No, no -- really. Honest.
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| Lord of Poxes |
I know I said that I was finished, but even then I acknowledged that Games Workshop had just announced a new model.
I really like this guy, actually. A lot of the 'new' (it's seven years old...) range is way too over the top with the tentacles and the gloop and the smoke. This fellow is a lot more industrial and grounded, while still having a giant silly backpack and a sword the length of two men. Good times.
Thus, all tyrants projects.
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| Daemon engine. Defiler-class. Cognomen: 3-9-ϴ-27 |
I was misinformed the other day when I said I only had four miniatures left for the project...
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| squirmy wrigglers |
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| Lord of Virulence |
Good lord, I've been painting this accidental project for over five years.
I picked up Midgard: Heroic Battles today, after doing some shopping at CanCon. I now have ideas for about a dozen more projects...
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| stay focused: this is the current work-in-progress |
Every hobbyist struggles with distraction, but the past year has seen the pressure ramp up even more than usual. Two sets of temporary promotions, personal issues - oh, right and my beautiful son, whose eyes glow in the daylight.
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| bad selfie from last week |
..qui sanat contritos corde, et alligat contritiones eorum
- Psalmi 146:3
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| rule of three |
augebit Dominus plagas tuas, et plagas seminis tui, plagas magnas et perseverantes, infirmitates pessimas et perpetuas
- Deuteronomium 28
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| Mars-pattern Rhino transports (corrupted; Death Guard affiliation) |
A few months ago, winter put a halt to undercoating and therefore painting, but that freed up my hobby time to allow me to finally convert the trio of second-hand Rhinos that I had accumulated. I may have gone a little overboard...
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| Aspiring Champion-Sergeant Sānchóng |
A few additions to the Death Guard.
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| Aspiring Champion-Sergeant Gehazi |
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| Aspiring Champion-Sergeant Naaman |
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| Aspiring Champion-Sergeant Joab |
You may remember my squads of 7-strong Death Guard infantry. Fluffy, fun, neat - a great part of this accidental project. Unfortunately, the 9th edition codex made those squads immediately illegal. Now, while 9th edition is basically unplayable due to a) the overwritten rules making it hard to follow the game and b) the constant rules changes making any faint understanding immediately obsolete, I wasn't totally happy with a few aspects of the squads anyway. One lacked an icon, for instance, and I wanted more of the fun equipment that 8/9th has brought to Mortarion's Chosen.
So I painted and converted a few more lads. Now the three squads are ten-strong, which is less flavoursome but there are still three of them - and I can always drop a few members if I ever actually play a game with them.
Good to get things ticked off the list.
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| hail mortarion! hail the death-of-kings! |
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| Vicchièneche, a chief city Note the early Imperial ruin, c.700M38 |
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| plague zombies pour from the industrial district |
Justice shall be delivered, and doom shall stalk a thousand worlds.
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| Aspiring Champion-Sergeant Naaman and his squad |
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| Aspiring Champion-Sergeant Joab and his six brothers-in-hell |
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| Aspiring Champion-Sergeant Gehazi and six Once-Men |
The final part of the Death Guard showcase, the core of the army: infantry. Three squads of seven posthuman nightmares. This the core of the accidental army - I'd always loved the old monopose plastic plague marines and after winning a couple of accidental eBay auctions.... well.
Apparently the pathway to hell has seven steps. Below the cut for more photos and conversation.
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| malicious artillery |
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| possessed tankettes |
I've accidentally put together a fallen Death Guard force.
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| officer cadre |
How do you 'accidentally' put together an entire army? Well, the same way any fall occurs: one step at a time.
At any rate, once I realised that the three squads of plague marines, mobs of cultists, and swarms of zombies basically constituted an army, I gradually put together an officer cadre. I've painted several of these grimy bastards this year as breaks between projects, so I might as well show 'em off.
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| sorcerer |
This is the Forgeworld model Necrosius, although when I went to look him up to link him, it appears he's no longer produced. I intend to use him as a Malignant Plaguecaster (an idiotic name for 'plague-themed sorcerer' but whatever). I think he was the first of the officers I painted, some time last year.
The sculpt is great, with ritual bone skewering him, rotting pauldrons and a cool glaive-staff. I've given his back banner runes in the Dark Tongue and an old-school check pattern, but the paint scheme is otherwise the streaky white with yellow details that I use army wide.
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| surgeon |
Plague Surgeon. I put this guy on a 32mm base without thinking; the Death Guard officers are all on 40mm bases, as they are huge. I don't like that officers are weirdly bigger than the regular soldiers, but it works okay in a chaos army so I'm happy to ignore it here. I should get him a base extender though.
This sculpt is also lovely, with a screaming daemon in one pauldron, all the tools of a healer and then a sick rotting sword, which I've painted up like corrupted bone. I also let him keep the white robe of a real doctor so that he didn't get mistaken for his yellow-robed magician pal, above.
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| brewer |
Foul Blightspawn. I picked up this model and the Biologus Putrifier below in the second-hand section at CanCon 2020, intending for them to serve as painting palate cleansers. They are actually quite detailed and intricate sculpts, which proved a bit frustrating to paint. I eventually came to love them, as my Death Guard painting style really is a lot of fun.
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| alchemist. grenadier. |
Biologus Putrifier. He has so very many vials and bottles, which made me put off painting him, but the design is actually cool as shit. He's an insect-faced parody of an angel, with the wings replaced with racks of alchemical nightmares. It's a great concept and very neatly fits into the concept of Chaos Space Marines being 'fallen' Angels of Death (with the obvious caveat that in rebelling against the fascist Imperium, they aren't so much evil as just completely fucked). I also wrote a lil' passage on the original instagram post for this guy:
"..and then descended the seventh part of a seventh part of the Great Horror; and in its vanguard were seven fiends, each cast in its own aspect of the Decay That Wastes Hope... and then the fourth was shaped like unto an angel of Order, but corrupted. In place of wings, it bore branches of bone, hung upon which were vials and alchemy, the rotted fruits of evil. In place of a halo, it bore a half-crown of broken bronze. In place of a face..."
-From the Seventh Prophecy of Šeru’a-eṭirat.
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| bannerman |
Noxious Blightbringer. Mildly converted from the really excellent Blightkings kit for Age of Sigmar as the only way to get one of these bell-ringing maniacs is in the 8th edition starter box, Dark Imperium, and the resellers on ebay charge a surprising amount for them. Mostly I just love the conceit that his guts have been replaced by the dark gods with another, smaller bell. Hilarious.
I gave him an old marine right arm, replaced one leg with power armour, and gave him a Heresy-era Death Guard helmet to make sure he reads as a fallen space marine. I think it works.
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| archivist |
Tallyman. I joked on instagram that once I realised that Games Workshop had released a fat archivist model that I needed to buy one, so that I could have #representation on the tabletop. Because I am also an overweight archivist, you see. Do you get it?
(admittedly, I lack tentacles or an abacus made of tiny skulls)
He was fun to paint, especially adding some spare scrolls and book pieces to his base to make it look like he's standing in a ransacked, filth-soaked library. Note that his right arm is red, indicating that he was once a Dusk Raider.
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| captain |
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| yeah take that space sharks |
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| not affiliated with any raiders, at dusk or dawn |
