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757.M41: The first recorded incidence of the Zombie Plague occurs on Hydra Minoris. Quarantine is imposed, trapping 23 billion uninfected Imperial citizens alongside a rising tide of the undead. Unknown to most, however, is that one Hulk was allowed to leave orbit; Hydra's 37th PDF was thoroughly decontaminated and allowed to ship out to bolster the fighting around the nearby Eye of Terror. Unfortunately the crew tasked with scrubbing the landers was entirely unfamiliar with the unusual properties of the Zombie Plague; by the second week of the trip, the air circulation system had been overpowered by the virus. By the end of the month, the doomed 37th's fate was sealed. When the Hulk crash landed on an embattled Cadian world, it's entire crew had succumbed to the plague. The resulting disorientation bolstered the faltering Chaos offensive, and eventually resulted in that planet's downfall (however temporarily; no one can hold an Imperial world forever). In the two hundred-odd years since, the plague zombies and their Black Legion commando handlers have continued to raid nearby sectors for ordinance, vehicles, and "recruits". With intermittent support from various chaos marine factions in the area, the 37th 'Infected' has been a thorn in the side of countless defending forces the Cadian Gate and surrounding systems.

tl;dr A traitor Guard army consisting of Plague Zombies reenacting a farce of their former lives as soldiers, and their elite Chaos-aligned handlers.

I'm sad to have to start this blog without any actual pictures, but until my ebay zombie bitz arrive there's not much to look at besides a colour scheme. I've got the plague zombies (anyone BS3; that means the tank crews and everything) in fairly typical nurgley colours; disgusting brown fatigues, and even more disgusting off-white armour. The colours were chosen more to 'dirty up' properly than to represent actual pre-plague armour. The so-called 'chaos commados' are more typical of unaligned chaos; dark grey fatigues under black flak jackets, with the typical accoutrement of spikes and chaos glyphs. They're also all equipped with covered gas masks and air recycling packs; won't do much good for the 'brains' of the army to turn into shambling husks themselves.

I know it's a little bit of a stretch that zombies could operate complex indirect fire artillery, or fail morale checks, or fire rifles but I don't think I've done anything heretical; it's sensible, and makes for a pretty novel army concept I think. I hope to have some pics up for all you nice folks by this time next week or so, but in the meantime I'm looking for some of dakka's creative modelling minds to back me up!

My execution of this theme falls apart for my when I consider two units; how do I go about making a decent Nurgle-themed Valkyrie? Papa Nurgle and fliers never really meshed well conceptually for me, so I'm drawing a blank on ideas. The other tanks will be fine with the same filthy off-white with lots of spikey chaos bitz and lots of exposed metal but I can't help but feel the Valkyries deserve something extra. One of my ideas was, since they'll likely occupy any fliers I build 99% of the time is paint them up like the Black Legion commandos; all black and red, more typical chaos style. My only concern is that this won't mesh properly with the army, leaving me with an out of place looking unit. It's a concern I have with the vets as well, but not as big a concern as it's only a handful of models instead of a big-ass flier. I'm also hung up on what to do for bases; I thought I'd go with textured plasticard that looks like deck plating, to show the Space Hulk they originated from. I could gross it right up, add in bitz and whatnot and it would be a relatively simple base for the piles of infantry I'll no doubt have to paint. It might be a little plain though.....



Anyway, I apologize again that there's not much to look at here just yet, but check back; I'll try to get some purdy pichers up ASAP!

There is a great FW nurgle drone and flies are also very nurgley. I think you make something work for a flier.

I think it's a great idea, but if someone complains, you just tell em that everyone turned to Nurgle at the last minute; so they are all well and truly rotten.

A while back I was thinking of doing a nurlge traitor guard force. For the Valkyrie I was thinking of having it mutating into a dragon by merging the Valkyrie kit with bits from the stegadon and dragon kits. I think there would be a lot of green stuff necessary too though

You could try making a valk/airship crossover.

Rotting gases keep the thing aloft and fuel the engines.

Nothing more nurgly than a big bloated thing floating about the battlefield throwing up diseased zombies on people

Now that idea I like; it fits nicely with the Blight Drones too.

The plus side to being a zombie is you tend not to need a parachute. If it lands on someone; it'll kill them with the impact and then eat their brains. If it doesn't, it'll shamble/crawl towards the enemy, beat them over the head with the leg that came off in the drop and *then* eat their brains

Oh look, it's picture time!

I decided I'd grab some pre-zombie shots of my footsoldiers, as well as some mostly finished shots of the commandos. Maybe some people will be able to offer basing advice, too!


I just noticed none of these show the freehand nurgle insignias on the shoulderpads

I'm still not completely sold on the rust colouring on the guns, but the right guardsman's gun shows the true colour the best in this shot.

you can see in the back of this one (sort of) that I've modded the flamer into a sort of plague thrower; got rid of the pilot light and greenstuffed over the exhaust cowl.





these guys are kitbashes of the cadian infantry set, Pig Iron Militia Heads, and some meltas and bolter barrels from the space marine sets. The backpacks are chopshopped voxcasters (best seen on the left guy in this shot). Oh, and the spiked skulls? From a soul grinder.




I think my shotguns (best seen on the right in this pic) turned out half-way decent for being a somewhat half-assed kitbash!

Lighting effects from the eyes is spectacular! Nice colours on the commandos too, and I think the pig-iron heads is a good way of explaining why they havent zombied up yet either.

I will be following this blog with interest!


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Ive used sand as my basing materials, looks suitably cityfighting. glue on sand, paint with chardon granite, do a badab wash, then light drybrush highlight with Fortress grey.

Looking good so far. The glow looks good, though might be a bit OTT on the guy with the sword. Just my tastes though, as he still looks good.

The regular zombie troops look decayed without being rotten. The armour in particular looks good. The fatigues I am not so keen on... perhaps they are not as dirty looking as they could be.

Not so sure about the rust... you may want to think about dulling down the regular metal colour to make it look universally older. I would go for just the odd spec of "good as new" looking metal for the pop, rather than the rust being the pop.

You might want to check out the gale force 9 basing range. They have basing material for pretty much any battlefield.

I would suggest something swampy and evil... so a dark brown "soil" with some greeny/brown/grey water and perhaps some dead plants/reeds.

I am pretty sure that GF9 do materials for all the above effects, except for the water. But I have found that painting the water colours and effects on the base and then covering it with a couple of layers of PVA works well.

Oooo I'm really liking these so far, nice work
I do have to agree with SilverMK2 about the fatigues being too clean and the lighting on the shoulder of the chainsword guy being a little too much. Other than that... excellent stuff.

Holy smokes... who knew? You paint the eye-light effects spectacularly.

I thought you'd replaced the eyes with lights or something when i saw that, amazing effect.

Its looking good to me atm

This. Is. Awesome! Fly the banner high for the renegade guard!!

Nice painting! The handlers look great, but maybe something to tie them in to the rest? Perhaps the base will do that?

I like the rust effect, but it's a bit clean between the rust patches, some washes of the rust to dirty up the overall look might help.

You said it's a stretch for Zombies to Operate vehicles or fire rifles...

What if you have some sort of Daemon Psyker or just state for fluff reasons that the more complicated actions performed by the Zombies are guided by an off-map psyker command choir of some sort?
Or you could say that they've been implanted with small computers to help them perform a complicated function when their overseers issue commands
Would explain things, and still be fluffy

The shots are great. I love the colour, though I think the fatigues need some dried bloodstains on them where sores, open wounds, and victims have left their marks Some good old battle damage (A few penetrating bulletholes, some shrapnel or burn damage, cracking, etc...) would really help add some zombie-ish wear and tear.

A good tip I sort of accidentally discovered for fire damage or peeling paint is superglue. Let it sit for a while, and just use an old brush or pin to keep prodding at it and moving it around. Eventually, with enough work and time to set, it'll start getting rigid and lumpy. Paint a metallic colour over it, then lightly drybrush your armour colours over it. It'll look like paint flaking from the armour. Same tactic can be applied to give burnt armour some damage texture. Works really great for helping emphasize that sort of stuff

i love painting, they look great, dont worry about the rifle/rust colour it looks perfect, also on a side not, why not remove the valkaries wings and add "fly-like" wings, and maybe some insect legs instead of landing gear...and an insect head instead of a cockpit, but keep the side and rear doors as is, i think that would be awesome if you could pull it off

looks really good I want to see more.

I'm really glad to hear a lot of people affirming a couple of my own suspicions (the rust and the fatigues), I'll remind everyone I'm in no way finished Like I said, they need some zombie bitz and I agree the fatigues need a bit of grossing up. They have a stronger green sheen than in the shot, but it still might be too subtle in person.

I'm also with you guys about the 'strength' of the eye glow on a couple of them; I was just making it up as I went along, I'll probably be going back and toning it down.

I'm pretty sure the bases will make the difference for cohesion in the army;



some fantastic tech bases that I can gross right up!

I disagree that the eye-lighting effect is too distinct. For tabletop minis viewed from apporx. 3-4 feet away, that bold impression is good.

Great work there!

A few minor criticisms, mostly echoing what others have said: more tie-in is needed between the two types of troops, visually. Basing is not enough. Their color schemes are totally different. At least a couple shared colors would be a good idea. Right now, they look too distinct. My recommendation is to either add black/gray to the basic troopers, or just dump the basic scheme and start again. The elite trooper's scheme doesn't have much room for addition, so you should add elements of it to the zombies instead. OR you could mostly scrap the zombies' scheme and echo the gray of the elite troopers plus purplish skin for the zombies.

They're both great schemes, but there's not enough coherency for the eye. Your fluff is a good justification, but it still doesn't work to have such disparate looks together. It's the old "Skittles" effect that so many older Guard armies used to have, with odd platoons of Mordians, Cadians, Attilan roughriders, etc. You've gotta have some theme in the minis themselves, not just the bases.

Also, the skin on the basic marines looks a bit too healthy. Some purpling would fit well with your current scheme, actually.

But you have great skills and great schemes! I look forward to seeing a Nurgled-up Valkyrie.

These guys are utterly awesome and I have to disagree with several posters here. For a start the startling eye effect appeals to me as some sort of bale eye/ evil eye/ witch fire thing generated by these fearsome warriors. I personally feel having distinct varied elements in an army is not a bad thing especially for a chaos force. Personally eventually I'd love to do a 1500 pt for every god Apocalypse force which wouldn't tie together at all!

agreed

I love the red around the eyes, it looks really effective. Its not a technique I've really considered before, but for traitor guardsmen it looks awesome. Actually makes them look evil.

I'd echo what everyone else has said about tying the colour schemes in though - its not enough to just do the bases the same, in my experience.

So, my zombie bitz finally arrived and I've bashed a couple "proper" zombie guardsmen together; sadly, the colour balance isn't quite right so the skin tones aren't perfect but are a good approximation. I've got a bunch more shots in my gallery if you want to take a look.


I really like how my Platoon Commander turned out. The beard makes him look a little too 'mad russian', but he's pretty neat. His bone club/scepter is fitting for a zombie leader, I think.


Group Shot

The guy on the left is one of my favourite; blank stare, bulging eye, bleeding from every orifice.... The sergeant turned out pretty well too. The skin tone half of his face and the exposed bone half are too similarly coloured in this shot; they're more easily differentiated in person. The one nice thing about the colour balance in these shots is that you can properly see the sickly green tint to the fatigues; they look pretty bang on to real life.

I've been giving the dual schemes issue some more thought, and I want to reserve final judgement until I have a unit of each "finished" (IE fully detailed, with finished bases and all that) before I render final judgement. I'm super committed to the schemes (I still want everything BS3 to be zombies, everything BS4 to be cultists), so I'm PRAYING for inspiration on something in addition to bases to tie the two together without any complete rehauls.

Fantastic job on those zombies, great mix of the normal IG bits and the zombie bits. I think the different colors schemes work well together, and, more importantly, they'll prevent you from getting bored of painting the whole army a single style!

BlackDracoSLC wrote:Fantastic job on those zombies, great mix of the normal IG bits and the zombie bits. I think the different colors schemes work well together, and, more importantly, they'll prevent you from getting bored of painting the whole army a single style!

I agree with this wholeheartedly. Very well made!

Loving the zombies if you need to tie in the schemes how about an universal icon appearing on every trooper and zombie for the sigil of the lord?

Great work Defenestrator. As for the scheme issue, i say have as much variation/ randomness/ chaos (lol) in your units as possible. If they don't look coherent on the battlefield who cares, its a chaos force, thats the point!!!

infilTRAITOR wrote:

BlackDracoSLC wrote:Some very flattering things.

I agree with this wholeheartedly. Very well made!

Considering your own Traitor work, I consider this high praise indeed. So thanks!






Coming up next, Plague Hulk bases (or a Chimera if I can gather the courage and bitz to dive in)!

Nice take for both Zombies and Pig Iron materials!!!

Keep on painting!!

Will follow this thread for sure....

Alright peoples, the first (of many!) vehicles is finished:


Dirty, rusty and poorly treated; a perfect ride for some zombies.

And who said heavy bolters can't do anti-tank...

I love the way searchlights look on chimeras, I'm so glad they're standard now..... the glue marks where I stuck on the chain are embarassing though! *adds to his list of fixes/redos*

I couldn't decide how I wanted to de-loyalist the panels (couldn't swap them out easily, since this was a salvaged chimera from craigslist) so I figured zombies would just splash some blood on there and call it a day.

oh chimeras, someone needs to buy you some side hatches....

Some thoughts to (hopefully!) explain my choices:
I avoided any really serious mods/chaosy bitz since this isn't an army of chaos-mad cultists turning all their vehicles into glorious altars to their beloved deities; it's an army comprised of men who were dragged kicking and screaming from their vehicles to be chewed to death by zombies. They got back up a few minutes after, got back in their tanks, and turned them on their allies. Thought I am likely to add more spikey bitz from the chaos sprues, I'm still waffling a bit. I'll probably put some on my Russes, see how it looks, and come back for this chimera if I deem it worthwhile.

Now I turn to you, dearest Dakkaites; does it look 'too loyalist' still? Also, would this scheme look any good on a Valkyrie? My brain is telling me no, but that might also be because I want to do it up in the style of my vets (see above), all black red and evil. A workhorse like the chimera makes sense as a terribly maintained but still operational vehicle, but that just doesn't jive with a Valkyrie... strikes me as more of a sleek black strike craft utilized by hardened experts than a rustbucket flown by a man with half a face....

Evilify up the valk! Dark and red!

The Chimera looks great and fits in with the story you just gave. I say keep it as that. Don't go nuts on the Chaos symbols although maybe down the line adding chaos symbols may be part of the infection?? I don't know.