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Hello there!

This blog will be dedicated to documenting the progress on my custom Nurgle Plague Marine army. Well at least a small collection of minis, if not a full sized army I'll be converting up the older, classic Chaos Space Marines mainly, because I don't really like the new bigger GW Plague marines. Don't get me wrong, they are awesome sculpts and being way bigger they are also more imposing on the table, which is why I can see the appeal of these new minis. However, for me, the fun lies in customising, converting and painting to create something unique to my collection, and monopose models don’t lend themselves to customization that well. I find they all come out looking very same-y, even with quite some effort in conversion work. This is the reason why I just love the classic Chaos Space Marines that much. The sets offer so much versatility and can be assembled in different ways. No model needs to be the same.
Another big part of the hobby for me is making do with what I have lying around, and this is also how this project came into being. I decided to recycle some old, damaged Space Marine bitz which were unusable for Loyalist Marines because of their condition. However, they can be recycled easily to give some characterful Nurgle Plague Marines. After assembling the first miniature, I caught the conversion/recycling bug and a single test mini soon became a squad of three and then a full squad of seven Plague Marines. In this thread, I want to share with you my endeavours into creating a custom force of Nurgle-themed Marines and allies. I hope you will enjoy.

To start off this thread, let me thus begin with the model that started it all - I had a damaged pair of SM legs lying around which got ruined by taking a bath in the wrong cleaning liquid. Luckily, it was just a spare test mini I wasted on this experiment, so it wasn't too bad. The next part was a damaged/miscast SM body I cast myself. I made a mold of a custom-built MKII Iron suit a while ago, and I used it to create the MKII champion for my Ultramarines which you can check out in my other thread. Since the body was also not usable for a regular mini, I had put it aside, not knowing what to do with it. Seeing the bloated damaged legs and the miscast MKII body lying around on my hobby table, it suddenly hit me like a brick - the parts may not be suitable for regular Marines, but they'll do fine for Plague Marines right? So off I was, rummaging through my bits-box to find this guy some arms and a backpack to complete him. This is what I came up with:







Not bad for a start, if I may say so myself. However, I felt this guy needed some more nurglifying, if you know what I’m trying to say. I decided to keep the paintjob simple with just a few colours and a generous amount of washes, which meant I would have to add some more texture to the mini to make the end result more interesting. I got out the greenstuff and applied pustule-like growths to the armour in some random spots across the model. These pustules gave some interesting texture and variety tot he model and allowed me to simultaneously cover up some obvious, weird marks left on the miscast bits. I added the icon of Nurgle to the mini's left pauldron as well as the boltpistol in its right hand. To spruce up the mini a little more, I added an ammo belt and some grenades to its belt in the back.







I liked the look and decided to start painting. As I said, the paintjob was rather simple so I could churn out more of those in a short amount of time. I relied heavily on washes and sloppy stippling and drybrushing techniques to achieve a dirty, almost mouldy look for the armor of the Marine. I’ll go through the whole painting recipe in a later post if people are interested, but for now, let me leave you with pictures of the finished Plague Marine. The first one is unedited, the second one was edited using the app Pixlr.





After seeing how easy and fun it was to convert and paint Plague Marines, I decided to keep going and do a whole squad of seven. Looking at this test miniature with ruptured pustules on the armour, you may understand why I have taken to lovingly calling the army the "Barnacle Boys". Watch this space because in the following updates I will show you how my first foray into building a force of Chaos Marines continued! Until then, thanks for checking this out and feel free to leave C&C!

I'll stand by, that sounds interesting

Hello again!

With other projects keeping me busy, I did not post anything here for a long time. Let me make up for it with a picture dump of the conversion process and the finished result of the first squad of Plague Marines. The squad is 7 strong, as is customary for Marines dedicated to the god Nurgle, and it includes one plasma gunner. Let me start with some images of the unpainted Marines:







































Now for some pictures of the finished, painted squad:































Im looking forward to your C&C!

They look really darn good, THAT'S my feedback! The colour choices work really well, and the conversions are awesome - nice rescue of that original piece BTW.

What's the painting recipe, I'm interested to see if it can be used by other grimy/ ragtag projects out there.

Keep up the nice work, mate

Hey Ragsta! Thanks for the kind words! Glad you like them!
Sorry if it annoys anybody, but to describe the painting stages, I will use a mix of old and new GW paint names, as I still have some of the older pots. Here's the recipe I use:

First off, make sure to give the model some texture. This can be done by stippling the base paint on more thickly than usual. Another way would be to stipple on some Liquid greenstuff paste before the undercoat. Either way, let that dry thoroughly before moving on

Basecoat armor with Elysian Green

Drybrush entire mini with Rotting Flesh

Basecoat metal parts like the guns and vents with Scorched Brown

Basecoat any horns/spikes with Skull White

Basecoat skin with Rotting Flesh

Highlight skin with Skull White drybrush

Wash the whole mini with Agrax Earthshade (i.e. over the green, brown and the white)

Apply second coat of Agrax Earthshade in deeper recesses if necessary

Stipple brown metal parts with Dark Flesh now, not all over but randomly

Stipple/streak/smear some Macharius Solar Orange over the brown metal parts for a second highlight/rust layer. Try to be sloppy, and don't cover the whole surface. Just add some random, irregular splotches or streaks of rust here and there without going overboard

Basecoat visors & glowing areas with sky blue (maybe GW Ice Blue could work for you)

Highlight with 50/50 mix of Ice Blue and Skull White

Hope this helps!

Now that's a classic early 2000s plague marine squad! I remember seeing similar conversions and paintjobs on the tables and in White Dwarf many years ago, way to keep the DIY dream alive Dig the OSL and those are some impressively rusted weapons

Thanks a lot Boss Salvage! Yeah, I gotta admit, I'm a sucker for the older multipose kits They are just so much more fun to work with, and you can be way more creative by combining sets and converting or casting bitz.
Thanks for the encouragement, I definately will keep up the DIY stuff, as it's become kind of an addiction I have way more converted and kitbashed minis on my desk than I could ever realistically hope to be able to paint

Stop by again, I got another squad ready to show off, and a third and fourth are in the assembly/planning phase

Action shot of Squad n° 1:

That paint scheme seems ridiculously simple yet devastatingly effective. The action shot is very nice indeed, good stuff mate!

 Ragsta wrote:
That paint scheme seems ridiculously simple yet devastatingly effective. The action shot is very nice indeed, good stuff mate!

Thanks Ragsta! Yeah it's pretty simple. That way I get to convert more while still being able to get stuff painted in a reasonable amount of time

Update time!
Today, time for me to show you squad number 2! Again, these are the classic plastic Chaos Space Marines with some conversions, as well as greenstuff pustules and modifications added on. As in the previous squad, I tried to make the squad leader/sergeant stand out by using some special bitz. This squads sergeant features the head from a WHFB chaos warrior that comes with the Chaos chariot set. The set is great because it has many interesting bitz to use for conversions, such as 4 heads dedicated to one chaos god each. I used the Nurgle chaos warrior head for the conversion of this sergeant, along with some bitz from the Khorne berzerker sprue.
The other squad members are just regular dudes, but with the helmet horns removed (I think they aren’t fitting for a Nurgle-themed army) and some pustules added on. Without further ado, let’s move on to the images of the unpainted squad:
































So that's it for now! But stop by again soon, as I will upload pictures of the painted squad in the near future! I hope you like the stuff in here and I'd be glad to hear your feedback again! Until next time!

Great stuff. Lovely simple paint job, which shows off some well sculpted conversions. Looking forward to seeing more.

FeistyRips,

Very nice green-stuff work there.

Cheers,

CB

Hello again!

Thanks RobertsMinis and Captain Brown!
Today, it’s time for another picture dump, this time of the finished second squad! I have to apologise in advance as I realised too late that some of the minis had become a little dusty. I ended up taking all the pictures and left the house, so this is all I can post for now. Hope you guys still enjoy and aren’t too bothered by the dust!






























That’s it so far, but like I said, I still have a 3rd and 4th squad in the making, as well as a half-finished Nurgle Daemon Prince and a half-finished Dreadnought/Helbrute. I don’t know when I’ll get around to completing them, seeing as I have to work on my Tigers and some DnD stuff as well! However, I’ll make sure to keep you guys posted on the progress!
Until next time!

Congrats on finishing the squad! They look great. the rust and light blue eyes really pop against the neutral green armour and grey base.

Looking forward to seeing what you do with the next update - whenever it might be!

Thanks tzurk! Glad you like the colour combination!

I'll upload some WIP shots of the DP and Helbrute as well. Currently, they are in the assembly/conversion stage. As I am kitbashing both from different sets and with only half the required parts at my disposal, it might still take me a while to finish them, but I'll show you what I have so far!


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I quickly took some WIP pics of the Helbrute and Daemon Prince. Let's start with the latter:



As you can see, this guy is made from a mix of many different GW kits: The body is from an actual, proper Nurgle DP, and as it was given to me many years ago by a friend, it is still the older, pewter version. The arms, pauldrons and exhaust vents originate from the newer, generic plastic Daemon prince. Finally, the head came from a set of Ogre Kingdoms Ironguts (if that’s the proper name?). To tie all the parts together and nurglify the whole thing, I added copious amounts of greenstuff on all the areas where different parts met. I sculpted a horn and cyclopic eye onto the ogre head to give it the classic Nurgle look. Also, many pustules and boils were added here and there to give the whole model a diseased appearance. To give the model some ranged combat capabilities, I decided to add a wrist-mounted cannon, similar to the one seen on the classic, OOP metal DP. This cannon was made from a piece of a pen I had taken apart. These always contain some useful bits which are great for cannon barrels and the like, so I usually keep them when they run out of ink.



Whats left to do now if find this guy some legs! Since my friend only gifted me the metal body, I had to get creative by substituting bitz from other kits. However, I don’t have any legs of suitable size for this mini. I guess I’ll have to change plans and sculpt the legs myself. For this, I will need to make a wire armature, and then work around that in layers of greenstuff (and possibly some less expensive filler material underneath, as well). Also, I’ll have to sculpt some new fingers for this guy, since I cut the original, long and creepy plastic fingers off. They just didn’t fit in with Nurgle.



I might have to add some more details to some of the parts, but for now, the most important step will be to actually manage to create a decent armature with a suitable pose to start sculpting. Wish me luck
Next up, let’s take a look at the Helbrute:



As you will surely recognize, the bulk of this guy is made from some some leftover bitz from a Blood Angels dreadnought kit. The head is a modified head from an old, OOP WHFB plastic chaos barbarian set, and I just had to use it somewhere as I think it looks tremendously cool. As you can see, all the armor plates are covered in BA insignia. Hoooo boy, I’ll have to sculpt a LOT of pustules and blemishes to cover up this loyalist mess



I will also have to come up with a way of filling in the hole above the head. The ranged weapon arm is part of a frag cannon, with two leftover CSM heavy bolters attached to it. I think the ammo belt of the frag cannon goes well with the heavy bolters barrel size



Sorry for the blurry image, but it was hard to get everything into focus. Anyways, as you can see, I still have a long way to go with this guy. I’ll need to attach the left arm, patch many holes, make a custom back plate since I don’t have one left over, convert the legs, cover everything with pustules etc. Oh yeah, before I forget: I already have a left CCW arm prepared for this helbrute, but I’m not 100% sold on it. Check it out:



I do like the fact that it’s a chainfist a lot, but I’m unsure whether it is too elegant of a weapon for a brutish creature like the Helbrute. The arm is a little skinnier compared to regular SM dreadnought arms, and maybe that’s why it seems a little off to me. Maybe I’ll be able to source a regular CCW arm for him somewhere? Or should I go with what I already have?

Anyways, that’s all the WIP stuff I can show you for now. I hope you guys enjoyed and let me know what you think and what I could improve! Thanks for checking this out! Until next time!

Hello there!

I'm back working on this project. As you may recall, I showed off some WIP pics of a Nurgle Dreadnought/Helbrute last time. I recently ordered a used SM Dread from a private seller for my Fighting Tigers project because I needed the attached Assault cannon. When the Dread arrived, a sudden realization hit me. The rest of the dread would be perfect to allow me to finish my Nurgle Helbrute with the leftover parts. So here I am, hacking away at the mini and converting it to fit the look I have in mind. I want it to be similar to the pose of the original GW Helbrute with the multimelta that came in one of the GW starter sets years ago. Right now, I am in the process of adding multiple layers of greenstuff to "nurglify" the loyalist dreadnought. This is where I'm at right now:







I'd be glad to hear your opinions on the progress so far. There'still a lot to be done, but I keep adding GS layers everyday to complete the look. Please let me know what you think! Until next time!

Back again with some more WIP shots. I added some detail to the shoulder joints and the arm yesterday. Today, I did more superficial work on the armour plates and the right heavy bolter arm, but I will show these off tomorrow. Here's some pics:












Let me know your thoughts see you later

Looks good so far!
Especially the sinewy "fleshy" arm joints

Cant wait to see it painted.

Back again! The final steps of the sculpting process are done! I added some more detail to the CCW arm and did some minor touchups to surfaces that needed breaking up. I also used some liquid green stuff to further detail certain surfaces. I'm really happy with how the sculpting managed to tie all the different parts together to create a proper Nurgle abomination to join my Barnacle Boys









Here's a detail shot of the CCW...



... and a detail shot of the sarcophagus



I have also already started painting the dreadnought today. So far, it has received a basecoat of Elysian green. Much to Lord Duncan's dismay, however, it received only one single thick coat of paint which was heavily stippled on, to create additional texture. It was actually a good thing that I bought a used model for this conversion, since it was kind of in bad shape and had glue spills and other problems. Instead of painstakingly fixing these, I actually steered into the skid and reinforced the rough texture to create this beautiful, nurgley surface.

I would love to hear your thoughts and feedback on the progress so far. Catch you later!

The greenstuffing looks good! I like the choice of helmet style too.

You have excellent sculpting skills! I love the thin layer of pitting and boils everywhere, but I'm really impressed with the cabling and musculature at the shoulders/in this beast's armpits. Nice job! Looking forward to seeing more progress.

Thanks ph34r and Warboss_Waaazag! Glad you like the dreadnought! :

Today I've got a small update for you about some progress I made, both on the dreadnought itself as well as on the third squad of Plague Marines I am preparing. Let's start off with the Marines:



This guy is going to be the squad's sergeant. His legs are casts of SM legs I made myself. I added a GK body and sculpted on a pot belly with some battle damage as well as some pitting on the chestplate. The head came from a rather old set of WHFB Tomb Kings Skeletons. The chainaxe arm came from a set of Khorne berzerkers, the other from a set of regular CSM.



I added a different magazine to the sergeant's boltgun. I also sculpted on the usual barnacles/pustules onto the armor to add some visual interest and break up the surface for the upcoming, drybrush-heavy paintjob.



Next guy is the squad's plasma gunner. When buying some used minis off of ebay, I was lucky enough to receive this extremely cool FW resin Plague Marine torso with plasma gun, and I decided to keeep it pretty much as is:





Next up, some regular guys from the squad:













Next up, a Marine I like because of the simple yet effective head conversion. This guy used to have the regular CSM top knot you often see on older Marines. To nurglify his helmet, I carefully clipped off the hair of the top knot, and then shaved the remaining stump down to form a spike, like some of the very old plague marines used to have. I think it's quite cool because it transforms the helmet a lot without wasting anything or having to buy extra materials.





And finally, another pretty quick but cool conversion: This guy had the lower jaw of the helmet removed. I then sculpted on a dangling tongue and an organic jaw that seemed like it was protruding from below the helmet to give the Marine kind of a demonic, distorted visage:





I'd love to get your input on these guys. I hope you like the subtle conversions to the squad. Next up, let's take another look at the Nurgle Dreadnought/Helbrute. Not much work done on him in the mean time, but I did lay down the base coat for the drybrush already. This really helped to tie the whole conversion together and give an impression of what the final product can become. Check it out:












And that's it! I hope you enjoyed this quick update! Feel free to leave your C&C down below, I'm interested to read what you have to say! Until next time!

Been waiting for a prime / base layer shot of the dread, love how the paint pulls that old dread and GS together

Thanks Boss Salvage! Now I hope I will manage to match the paint scheme of the Marines as closely as possible so he will fit in!

Hello there! I’m back with some pictures of something I hope you will like. Last time I left you off with unpainted pictures of my Nurgle Helbrute/Dreadnought. Well today, I want to show you the finished, painted product. This guy’s been sitting on my shelf in its finished state for quite a while, but I’ve only now gotten around to uploading the pics and typing this post. I hope you can forgive the long wait. Anyways, without further ado, let’s get cracking!



Here’s the dread in all its nurgley, pustule-ridden glory. I really like how the paintjob managed to pull together the crazy, random garble of bitz, greenstuff and superglue to make a properly nasty, gnarly Nurgle Dreadnought. In this shot you can appreciate the fit of the old, modified WHFB chaos warrior helmet inside the dreadnought’s sarcophagus. The head is one of my personal favorite parts about this model.



The new techniques I used on this guy, like creating pitting and shallow holes by modeling them onto a very thin, even layer of greenstuff, have taken well to the paint and turned out just like I had envisioned them. They provide a lot of contrast to the previously smooth surfaces and add a lot of visual interest.



Another technique I used to add detail to the surfaces was globbing on some random splotches of an old batch of semi-dried liquid greenstuff which creates rough, irregular patches that also lend themselves very well to drybrushing. On the side of the right shoulder housing the heavy bolters, I added several round, ‘unpopped’ pustules. All of the metallics were painted in rust colors, just like I do with the boltguns and techy bitz on my regular foot soldiers.



The back of the dreadnought is obviously less armored than the front, revealing larger areas of corroded metal and sinewy strands of mutated flesh between the armor plates. The cool thing about building Nurgle stuff is that you can get away with using parts that are damaged or have had one too many layers of paint, because the added texture will just improve the gritty look that you want on the followers of this specific chaos god. Have a used model with goopy paint, glue spills and marks from accidental hobby knife mishaps? No problem! Sculpt on some additional mess and paint it in a matching color, and presto, you have just salvaged a normally useless miniature and created something new, creative and unique for your collection. Hey, I should know, because my attempt to salvage bad parts was how this army initially got started



When building this guy, I tried to pay attention to the dynamism of his pose. I wanted to replicate something similar to GW’s Helbrute that they put in the Dark Vengeance starter set, and I think I’ve managed to at least partially recreate it. I made sure to angle the arms and turn the dreadnought’s head in the direction he’s aiming his heavy bolters. I also repositioned his right leg to be able to place it on top of a mound on his base to give him more of a braced shooting pose.



The CCW was kind of a tricky thing. If you go back and look at the older pictures, you can see that the fingers used to be longer, almost like claws. However, I decided I wanted them to be more short and sturdy-looking, so I cut them down considerably and then sculpted on extra detail like the segments. For the final, grimy touches (pun not intended), I slathered them in some LGS to roughen up the surface for drybrushing.



The CCW now looks very sturdy, and actually quite similar in overall shape to the one on the DV dreadnought, if a lot more nurglified in texture. To keep my paint palette limited, I decided to also paint all the lenses and glowing effects on this model in a light blue, like I always do with the regular Space Marines in this army.



Finally, here’s a look at the model’s base from a better angle. From here, you can see the debris I added to the ground using a custom mixture of all the offcuts that I inevitably amass when doing any sort of conversion. I always keep these offcuts, little broken pieces, as well as any loose bits of cardboard and plastic in a special container for later use when I need to dirty up some bases. It’s really handy and I can only recommend it. Now, the keen-eyed among you might be able to tell that this is one of the dreadnought bases that GW sells with pre-sculpted detail. While it is a nice touch, it can get repetitive very fast if you have more than one dreadnought in your army, or the look might not fit your army’s basing style at all. For this reason, I decide to cover up large parts of the base, either by adding a mound of greenstuff for one of the legs to rest on, by adding sand or by adding copious amounts of the aforementioned debris mixture. One detail I wanted to keep visible however, was the tiny skull embedded in the ground, which I painted up with a very quick, two-color paintjob.

Alright, now that we’ve looked at the model in detail, I have one final picture for you: an action shot in a ruined city landscape:



And that wraps up today’s post! I hope you all enjoyed looking at my Nurgle stuff and I would really ppreciate your comments and feedback on this fella. Stay tuned for more Nurgle stuff, because as of me typing this, there’s still two more squads of Plague Marines finished on my shelf which I still want to share with you. I hope you will stop by again to check out the other stuff. Until then, thanks a lot for looking and have a great day. Until next time

I had to turn back time and see where he was before paint ...

 FeistyRips wrote:

... so I could properly appreciate where he ended up! Happy to see him all painted up, dig how aggressively rusty the worky bits are, and the blue glow is a nice contrast.

Great work rescuing/corrupting these Nurgley chaps. The GS really does look quite barnacle-y! . Boss Salvage summed up the genius of the paint scheme really well, +1 to what he said!

Thanks Boss Salvage and gobert for your nice comments, I'm happy to hear you like the paintjob!

Nice Hellbrute/Dread, FeistyRips.