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muette wrote:Such a penetrating gaze! You have plenty of reasons to be proud, it looks fantastic (and disgusting!).

Maréchal des Logis Walter wrote:Now that's an original mini.you have there sir!

Nozeminer wrote:Not gonna lie, that is pretty disturbing. That's what makes it awesome. I can see why you'd be excited to make another. Have fun!

FeistyRips wrote:The droe came out absolutely amazing. I'm in awe at your beautiful blending, but also the rust effect on the metal bits. Really stunning work once again, it really does the fantastic sculpting justice!

gobert wrote:That skull drone is amazing! Excellent building and a really cool paint job to boot!

Thank you, everyone! I was surprised to find out that making that bloat drone actually left me feeling quite creatively spent. I really put a lot into that and needed to take a little time off to recharge! I've been working on a Turnip28 force in time for TurnipCon in May, but found some time to paint up another couple of guys for the plague marines.


The plague belcher arm came out really well. I picked up some Pro Acryl neon pink and it's SO bright. I had to tone it down a little with some purple glazes but I honestly love how it came out.

The eye lenses are so small I found it impossible to do. So i painted them white and slopped a load of turquoise in in there and called it a day


Then we have the plasma gunner. I wasn't intending this army to be so bright and colourful. But they just seem to have taken on a life of their own and I'm really enjoying seeing it come together.


I've got a fairly quick and easy recipe for the armour and trim now, so I'm hoping I can start batching the remaining PMs. Here's a little sneak peak of the model I started today. This will be a PM armed with a plague spewer. It'll be bigger than the belcher, with a pipe going to a backpack. I kind of want to see some continuity between the plague squirty weapons, so it'll be a smaller version of the Blightspawn, seen next to him.

Hi Tek, loving the colour scheme on the plague marines, it’s a very striking and bold. I really like the way you have done the flamer, it looks very fleshy.
You have a talent for creativity and green stuff and some of those mods look great.

That Skull drone is fantastic!! you have skills brother... disturbing skills! I envy you.

Loving the neon primary colours! Really adds to the retro feel. Hopefully the creative motivation burnout doesn’t last too long

JordySteve wrote:Hi Tek, loving the colour scheme on the plague marines, it’s a very striking and bold. I really like the way you have done the flamer, it looks very fleshy.
You have a talent for creativity and green stuff and some of those mods look great.

Thank you! The creative side of this hobby is my favourite part. I don't consider myself to be amazing, but I have fun and that's what's important to me

Styrofoam04 wrote:That Skull drone is fantastic!! you have skills brother... disturbing skills! I envy you.

Thanks mate, that thing was a monster to build! I have started on the companion drone, so hopefully I can update the blog with a sister drone in the near future.

gobert wrote:Loving the neon primary colours! Really adds to the retro feel. Hopefully the creative motivation burnout doesn’t last too long

Thanks, Gobert! The colours are getting brighter and brighter. This wasn't my intention but I agree, it really works with the old models and the overall feel of my force. Good news, the burnout hasn't lasted and I in fact speed painted a unit of plaguebearers yesterday!









These were all done with your classic drybrushed, tinted with washes technique. Each model had a slightly different colour recipe, but a very simple approach. Drybrush a mid tone on the top 2/3, a light tone on the top half and a bright tone on the top 1/3. Then filter the whole thing with a wash. I made two different washes, one a turquoisey brown, one a purply brown. This meant the unit can look chaotic, but there's still some colour theory tying them together. The lime green horns ties them back into the rest of the army. And the neon pink faces just kind of happened!

I think I mentioned I bought some Pro Acryl neon pink. It's really thin, and that means it was really easy to glaze a few layers onto the faces and hands of this lot and again, bring them all together. I did the whole unit in a day today. Really pleased with how they all turned out!

Man what a delight! Kudos

Flipping awesome Plague bearers! Some of those old sculpts look a bit one eyed gobbo, but are fantastic nonetheless. That neon pink on their faces was a great unifying colour choice

Those Plaguebearers look sweet! Althouth I would not put them in my mouth...

Those Plaguebearers are great! Lovely, very artistic. I disagree with the guy above me, they look very tasty, don't bring them to a public game or a small child might confuse them for sweets haha. Great colour scheme

Hey Tek! Amazing work, both on the Plague Marines and the Plaguebearers! The vibrancy and high contrast of your chosen paint scheme very striking which makes the units really pop. The lime green and deep purple complement eachother perfectly. I'm also in awe at what you manage to achieve with a 'speed paint' in one day! A paintjob of that caliber would probably take me weeks, if I could pull it off at all! Mad props mate and sorry for my late response btw!

Thank you so much, everyone! I can't tell you how much your positive words help to keep me motivated to keep working on this force.
@gobert, I love these goofy old sculpts. I narrowly missed out on a bunch of the even older plaguebearer sculpts. If I ever want a big blob of 20 of them, I'll be getting even more of these janky old sods!
@feisty - I am SURE you could smash this paint scheme. It was loads of fun - I even got my girlfriend in on the action. She had a blast doing some drybrushing and washing!

I don't have much in the way of updates, but I have finished modelling two squads of Plague Marines! You can see the variety of kits which make up these guys too. Which I think is pretty rad.


I'm calling the first squad "shooty squad". There's two bolters, a plasma gun and a blight launcher. The champion has a plasma gun (and heavy plague weapon) and they're accompanied by the plague surgeon. In my mind, they dig into cover and become a stubborn nuisance. I don't know if that's the practical reality, but that's how I see them!


The second squad I'm calling "squirty squad". Two bolters, a plague belcher and plague spewer. Champion has the same loadout (plasma and HPW feels like the best loadout really) and the squad has the attached blightspawn. I see this lot throwing a lot of torrent fire out and they all have tentacle arms instead of actual flamer-style weapons. Which has caused the Mrs to call them the "penis patrol".


Here's a closeup of the second plague champion. His body is (I think) one of the possessed from the Dark Vengeance box(?), but with arms from very old plastic WFB Chaos models. The left arm holding the plasma is an old Knight arm, with a modern plasma gun slightly modified to fit. The mace is a counts-as heavy plague weapon. And the backpack is an old Khorne bezerker backpack! I covered the Khorne logo and I'll paint a tiny Nurgle logo on it. How about that for rivalry?


Lastly, a detail shot of the plague spewer. I need to do a little more greebling on the backpack but I'm happy with the green stuff work. I feel like my skills are getting better. I bought a green stuff cable maker, too. Can't wait to start using that across the army.


Now I'd better get some paint on these suckers!

Damn! Those squads look so nice already! I love the variety of old and new minis, your mixing and matching of parts and that you even managed to incorporate some of the classic pewter sculpts. These just ooze so much character IMO. Also, I'm stunned by the inclusion of the delicate veins you managed to sculpt onto the fleshy bits, that is INSANE!

Your force is really shaping up nicely! It's super cool to see how the purple basecoat ties all the parts together and gives us a first impression of the finished product.
Also, very cool that you managed to recruit your girlfriend to help you with the hobby, so great that you can share this!

Looking forward to more cool stuff mate!!

Keep it up!

Wow, these are fantastic conversions. I love them all.

That plague spewer is certainly a veiny member of the penis patrol sorry I saw it and couldn’t help myself! Serious though, the sculpting and kit bashing is first rate. Can’t wait to see how they develop

Maréchal des Logis Walter wrote:Keep it up!

Warboss_Waaazag wrote:Wow, these are fantastic conversions. I love them all.

Thanks so much! I don't see too much converting and kitbashing in the hobby nowadays. I guess GW having a model for everything removes the need to make your own models. But I'm old school, and I _love_ converting and making a mess

gobert wrote:That plague spewer is certainly a veiny member of the penis patrol sorry I saw it and couldn’t help myself! Serious though, the sculpting and kit bashing is first rate. Can’t wait to see how they develop

lol the veins really set off the penis patrol vibes Thanks so much for the kind words. I do have some updates!

I've been out of the Death Guard game for a few weeks, as I was preparing for TurnipCon Bristol, a Turnip28 tournament near me. I managed to bash out a decent cultless force (and got absolutely battered on the day lol)


Back to the plague marines. I've painted up the special characters who will be running with the two squads of Plague Marines. Namely the Plague Surgeon and Foul Blightspawn:


I've been told by the wonderful Sherrypie that the Plague Surgeon is actually a pants unit. But I love the idea of a corrupted apothecary too much. I think I'll make a Tallyman at some point, but I couldn't neglect the conversion work on him


I feel like the bright pink pipe that's going into his gob looks like some gross intestine. It connects to the weird contraption on his back, so there's two possible scenarios I can see here. Either it's a straw that sucks the guts out of folks and he drinks it, or it's a hypodermic which takes bile out of his stomach and injects into folks? Both are gross, which is just wonderful.

The Foul Blightspawn came out fairly well I think.


The angry penis arm is so OTT! I can't get the white balance right on my pics, so I've adjusted the balance slightly so you can get a better idea of the purple tone. It's not 100%, but I'm just taking photos using the window in my office for light. Once they're all complete I'll attempt some better photography.

Not photographed, but 100% of the Battleline units are now painted. I'm going to have a massive basing session today. So potentially by the end of the day I'll be uploading a pic of the completed army so far! And one final sneak peek. Every army needs a leader. And who else would I be using but this classic OOP legend:


As you can see, there's been a fair bit of embiggening to try to get him to stand up next to the new model. MASSIVE base, green stuff brothel creeper platform shoes, a new scythe and an extension to the Destroyer Hive, courtesy of some bits from a Deathshroud terminator and a fair bit of green stuff. Also some cool giant flies from Frostgrave, I want to say. Oh yeah and a head from an old metal chaos termie. I've got a couple of those in my bitz box. They're TINY compared to modern terminators, but that head is just too cool not to utilise. I'll probably use Typhus's head on a Lord of Contagion or something.

Thank you all for the support so far! The army keeps trucking and your support really helps to keep me inspired.

Great project, very inventive. Inspiring to see what you can achieve with a few old models and some bits. Keep up the good work; i'll be following to the end

 PaddyMick wrote:
Great project, very inventive. Inspiring to see what you can achieve with a few old models and some bits. Keep up the good work; i'll be following to the end

Thank you so much, PaddyMick. You make a good point. You can do a lot with a few old models and a bit of wild abandon.

As mentioned above, I've been on a basing mission. I now have a technically-playable 450 point force. I doubt this would be very competetive, but it's cool to have a legal, playable force completely painted and based. It's been a while since I could say that. And here they are!



Got to admit, seeing them all lined up like that makes me proud. We've got the two squads of Plague Marines. One with torrent weapons, the other with more punchy, anti-armour weapons. It looks like HPWs have been pulled (according to the app), to those maces will now count-as power fists.



Then we've got the Poxwalkers. These will go with Typhus when he's finished


The two characters completed and based:


And then finally, the Bloat-Drone. Which is currently the centrepiece for the force. There's one more to come, but according to the app, Heavy Blight Launchers have been dropped so I think I need to think about how to load these out.


Super happy to have all of these done. The plan for the next phase is a second Drone, Typhus, six Deathshroud Terminators and a Lord of Contagion. That _should_ put me in the vicinity of 1000 points. Onto the Phase 2!

OMG! I'm amazed by the progress on your force! I LOVE the way the Plague Surgeon, Cyclops Champ and Blightspawn came out! Really great to see the force come together! Also, really love how the heavy Bolter dude turned out now that he has shoulder pads and a paintjob. The bases look fantastic as well, and the shots of all the minis lined up are mighty impressive!

Once again, I can only praise your inspiring work! Looking forward to more from you mate!

Man that's so neat, both armies

Thanks Feisty, thanks Merechel. I'm glad you're enjoying the army. I've made some progress on the Deathshroud which I think you'll love. Potentially pics tomorrow!

These are awesome! Unique colour choices, great kitbashing and green-stuff trickery, and some very creative ideas. 'Angry penis arm' is not a phrase I ever expected to read but I guess you learn something new every day...

 bullisariuscowl wrote:
These are awesome! Unique colour choices, great kitbashing and green-stuff trickery, and some very creative ideas. 'Angry penis arm' is not a phrase I ever expected to read but I guess you learn something new every day...

Thank you so much. Creativity is the only real aim here. If I play, I'm certainly not looking to win. I'm just looking to have fun making a cool-looking army that reflects me. My green stuff work is getting better. I feel I have a log way to go but I'm enjoying learning and (hopefully) improving. And yeah haha "angry penis arm" might be a new sentence

I've got new updates! Spurred on by the completed "Phase 1", I spent this weekend building my Deathshroud. The new Deathshroud are super expensive, and I'm not in love with the new aesthetic. So mine are made by bashing the Forge World Heresy-era Deathshroud, bashed together with the old Forge World DG Terminator upgrade kit. Here's my test model:


Where the kits don't fit together (it wasn't as easy to get them to play nicely as I was hoping), I've done some GS "rot", some cheese cloth and some jewelry chain. The combination of textures and additional details really helps to hide the seams between the kits. Spraying him one colour really helps to visualise it, too. And with him done, I pushed for the whole five-man squad.

In order to bring the two kits together, I "rotted" up the Heresy-era armour, as it was very clean-looking. I used a couple of the Heresy bodies with some newer Deathshroud heads (I have one model on sprue which I'm stretching out as far as I can!) and then the old cloth and chain trick.



I'm really happy that they have a ploddy, slow and menacing vibe.
The _problem_ with the Heresy kit is you get five. And I needed a Champion. So the champ became a real kitbashing exercise!

The body is from the FW DG Terminator upgrade kit. The legs are from the Lord in Terminator Armour kit, the shoulders and scythe-end are from that one Deathshroud model I have. Both arms are from 80s/90s Chaos cavalry models. The spear arm has been in my bitz box forever and this was a perfect opportunity:


I am absolutely gassed with this unit. They're an absolute death star. At 300 points, they're the most expensive unit by far and will likely form more of a centrepiece than any of the scratchbuilds. I've added some texture paste to them and will start the painting this week.

Once they're done, I'm looking to build a Lord of Contagion to go with them (I've got some good ideas for this), another Bloat Drone and a couple of Myphitic Blight-Haulers. That should round out the force at 1250 points. Taking it to 1500 should really only be a case of more Plague Marines, a couple of Rhinos and a Tallyman.

Love the Army pics, they’re really coming together Asa good looking force now! I like how the Deathshroud were too expensive so you converted some Forge World kits . They look awesome though

those terminators lok really death guardish!

Mad green stuff skill and impressive work !

gobert wrote:Love the Army pics, they’re really coming together Asa good looking force now! I like how the Deathshroud were too expensive so you converted some Forge World kits . They look awesome though

Haha yeah point well taken. If I had paid retail for these, I think this Deathshroud would be a £250 unit! I got a great deal on these resin models. I actually just picked up a second squad of FW DG Terminators which I'd like to use as Blightlords for £17. The deals are out there

Maréchal des Logis Walter wrote:those terminators lok really death guardish!

Thank you mate, so glad to see you regularly backing me up <3

SarpedonofSotha wrote:Mad green stuff skill and impressive work !

Thank you so much. I'm learning all the time with the green stuff. It's a challenge but I enjoy it. I've been painting the Deathshroud this weekend but I also found time to finish building the second Blight Drone. She's running with the dual plaguespitters. I feel like I _have_ to take the squirty tentacle option whenever it presents itself now! Anyway, here she is:

Those Terminators turned out amazing, waaay better than the stock version IMHO. Great job on the conversion and kitbashing! And the second blight drone is SICK! Looking forward to more

Thank you so much. I'm learning all the time with the green stuff. It's a challenge but I enjoy it. I've been painting the Deathshroud this weekend but I also found time to finish building the second Blight Drone. She's running with the dual plaguespitters. I feel like I _have_ to take the squirty tentacle option whenever it presents itself now! Anyway, here she is:

You definitely have found a winning formula ! Impressive work overall anyway, very inspirational, keep up the good work !

There's a nice feel of joy seeing someone develop such a great army and make tremendous progress!