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So after a ~2 year long break from the hobby, I've been in the mood to pick it up again. My first order of business was choosing a new army. I have a sizeable Ork horde lying around, half-painted, but I felt kind of sick of the obscene numbers of models.

So I looked over all of the available armies, weighing how much fun they'd be to paint, and how much fun they'd be to play. After a hard look at Tyranids, I decided to revisit Chaos -- the first army I ever had, so long, long ago.

But Chaos itself is so complex and varied. Black Legion, Night Lords, Word Bearers, or one of the thematic armies, like Worldeaters, Thousand Sons or Death Guard?

Initially it was down to two - Worldeaters Berzerkers, or Thousand Sons. I decided on Thousand Sons, primarily because the Khorne Berzerker models are hella-old at this point; they were effectively unchanged from the Berzerkers I'd bought in my youth, some 15 or so years ago. Thousand Sons on the other hand, seemed like a good low-count, relatively easy to paint army, so I went ahead and picked up a Terminator Lord/Sorcerer box and built and painted myself a warlord.

But doubt kept nagging me. To maintain a thematic Thousand Sons army would be hard, as so many army options simply don't seem to fit their style. After painting the Sorcerer, I felt like I crash-coursed myself back into painting minis enough to tackle something a bit more ambitious - Plague Marines.

They had been something I thought about earlier on, but eventually decided against because it looked like it'd be a challenge to build and paint them appropriately disgusting. But I felt more confident now, and 'fluff-wise' they have more credible army options available to them. Unfortunately however, as I made my decision, I got a call from my local GW store; the Thousand Sons upgrade sprues I'd ordered in the store had arrived. Welp! Thankfully though, I went in and explained my predicament to the staff, telling them I'd changed my mind and wanted to go Death Guard instead, and they were gracious enough to give me a credit refund on the Thousand Sons which I put towards my first box of Plague Marines.

I also bartered with some local 40K players to pick up some extra toys, bagging a cheap Helbrute, a couple of Dark Vengeance Chosen and squad of Cultists.

That was last week. Since then I've been busy; I've fininshed the Helbrute and am putting finishing touches on the last of the Plague Marines, as well as turned one of the DV Chosen into a Plague Marine Sorcerer. I've got in contact with another local player who's up for trading a partially assembled and unpainted Rhino for a converted Looted Basilisk I had lying around from my Ork days. My next step, I think, will be to try and get my hands on the Death Guard conversion sets (for both regular CSM and Terminators) from Forgeworld, grab/build a few Chaos Spawn, and get another Terminator Lord to Nurgle-fy.

So without further adieu, here is my finished Helbrute featuring the colour scheme I'm going for; a subdued, sickly pale darkish green with grey metal trim, contrasted with reddish browns and bright bone colours. I've also been making use of GW's new technicals, which I think are absolutely awesome.

Put the final finishing touches on my first squad of Plague Marines, including a slightly converted DV box Chosen serving as a Sorcerer. To be honest, I'm not very happy with him at all, but I like the model so I may pick up another and redo him altogether with some more extensive GS sculpting.




Automatically Appended Next Post:
To elaborate more on what I want to do with a new Sorcerer; give him a big bloated greenstuff belly, drill out the head and give him one from a Plaguebearer, and a suitably cooler Plague Marine-style backpack. Mmm, yeah.

In other news I should be able to pick up a Rhino soon. I really want to convert it into an old Mk 1 style Rhino. I know FW has this kid for a relatively good price, but there are some things about it I'd like to do differently. But basically it'll involve primarily replacing the 4 exhausts with round pipes, giving it circular hatches on the sides, maybe altering the top doors a little and adding grills to the front and rear sides, and then some conversion of the front... we'll see how it goes, and I'm actually considering maybe trying to scratch-build one because it's really considerable different than the Mk2.

So I decided to start a new Sorcerer conversion on one of the other Chosen models from the DV box. The more I looked at the model, the more I could see what I'd want and need to do, plus I quite like his helmet; the single forehead-protruding blade is very Nurgly and something I kind of tried to reproduce with the other Sorcerer.

So I started by carefully slicing off the slung Boltgun and Power Fist; I'm going to attach the Axe from the Terminator Lord kit in it's place, for use as a Force Axe.

Then I sculpted him a nice big dangling gutsack:

Cool, I'd been eyeing those guys for DG, glad to see it looks right.

Here's his arm and some other doodads. Now to let the GS dry...

Alright, here is is pretty much done; just letting the Armageddon Dust dry on the base. I guess it's hard to see by these pics, but I made a little shallow "pit" with the dirt technical, out of which the tentacle there sprouts. When it's dry and painted I'm going to fill up the pit with Nurgle's Rot, and hopefully produce a cool effect of a puddle of disgusting slime breeding foul daemonic things. Also it can serve as a Spell Familiar ^_^

In other news, I'll upload some pics of my Orks, since I kinda promised.

Here we go then, some Orks!

The first set of pictures is a 'Aff Trakk concept inspired by a similar design I saw awhile ago. It's nothing fancy and made primarily from Trukk parts. It's even got a weedy little Killa Kan engine (the regular Trukk engine was much too big) underneath the gunner, blowing exhaust into the troop compartment.

The second is my Battlewagon. Nothing fancy, only slight converting.

As for the paint jobs, I'm not too happy with them now but at the time I was going for an exceptionally muddy, dirty look, like these things hadn't been given a second thought to their maintenance since they were hobbled together by a Mek years and years ago.

And here's a Looted Wagon (I call her the Boomwagon) based off hobbled-together Chimera/Basilisk kit. The boomgun in the back can be removed, and the front hull weapon hole can be used as well; I have a hobbled together Big Shoota/Heavy Skorcha bit somewhere, so I can occasionally turn it back into a regular Looted Wagon transport (at which point, with the Heavy Skorcha, I was going to use for a mob of Burna Boyz).

I'm quite pleased with the conversion itself; most Imperial vehicle conversions I see usually look kind of daft and obvious with little actual alteration, where as I feel this look suitably subtle yet extensive to actually be very Orky.

But I'm obviously biased.

Alright, so, yesterday I went digging through my old WHFB stuff, of which I bought a bunch of metal and plastic Vampire Counts from a friend several years ago. I THOUGHT I'd only had some metal Grave Guard, plastic skellies and plastic Crypt Ghouls (along with a Corpse Cart) but APPARENTLY... I also have 4 full, untouched sprues of ZOMBIES! Hoorah!

So sometime soon I'll pick up a box or Imperial Guardsmen and start smushing them together into a giant zombie horde.

Oh, and merry christmas!

EDIT: Actually, on second thought, after browsing through my bitz box I've realized I have more than enough IG bits lying around to make these zombies recognizably Imperial, so I'm just going to go ahead and start converting now. The only thing I actually need is a bucketload of round bases.

Excellent work all around.

 Chaos Legionnaire wrote:
Excellent work all around.

Thanks!

So, did a little clipping, cleaning, cutting, pruning and gluing, and came up with this, an undead Guardsman dragging around his weapon, which he uses to club people to death. I used one of the Zombie arms holding the big spear weapons, cut it off, drilled some holes in either end of the hand, drilled a holy into the lasgun (very hard) and pinned it into the hand. I think it looks neat.

But I may have to buy a box of Cadians after all, since I have absolutely no torsos or legs for them, and I kind of want a few of them to mix in.

Couple more done, a former Sergeant with his Chainsword and an older vet with a pickaxe.

really cool stuff in here mate!

Keep em coming!

BB

Alright, I've got 4 zombies built, so I'm going to do some test-run paint schemes on them to see what I can get while I also figure out where to pick up a bunch of Catachan legs and Cadian torsos; Cadian legs unfortunately have the lower part of their shirt showing, which will look odd if the top half is a shirtless zombie.

Okay I went on a biiiiit of a shopping spree today; picked up a couple pots of paint and a Chaos Spawn box from my local GW, and upon seeing just how many bloody bits you get with that thing, went and bought some extra bodies on eBay. I also ordered a couple of Death Guard conversion kits for CSM and Terminators from Forgeworld, and some other loose odds and ends I'll need. I also got in touch with a local player/cool dude who can hook me up with some Catachan legs and maybe some Cadian torsos as well as a second Helbrute, which I'll pick up this weekend.

I also found in my bitz box a whole SM Devastator Plasma Cannon upgrade bit; I'll be using that on the second Helbrute!

Alright, some more pics!

First up, I picked up a second Helbrute, and after a lengthy surgical procedure, installed a Plasma cannon. I still have some small detail work to do, adding little boils and sores and filling in the gaps, etc


I also started on the Spawn. Again, they have some minor detail work to be done, but are sporting some nice swollen bellies. I should point out I really like the "pipehead" thingy on the one on the left; I of course modelled a bit of sludge dripping out and will have a pool of it on the base.


Finally, the zombies. I've built 20 so far by cobbling together parts from the WHFB zombie kit and Cadian and Catachan guardsmen kits, and I'm fairly happy with the result. Lots of improvised weapons and such:



I also did some test painting on 4 of them, to figure out how best to paint them. The skin on the two on the left was achieved by giving a base of some off-white colour and then a watered-down shade with green on the left and blue on the right. I really like these, as they were quite simple to do. The one with the helmet I also like however, as in my opinion it has a nice old rotten leathery look to it. The one on the far right.. well, it sucks, plain and simple, and didn't turn out how I imagined.


So yeah, I'll continue work on these while I wait for everything else to arrive. I'm also considering ordering one or two FW Mark I pattern Rhino kits. I really want to give my Plague Marines an old-style Rhino, but I'm still debating whether I should attempt a conversion myself or not. I probably will try to do it myself.. it's just that the FW kit is quite beautiful, and relatively cheap (only $15 more than a brand new GW Rhino).

Until next time, adios!


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Did some more work with the Helbrute. I really wanted to do something trypophobic with the first but couldn't. However I decided to give it a shot for this one, and I'm quite pleased with the result.. I had to fashion some 'improvised' tools to get the job done but I really like the look, and can't wait to paint it!

how did you do that?

Finished up the Helbrute greenstuff modelling. Ready for some basecoating and painting. Going to make his skin much lighter than the first Helbrute, not sure if I'll go a light brown or something like a lightish blue or green... we'll see.

 OnlyWar wrote:
how did you do that?

Basically very small tubes. I didn't have anything suitable so I ended up using various discarded long round bits and drilled into one end with various sizes of drills, and then gently pushed these into fresh greenstuff. Make sure the hole is deep enough and don't push too hard and the dimple in the middle will take on that round shape as the rest of it is pushed down.

Great news! The Death Guard Marine and Terminator conversion kits from Forgeworld have arrived! And they're frikkin awesome!

So I'll be busy today putting these bad boys together. While the Marines will be fairly straightforward, I plan on making all of the Terminators customizable, for both their right and left arms.

I thought about magnetizing but that is a bit of a hassle on infantry-sized miniatures, so I've decided I'm going to use simple pins; drill a hole and fit a pin in sticking out a few mm from the body where the arm goes, and drill holes in the arms so they can slide on. By squeezing the end of the (I assume brass) pins, they flatten and widen out, giving them some grip so the arms won't just dangle loosely but have a nice snug and pose-able grip.

I'll update with some pics soon!


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Okay here goes, the first model, my new Terminator Lord of Nurgle. All of my lists that I've been designing to play with have revolved around having, at max, 4 Terminators, if not the minimum 3, so I figured I'd just use a 5th Terminator from the box set as my Lord to save a bit of money.

He uses regular Terminator legs but Terminator Lord arms I had left over from when I built my Thousand Sons Terminator Sorcerer, specifically a Lightning Claw and Power Fist (to get that extra attack for two specialized weapons!)

I started off (after cleaning the models of course) by drilling a hole in either side of his torso to glue some pins in, followed by trying to squeeze the ends of the pin with some pliers so they flatten and widen out, giving them some grip when the arm is attached so it isn't just loosely dangling off.





Being my Lord and all, I figured he needed a bit of some extra flair and pizazz, so I decided I'd use one of the hanging corpses from the WHFB Zombie kit to attach on his back. Now, if you're like me, you've tried to attach little extra bits to models only to have them easily come off with the slightest jarring, so this time I decided to pin the damned thing. Started off by drilling a hole in his ass...



Before doing the same to the corpse, and gluing a pin in for a nice, solid and permanent fit.



As I said I plan on doing the same pinning for all the Terminator's arms, so I can easily swap out different loadouts. Man this is good stuff, I think I've finally realized my favourite part of this hobby is converting and assembling over anything else.

Loving the FW termies. I have some in my death guard army and they make a lovely focal point. I'd also suggest the sorcerer as he is a really nice model, FW and pretty cheap, even if you chose to do some conversion work to him. Looking forward to seeing more

Young Logan

Yeah I thought about the Sorcerer, and for collection purposes I'll probably order him as well.

In other news, I finally picked up a Rhino and have begun the process of Nurgleifying it; I painted a Terminator to test out my paint schemes on it and have everything else, except the second squad of Plague Marines, ready to start painting.

I'll upload pics soon, just haven't had the time!

Update time. Haven't gotten too much done; I'm almost done the conversion building on the Rhino and am pretty much just missing suitable round side doors and exhaust pipes.

But I did finish some painting, first and foremost one of the Forgeworld Terminators:





I'm not completely satisfied with it, I think it might look too clean, but i'm not sure how to dirty it up more...

I also finished a couple of Spawn. These were hard as I had no idea what to do with them.. so I just kind of decided to experiment. They're not great at all, but hey, I've got 4 more Spawn primed and ready to improve on!







I am happy about how the "trypophobia" came out though, especially on the pinkish one. However I'm not satisfied with the blue pincer arm, so I may actually repaint it read to match the rest of the pokey bits.

Alright here's some more.

First, another Terminator completed:



Second, finished up another Spawn, this one a bit more traditionally Nurgley with a Plaguebearer's head:




And lastly, a group shot of all finished pieces so far:



Note I did end up repainting the pink one's claw red; I think it much better matches the rest of it and helps the little blue trypophobia things pop out a bit more.

My todo list:

-3 more Chaos Spawn to be painted;
-1 Helbrute to be painted and 1 to be assembled/converted;
-7-man Plague Marine Squad (FW kit) to be painted (I'm keeping the 3 extra for if I eventually make Havocs);
-3 more Terminators (FW kit) to be painted;
-16 more Plague Zombies to be painted;
-1 Rhino to be finished converting (still looking for the last parts I need) and another Rhino to be acquired;
-Need to get Typhus!!
-Need to get anywhere from 3 to 6 Obliterators for conversion;

So all in all I'm almost halfway done!

Wow it's been awhile. Not like anyone's watching this anyway.

Well, update time, I've done quite a bit.

The Terminators are done, complete with multiple sets of weapons.

2nd squad of (FW) Plague Marines are done as well.

5 Spawn are done, 1 left ready to paint.

I picked up a box of Plaguebearers and painted them in a day. I really like those models! So much that I bought a second box today.. also prompted by a game I played last week where I only had the one Plaguebearer squad to summon!

I also converted a Herald of Nurgle using the WFB Nurgle Lord with a spare Plaguebearer head. The Nurgle Lord is $16, vs the actual Herald of Nurgle clampack which is $30... :\

I finished conversion on the first Rhino. It's primed and ready to paint. Lots of pockmarks. Thankfully I got a dremel tool to speed it along! I acquired a second Rhino cheap, but want to turn it into a FW Deimos pattern. Gotta wait a few days for the money. Since it comes with a Rhino kit as well, I might sell that off. Or keep it. Who knows!

Finally got 3 Obliterators, they're now fat-belly converted and ready for priming and painting.

Also picked up 10 autopistol/CCW Cultists for a couple bucks. Might be interesting to have a little 50 point scoring unit to sit on an objective in the back or something.

And lastly, I'm trying to figure out how to turn all of these extra Nurgling models that come in the Plaguebearer kit into Nurgle Swarms.. I have three 40mm bases but some of the Nurglings are meant to be hanging on intestines coming out the bellies of Plaguebearers, so trying to figure out how to make them make sense on their own.. we'll see.

For the future, I need to get some Plague Drones. Those things are kickass. Plus I want to have at least one of each type of Nurgle unit I can possibly summon via the new Daemonology... which means I'll need a Daemon Prince as well...

I'll upload pics soon.

I'm watching.
Ok that sounds creepy, but I really like what your doing here.

Subbed!

Your stuff is looking good. I've been buying bits for my eventual Death Guard army for awhile now, so it's always good to see how other people take on theirs.

Liking all the work you have done. The Hellbrute makes me feel like assembling my own. Its just been hanging out on its own.

I too have assembled a few plague zombies. Good fun to put together out of cadian and zombie bitz.