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Hi everyone,
Decided to get some pics together of a project I have been working on for a couple of years.
Several years ago after building and painting a few thousand points of Death Guard I found a buyer for them and got into…chaos marines I think… anyway fast forward a couple of years and I got the Death Guard Itch again (it’s really hard to get rid of).

This time I wanted to do something really different and work in colours I haven’t used a lot, and with the Idoneth Deepkin release I was pretty inspired to try something fishy…

..Cue Underwater Nurgle! And no, I don’t have a clever name for them yet, something with Reef, Deep or hunger, I don’t know yet.

I have tried to stick to a few ideas, Coral, Marine Creatures and Underwater Decay. I like the idea of the Whole chapter sitting on the seafloor rotting away and become an artificial reef until they receive a call to arms and start trudging out of the water, ready to overwhelm their foe.

First up are the HQ and Elites, a crayfish themed Lord of Contagion, Foul Blightspawn and a couple of termies.
Lord of Contagion / Crayfish


Foul Blightspawn

Bug Terminator


Fish Terminator



Next up, Plague Marines!

This is an absolutely inspired army idea. Love the lore idea of these dudes hanging out on the seafloor somewhere rotting and rusting just waiting for the siren call to shuffle off and kick ass.

The colours work well together and the conversions just blend - I'm surprised this aquaNurg combo hasn't popped up more often, it just seems like a natural fit now having seen these guys.

Lobster tail guy is fantastic, really dig the visual of his tail swishin around as he stomps off to war. Bring on the plague marines!

@tzurk - Thanks! I have seen the undersea nurgle a couple of times online but not a full army. Mind you this was supposed to be a Kill Team to begin with and has grown out of hand

Here are the Plague Marines, it has been difficult to keep a balance between the rust and decay and the bright colour scheme but I am overall pretty happy with how they have come out. They have also been built and painted over the last two years so some design changes have been made as I went.

















Next I just had to have a blob of Crusty Pox Walkers

So my Poxwalkers are a real mixed bag, some were painted up specifically for this army, others are nabbed from my last army and rebased. As you can see there is a range of schemes, the only unifying element is that I wanted to use washes and glazes as much as possible.








Thanks for looking!

Cool project and nice to see you posting again!

The underwater theme here is awesome paired with the Nurgle aspect, I really dig it. The varied mix of Poxwalker looks feels very Chaotic, they look sweet.

@Ingtaer – Thanks! Its been a awhile 
@Vaktathi – thanks!

I realized I missed a few Plague Marines from the first batch I posted






At some point last year I traded into a Demons of Nurgle box, some of the plaque drone bits show up here and there in the army but I wanted to include a whole unit of Plague Bearers to run with a Daemon Prince or Great Unclean One in the future.
I wanted to keep with the theme so I greenstuffed over the cyclops eyes and used tiny glass donuts/beads to make bulging fish eyes along with some fins and crests from my bits box. In hindsight I should have taken more than a day to do the sculpting as some of them read as fish men and others look like frogmen or worse but I found after the first couple I wasn’t very inspired by them so I kinda rushed it
Anyway, here are some Fish demons!

Loving the theme of this army, strong play.

Loving it. The aquatic theme and colours works so well and the fish demons are ace. Looking forward to seeing more.

This whole army was already amazing, but the fish demons? I love the fish demons. The big old buggy eyes work really well!

And froggy is good too, don't be too hard on yourself, Frogs can be underwater somethetimes!

This, is, amazing...
Well done... the only thing missing is a eel crab hybrid defiler...

Oh, that's some really nice conversion work. The fish daemons and crayfish in particular are great and I really enjoy how the paintwork elevates the underwater theme.

Really good work. You don't need to be told the theme at all, the colours and details ooze the concept really nicely.

@Everyone – Thanks for the comments guys, good to know the theme is clear and that maybe I’m being a bit critical of the FishBois 

So I had a couple of Obliterators from the Shadowspear box, thought I would play around with some more “Mutated” guys. The Hammerhead Oblit uses the smiling teeth bellyplate from a Death Guard marine and the rest is green stuff.


And the Octopus Oblit uses the head of a Plague Drone and a bunch of greenstuff, still not sure about this guy, he ended up looking like a mix of Cthulhu and one of the alien band members for the star wars cantina. I may go back and revisit the paint job on the head and add some texture and patterns like a real octopus.


Last is the Spiderbot thing from Shadowspear, I was trying for a mount for the Arch-Lord discordant, he came out a little more vertical than I wanted but I still like him a lot. The actual Arch-Lord is a WIP




Thanks again for the comments guys, very much appreciated!

So here is my long awaited Demon Prince, I saw this guy several years ago and have wanted him ever since. He was my late night Covid Impulse Buy and is totally worth it. If I had the chance to paint him again I would probably go with a colour scheme closer to rest of the army but his current scheme made so much sense and sells it as an actual whale man rather than a crazy mutant. Whether he is congruent with the rest of the army or not he is just too awesome not to include.

Depth Guard?

@E3DD - I like it but I’m trying to steer clear of puns 

Ok now for some weird stuff 
As much as I love the Plague Marine kits I was finding that they didn’t give me quite enough room for some of the conversions I wanted to do, for that I needed to move to the Oblits from further up the blog and Helbrutes 

First I managed to snag the fantastic mono-pose Helbrute, I have always liked the sense of motion it has, just unfortunate you can’t have more than one or the ‘brutes start to look weird. He is also covered in tons of aquatic details like gills and tentacles but I dialled it up a bit by adding a crab claw for a powerfist, a bunch of shells and coral on the carapace and of course, subbing out the sarcophagus for a grumpy moray eel.




The next Helbrute was an excuse to use the abdomen from the Spiderbot guy I had chopped up, I wanted to create a shell for a mobile reef with fish and seaweed in it. This turned out complicated because I had to paint the inside of the shell before assembling it as it would have been impossible otherwise… oh and I had no Helbrute legs so they had to be sculpted from scratch. All in all it’s a pretty weird and tall HelBrute but I figure I could always use contemptor rules for it





Again thanks for the comments guys, I should have some actual WIP pics up soon 

I like the hellbrute, i really really do.

@Not Online!!! - Yes, the Helbrute has been a fan favourite since I first made him

Ok, so this isn’t exactly model related but it is definitely painting related. In the last 8 months my job has changed a lot (I am sure a it has for a lot of people!) and I have moved from being Ops Manager for a small group of Book and Toy stores to also being sole charge of my local branch. This has meant I know have long, quiet afternoons spent at the counter wondering if we will ever have customers again 
To get through the doldrums I have had the huge luck to be able to paint at the counter, Living the dream I know, but lugging boxes of paint and models back and forth from work to home was becoming a little ridiculous so I have built myself a solution.






I am still working out the best setup, hence the temporary balsa wood shelves, and I may yet build another deeper one to accommodate more paint and space for models. But in the meantime the painting case has been super handy for being able to set up a painting session in no time.

Will be cracking out my light tent today(portable as well of course!) to get some pics of the Great Unclean One I am working on for the underwater plague army.

Cheers

BLACKHAND

Hmm, maybee a bit dangerous if something hits the case.

Have you considered small shelves?

This is nothing short of brilliance. Great idea and execution. The Octo-Obliterator is amazing. The Daemon Prince is awesome. Fantastic model. And the eel Hellbrute is a triumph.

These are great! Thank you for sharing!

@Not Online!!! - another reason for a wider case overall, it would help keep it from tipping over.
@Youwasshock – Thanks!
@Nurglitch – Cheers!

So have some actual WIP pics for you, I really wanted a GUO for this army and after several failed sculpts of a large fish like creature I decided to try a more traditional GUO and apply the same scheme and additions I made to the rest of the army to tie it all together










I am working on the Antlers/horns at the moment, they are going to be a bright blue blending to pink, going for a Vapourwave look. The thought is the GUO will end up looking like a living coral reef with the fish and eels swimming through the coral-like outgrowths on his back…at least that’s the plan!

Cheers

BLACKHAND

Between the chins, tentacly guts, and eel, he reminds me of Ursula. A distant relation, perhaps. Stellar work, so far.

Got time today to paint the outgrowths with their blues and pinks, needs more washes and highlighting but I couldn’t wait to get him glued together and ready to display! I had hoped to use Vallejo Fluorescent magentas and blues but they have proven to be impossible to get here in New Zealand so I have made do with Citadel paints, still happy with the outcome 







Cheers

BLACKHAND

So wonderfully colorful. The critters swimming around him really help sell the whole idea.

Thought I would post up pics of my Heldrake, still not sure if he is Heldrakey enough but he sure fits the aesthetic. The jaws are from the Idoneth shark kit, the fins are from the plague drone kit and the rest is polymer clay and green stuff.






Close up of the base as well to show its construction, literally pieces of Pine bark stacked on top each other and putty to fill in gaps, texture paint to add scale detail and then slathering on blue and green paint and washes. Its really quite easy when you are trying to convey an environment that is tinged all the same tones by the “water” you are viewing it through.

Wow, this stuff is pretty amazing. The helbrute and greater daemon especially. Hats off good sir.

Incredible! The fish head plaguebearers are very cool

Astonishing & cool theme. Those Plaguebearers are just scary and silly in a VERY good way. Keep it up!