Death Guard Army Showcase

I'm submitting this one for Azazel's Awesome August Hobby Challenge. Not because every single one of the Models seems awesome to me or anything like that (tho quite a few of them would probably qualify on their own), but because I painted almost all of it in a week. I had finished the Angel of Disease for Jewel of July, and one of the Predators, plus the underlayers for the rust on the other Vehicles, were done then too, and one Squad of Plague Marines just needed touch up and re-basing, since I did them in like 2002. All the remaining work on the Vehicles was done in that week, tho, and the other 22 Infantry Models were primer at the start of it. Anyhow, on with the show!

90s metal Plague Marines with newer arms, the Serpents of the Light. I had a couple of the old backpacks, and got someone to help me cast up a few more to fill out the Squad.

This is the Squad from 2002, the Unyielding Kings of Agony. Those are Tactical Marines, a few random bits, and a whole lot of putty. I am still damned happy with how they came out.

The new guys, Cleansed in Pestilence. Even with no easy customizability, there is a ton of variety in the sculpts, and they were a whole lot of fun to work on. There are only six right now because it's OFCC tradition that every team who didn't win puts a Model in the Bucket of Death, and there was one that I have a dupe of.

The Doom of Artifice. I fucking love this Predator sculpt (altho not dealing with hybrid kits), and particularly for Nurgle, it just feels right. Hopefully at some point I'll get around to doing a couple more back and forth bouts of stippling on green and rust colours to really get the transitions right.

The Unholy Blasphemies. These are cool Models, very fun to paint, altho I kept finding more bits partway through that I hadn't realized were actually something else and needed to be re-done. I tried to mess with them a bit to get a little variety, but they're only available as an ETB kit, so there's not a whole lot to be done. A proper kit for them with some options would be great.

The Lord of All Plagues and Fever. Converted from a Dark Vengeance Chaos Lord.

I forgot, I meant to do more work on the pattern on his cloak. Well, that's what happens when you're finishing an Army in a week.

Last, but not least, my BlightKing Terminators, Blessed Are the Sick. These guys were a hell of a lot of fun to make and paint. I'll try to do another post on each of them individually at some point.

The names mostly come from Morbid Angel songs, except for the Unyielding Kings of Agony (Slayer), and the Serpents of the Light (Deicide). As mentioned, due to rushing, there's a lot more I want to get to, particularly some obnoxiously bright highlights on the green, and without those, I had to tweak the colour balance really carefully to get them even this visible. Need to clear my desk off properly again so I can get in to the light box and change out the backdrop for a darker one, but that's not happening anytime soon.

This really shows how feast and famine my productivity can be. I got whatever it was done between January and March, then nothing from then 'til mid July, and then another 36 completions in less than a month. Unfortunately, the two purchases I made since then added another 46 unpainted Models plus Terrain, so I'm even further in the red despite that. Hopefully some of those will make it as part of next month's Scenic & Squaddie September Hobby Challenge. I have a bunch of other stuff well along, too, and have been keeping my momentum up fairly well, so hopefully there will be more soon, probably a mix of stuff for various smaller-scale GW Games, since I'm way more into those than full-on 40K these days. Until then, y'all have a good one, y'hear!

Rome Wasn't Built in a Day

But Carngrad (or at least this section of it) actually was.*

One of my gaming buddies came over on Saturday, and we finally got around to actually playing Warcry. The weekend before, I'd seen some people playing, and one of them said that he thought it might be just barely possible to build all the scenery in a single day. Obviously, that's the kind of thing I take as a challenge, but after finishing, either he builds extremely slowly, or he also meant all the dudes from the set as well, or something else, I don't know. Even taking more care with cleanup and such than I usually do, and consulting the guide that Waywalker Studios did on making sure your Terrain can actually be used for all the Battlefield cards, it still didn't take anywhere near a full day.

Speaking of that guide, as you may or may not have noticed, the assembly instructions in the box only show how to build two Ruins, and leave the remainder up to you. Which would be all well and good except that the game is built around specific Terrain set-ups on the included cards, and if you do just randomly build something cool with the rest, you won't necessarily actually be able to set all of those up. Furthermore, there are a couple of places where it's important to not follow the directions, as they tell you to glue on the stairs and a couple of other parts that the cards call for using in different configurations. The Waywalker Studios guide is good, but they relied on the pictures from the set, which don't have very good angles for the ruins that don't have directions. So hopefully, as well as being a build showcase, this will also have some useful reference images of those ruins from different angles.

Some of these barely fit in my light box. It got a bit sketchy at points.

These are some different angles on the ruin that doesn't have a good pic in the instructions. Hopefully, along with the parts list in the Waywalker guide, they'll make it easier for someone else to build than it was for me.

The other ruin that doesn't have directions. This one is pretty simple, tho.

One of the two that do have directions. Where they did them (and didn't tell you to glue things that should remain loose), the directions are really very good, with the different types of parts categorized and colour-coded.

The last of the ruins. Together, they really do offer a pretty impressive range of options. OK, technically, I think the next one is a ruin as well, but I think of it as The Bell Tower instead. It doesn't really have the same range of options and potential for mixing with the other parts, but is still really cool.

Again, as noted before, don't glue the stairs in. They pressure-fit just fine. I chose to leave the skeletons off of this one because A) the overall concentration of them was getting a bit high for my taste after doing the barricades, B) they'll be cool for other projects, and C) they all have the same pose, and collectively, it makes them look like they were sentenced to The Hell of Infinite Coffee and No Toilets. One big thing to note is that none of the stone framework is damaged except the very top. Chop off those shattered column tops and this could work great as part of an intact structure, make an actual bell tower or something. Also, you could put all kinds of things in the niches instead of the skeletons. A bit skinny for most actual minis, but there re definitely things that could make cool statuary or whatever in there.

The last major piece of terrain from the set. Again, don't glue the stairs in, and ideally don't glue the platform to the statue head (it actually stays on surprisingly solidly), or the barricade at the end either. I did that before I looked up advice on building these, and really wish I hadn't.

See. If that bit hadn't been there, this would be great for extending the platform area available. But it's stuck, so that's always going to be blocked off. Don't make my mistake. Leave it unglued. It sits on there just fine. I thought I also had a pic showing how well the stairs fit with the other ruins, but apparently not. You can see it in the big pic at the top, but it's not as nice as it would have been if I'd done it in the light box.

I really want more of this Terrain. It's built to be pretty compatible with the other AoS Terrain from the Azyrite Ruins on, and there's so much more potential than what I felt constrained to by the limitations of the Game.  A lot of this stuff (particularly the bell tower and statue head) could even fit in with 40K Sector Imperialis sets pretty nicely with a bit of work.

I've also got a bunch of shots of the Death Guard stuff that I've done this month, just need to get those ready to post. Until then, y'all have a good one, y'hear!

*Don't ask me about how long it's going to take to get it painted.

Jewel of July: The Angel of Disease

A Jewel that needs some serious cleaning and disinfecting this time, not so shiny as last year's.

While he may not be as objectively impressive as my KoS, I'm just as happy with him, because I've had this Conversion in mind since I first saw the Nightbringer C'tan, back in '02. I wasn't able to find suitable wings for almost a decade, tho, when the WHFB Cockatrice was released. The switch to Finecast also helped immensely with the project, both in reducing the difficulty of trimming down the bits and in greatly reducing the weight, letting me support him on a surprisingly thin bit of brass rod.

It took even longer for me to get hold of the necessary parts. I think I had him assembled and primed by sometime in 2014 or so, and I know I had the paintjob done to a usable state by the time Daemon Summoning was a big thing in 7th Ed. But it wasn't until this past weekend that I finally knuckled down and finished him up. All the work on the Gellerpox Infected really helped, since one of the reasons he'd fallen by the wayside was that I was having trouble getting the skin the way I wanted it, particularly on the wings. It's still not perfect, but it's close enough.

The staff was originally intended to be the Black Mace, but that's no longer an option for Daemon Princes, so now it's just a rod of office or something, and he counts as having two sets of Malefic Talons. Now, my Relic of choice for a Death Guard Daemon Prince is the Suppurating Plate. Since he's really not modeled suitably for that, I call him the Host of the Withering Contagion, which is completely different fluff-wise, but identical rules-wise!

I just got my light box set up again last night. I decided to go with the white background again for a while, but I might have to go back and re-shoot these on the black background, since they got kinda washed out, and then the base is so dark that it's hard to make out much. Speaking of the base, I also just realized that I forgot to clean up the rim, and I meant to do a teeny bit of black drybrushing on the entrance wound on that one skull.

I'm pretty pleased with my greenstuff work covering up the joins between the body and wings. It was crap while I was trying to actually blend them smoothly together, but once I decided to just extend the robe to cover the gaps there, it went pretty smoothly. I think the little bits are supposed to be scales, but I decided to do them as little buds of new feathers growing in, with the flesh all reddened and irritated around the areas where they're either coming in or falling out. The dead dude on the base has orange trousers because that's my standard 40K civilian clothing colour. I should probably also do a little more work on what's left of his shoulders, but it may or may not happen.

I'm sort of getting back into the swing of painting again, helped by the shock of "Holy shit it's August already OFCC is in like 2 weeks and I still have most of my Army to paint". Hopefully that will help me build some momentum, and I'll be able to sustain it better now that we're all settled in here. Until next time, y'all have a good one, y'hear!