who is admittedly going to be a bastard to assemble - and the two Daemon Princes, who are chock-full of conversion potential. In fact there would have been pics of the first Daemon Prince by now but just in the last couple of days I've decided (largely from staring at the model late at night while he's been sat on my bedside table) I want to convert the first one more than I'd originally thought I'd be doing, having had what will hopefully be a nice idea for making him both cooler-looking and a lot more fluffy wargear-wise

Pics as soon as I have them...

[Svartmetall]

Quick update...still very tired a lot of the time due to the horrible work hours which I'm still having issues adjusting to, but I've managed to get the first Daemon Prince to the point where you can see where I'm going with him:

I removed the front loincloth to leave the chainmail one, and gave him a big distended and torn gut while leaving the augmetic cabling from the model's own gut showing and also adding more Tube Tool augmetic cabling behind that. I've also never liked the squared-off 'safety scissors' sword the model has (really, Original Sculptor, what were you thinking with that one?) so I repositioned his left arm and now he's having a scratchbuilt, Nurgle-approved scythe. I'm still finalising in my head exactly how I want the scythe to look, but I think the overall proportions are about where they should be.

More when I have it...

[Svartmetall]

Here at last is what I hope will be the final, comprehensive paint scheme for the Plaguebearers, with this guy again being the test figure:





I can't see anything obvious that I've missed...I'm pretty happy with how he's looking, but once again I'd welcome all feedback on the paintjob; I'm working hard to try and improve my painting to at least a passably decent standard, so pick holes in him all you can In the absence of anything being drastically wrong, though, this is what (with minor individual variations in things like weapon metal colours and guts/tongues from model to model) will get applied to the whole squad. Here's how the rest of the squad is currently looking:

[Svartmetall]

And here's the first completed Plaguebearer unit, painted up and weathered:



I'm doing some colour tests on sprue at the moment, trying to find combinations for squads 2 & 3 that look right to me. I've also dragged out the still-half-finished Daemon Prince from his resting place, and am working on finishing off his arms and head; in addition to him, I also have one of the metal Daemon Princes - which I've always liked as a model - and will be Nurgling him up to be the other Heavy Support choice for the 1,000-point build of the Angels.

[SilverTabby]

Ooooh.... I may need to have a go at killing them at some point ...

The red makes a nice counter to the brown/green combo.

[HoopyFrood]

I like the colour combinations as well, the fading from one to the other looks nice and smooth. My only addition to the scheme would maybe be the nails on hands and feet, maybe the same colour as the eyes? (which really stand out in a good way, good call on making them one-eyed) Also, I think some of the metals are better than the others. The greeny-copper/brassy swords look really nice, but some of the details look like pure tin-bitz. It could just be because of the lighting in the photo of course.
I also really like the bases that you have done. The muddy mess suits the plaguebearers nicely =)

[Svartmetall]

Right...I had this cunning plan, see, of using a poisonous frog's colour scheme as inspiration for the second Plaguebearer unit. The frog was grey and yellow, one of the classic 'I'm poisonous!' warning colourations in nature, so it seemed fitting for a noxious Daemon of Nurgle. Here's the test model I did for him yesterday:



Yellow is a bugger to get right, but I like this shade of it. However on looking at him again this morning I wasn't sure; so I did another test model, with a rich brown (as opposed to the first squad's pale, 'parched earth' brown) instead of the grey as a contrast colour for his hide:



What do people think? I'm torn between the two; I think Mr. Grey is more distinctive, and I really like the idea of using real-world warning colours on a Plaguebearer (plus he also pops better against the basing colour scheme); but I'm not sure if it works or not, so there's always the slightly safer option of Mr. Brown.

Here are both of them with one of the first squad, for comparison:

The plan for squad 3 is to use green and orange, with a slightly richer green that on the first squad and orange again being a poison-warning colour on many terrestrial beasties...


All C&C definitely welcomed on this one; usually it's pure "did I screw this up?" technical-execution feedback I'm after, but right now I'm actually undecided aesthetically as well

[AridMonk]

I honestly prefer the middle one, the grey and yellow contrast nicely off one another. Good work all round, and excellent sculpting as usual.