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Good morning everyone,

I remember a few years back I always wanted to play 40k, but never really had the start up money to do so. Now that I have some disposable income, and a local group who plays, I am working on trying to get this started! I had a few questions however, as I am in a rather odd predicament and I am still learning the rules here. I decided to play Chaos Space Marines as they were one of the few left who had not been chosen, and without doing any real research (stupid) I purchased a base set of 10 Chaos Space Marines to go ahead and start learning.

Now, to start things off with, I should say that I am *NOT* artistically inclined. I would like to be, and practice makes perfect, but some of the amazing things you custom guys pull off are way beyond my league. I digress, I brought the little suckers home and started doing a little research on the kind of army I would like to build. Interested in the lore, and back story, and tactics, I've decided I wanted to go with an Army of Nurgle, and start slowly accumulating pieces with that in mind. Checking already built armies of nurgle, and recommended units, it seems most everyone uses a unit called "Plague Marines", which I simply did not have at my local store. My first question would be, are there any recommendations (or is it even possible) to turn a base set of 10 CSM into a set of 10 plague marines? I've purchased a lot of base black and green paint, and was thinking of doing something along the lines of the color scheme used by The Purge. Is there any way , rule wise, to make these guys Plague Marines? Is it worth doing so with my limited artistic and newish skills?

Also, any general recommendations for a complete newbie would be appreciated. I'm primarily monitoring ebay auctions and the like for cheap figures to purchase to reach the minimum for my starting army, and judging by how long it is taking me to prepare and create these 10 basic CSM, I don't think there is any rush!

As a basic, painting works wonders. You can do plague marines with GW colors. A simple paint job would be-

Chaos Black undercoat
Rotting Flesh: The entire model
Devlan Mud: To your liking.
Blood Red and Boltgun Metal: Applied to eyes and gun

A uniform grunge look will make them look good.

As an alternative, look at Forge World for the Nurgle conversions. I like the look of those better than the Finecast junk from GW.

Welcome aboard!

There's no need to by "real" Plague Marines, check my thread (in sig, go a few pages in like 5 or 6, the first few pages are of my old stuff) and you'll see what I mean. Most of my army is made of of standard plastic Chaos Marines with some slight conversions and Green Stuff. It's the paint job that sells the model and defines it. One really cool thing about Plague Marines is that they can look very good even with a mediocre paint job so long as you use some washes (like DAaddict mentioned).

There are dozens of Plague Marine threads on Dakka. I have post on my thread that has links, I can PM that to you if you'd like. I can also share my "step-by-step" painting process, it's quite simple and yields acceptable "tabletop" results.

Again, welcome to Dakka, hope to see you around the threads, and if you start a P&M blog let me know, I'll definitely be interested in following along.

Welcome to dakka!

I second using green stuff. Few stringy clumps falling out of the stomach looks nurglely to me, also some grains of sand of drops of green stuff painted right and you got boils.

Basically my battle plan for these guys, is a black paint primer as the undercoat for the entire unit. Then primarily focus on green on important sections, with a bit of silver on weaponary, and I had seen a guide about how to get the "glowing eye" effect with red that I might look into in the future. I will admit, however, I am the exact definition of the word "novice" so any step by step or visual queues I could use to get that "nurgly" result as you mentioned would certainly be appreciated. I actually had gone out and gotten some incredibly fine sand to utilize on the bases of some units, but that might not work well as "boils", not sure.

Also, any recommendations on other units to "keep an eye out " for would certainly be appreciated, and thanks much for your time!

Since you are basing black most of my technique will not apply, but some of it still does.

What would you recommend then? That was just my idea, and I'm all for a step by step guide. I like the pictures you have in your sig, it seems like I could get something similar with the black coat of primer, and then whatever technique you used to get that green sickly look over the CSM.

If you want tips on doing cool nurgle stuff join Pappa Nurgle,
http://www.papanurgle.com/

i have done some plauge marines,
using various bits available.

Hi,

Welcome to Dakka

Welcome to Dakka!

Have fun!

Iranna.

Welcome to dakka.

Hello and welcome to Dakka!