mortem tyrannis: decay and renewal

It's been a while. Let's move on.

 

Aspiring Champion-Sergeant Sānchóng

A lot of things happening since I last posted. Rather than get into it - most of the readers of this blog follow my instagram anyway - let's just move on to the miniatures. I've been working steadily to try and finish off some of the 'big projects' I've got, in an attempt to reduce the ongoing strain on my mind from having so many things unfinished. A relatively easy one to finish is this accidental Death Guard project... especially as I was unable to undercoat all winter, so I did a lot of sculpting on some vehicles and... others. Stay tuned for those!

bone sword, flesh sword, rust sword, bronze sword

I really love the Blightlord Terminator kit. In keeping with my obsessions with three and seven, the sacred numbers of Nurgle, I wanted to have a squad of seven. But the kit only comes with three, and I'm both very cheap and have so many spare Nurgle parts. So I finally got around to some kitbashing and very basic sculpting (can't emphasise how basic!). While I bought the damn kit like two years ago, finally we have them done! And I'm very pleased.

Aspiring-Champion Sānchóng ('three worms')

This is a stock sculpt, and the unit leader. My photos obscure the gribbly Nurgling infesting his stomach, which is a shame as that was why I selected this model as the leader - big fan of the 'infestation of Nurglings' chaos reward.

The tarnished bronze on his blade was an experiment, but I think it turned out nicely!

His black pauldron on the right echoes the same on the terminators and veterans in my Heresy-era force. So too, of course, do the red right arms, indicating these veterans have been fighting tyranny since Terra.

Aspiring Champion-Sergeant Sānchóng was the last member painted, so let's post these in reverse order of completion.

If you're doing a unit of chaos space marine terminators, you can't pass up a reaper autocannon. It's a classic for a reason! But this sculpt is my favourite of the stock miniatures for what should be obvious: he's turning into a giant insect. Just the best. Love a guy Becoming.

This guy was really fun to convert. I used one of his legs on another model (see later), so I decided to carcinize him. It makes him lopsided and awkward, which I always enjoy doing for my chaos conversions. The fact that the unblighted Heresy-era cataphractoii are shorter and squatter than their enlightened descendants works okay with him getting crabby, especially with his fat little arms.

He's armed with a flail of corruption, but I genuinely hate the stock sculpt for these. It's way too much. We've seen elsewhere that I prefer cursed weapons to be simpler. 

The pose is a little awkward, but the scrabbling legs make the whole thing work. Gribble.

This fellow is extensively converted, with his back almost entirely 'sculpted' (very basic stuff!) and some pipes carved from a modern Death Guard backpack, various tentacles, and some green-stuff tubes. His right leg, like many parts of these guys, comes from the Age of Sigmar.

His head, of course, is a Blood Bowl football. I stole the idea from someone on Instagram - such a fantastic idea.

Never get tired of painting rust.

I love the leg with elephantiasis. It's a great bit. Here it's actually a little short for the miniature (I didn't realise the bottom was a hero stone until I was basecoating), but I like to think that it's constantly sloughing flesh and regrowing as he moves.

I didn't realise I wanted to do a blemmy until I was looking at this face (again from the Age of Sigmar) and realised it fit basically perfectly into a Blightlord torso. Look at this guy!

He knows what he has become.

Having a blemmy face accidentally ties into other flesh-oriented aspects of the miniature, such as the three-head power pack, his skin bolter, and the flesh sword. Really all came together as if I planned it!

Deciding to paint this as a sword of flesh actually only occurred to me during basecoating. It's so fun. And weird. Truly an arcane weapon, a blessing from Mortarion.

The yellow half-cloaks and rags of this squad echo one of their officers. I didn't want to use too many new colours on them, focusing instead on the sculpts and grime, but I didn't want them to be just white, green, red, or flesh as I needed those colours in other places. I think they worked out perfectly.

Another stock sculpt. I really appreciate all the individualism on these guys - they tell such a visual story of their ten thousand years or corruption and suffering in the service of the Plaguefather. Makes it hard to do multiple squads, probably, but that's a problem for tournament players.

This is painted to mimic the larger version on a daemon engine.

Love the back of this guy! Flesh melting out of his armour, too swollen to be contained. Absolutely delightful.

The first one painted, to remind myself how to paint these guys. Heavily converted too, with one leg from the Heresy era and several parts from the Age of Sigmar. A lot of the design elements across the AoS and 40K Nurgle ranges are similar, so they blend very nicely. A few mechanical tubes and wires and we're good.

Demonic flesh is fun and relaxing to paint - no need to worry too much about it feeling 'real', even while grounding it in the pinks and off-whites of Caucasian flesh.

The only time I do eyes is for things like this.

That's it for these nightmarish once-men, burdened and weighted by their earned blessings in the holy service of their gods. I have two more stock sculpts on my desk (an officer and something else) and then it's on to a string of nightmarish conversions that were a real delight to make! Stay tuned.

I may even update with some photos from games I've had over the past checks timestamp nineteen months.