DuskRaider's 40K Nurgle - An Experiment in Flesh and Machine

[DuskRaider]

Thank you, gentlemen. 

 

I'll admit, the more I look at it the more I absolutely hate it. Some of it just looks too sloppy for me (the blue coils in particular, I managed to get the blood spilling over in the giant syringe, probably should have detailed the buboes more). It seems the more time goes on this year and the more I paint, the more I'm unhappy with the results. This Call of Chaos in particular with perhaps the exception of the Knights. 

 

I'm finishing up some stuff I had been working on prior to CoC, the end of the tunnel for my Nurgle Daemons. These are the last models in the army so unless GW surprises us with something new or I somehow decide to go back and add a ton of stuff for some reason, this is it for Daemons. I don't foresee myself adding more to my Death Guard either... perhaps some FW models at some point but I highly doubt it. I think at this point I'll be focusing on Adeptus Titanicus, my House Makabius and perhaps Kill Teams of various Chaotic flavors, if even that. I probably need a break. 

Edited December 11, 2018 by DuskRaider

[Augustus b'Raass]

Nooooooo! No break! Continue! Finish the army!!

[DuskRaider]

Well I mean I'm taking a break after the Daemons most likely. I still have work to do on the Armigers and I'm holding off on Titanicus until I get more units, but otherwise I'm probably going to take a bit of a break from painting. I feel the quality of my work has suffered due to outside interference and just constantly forcing myself to crank models out.

[rednekkboss]

I can understand, especially when the real world gets in the way. Hobbies should always be fun and relaxing.  That's one of the reasons I stopped making scale models for competition.  It was like work. Sometimes you need a break. Its usually a good thing, as far as the work is concerned. I had a professor in college that called it "cleaning your eyeballs and airing out your brain"  Which was great to hear in his Lithuanian accent.  Especially if you are short changing yourself on quality to get projects done. I do that myself. In fact I did it with the Call to Chaos challenge. I probably could have completed most of the work by cutting corners, but after pushing myself on some of the infantry models I ended up repainting most of what I had done, because it just wasn't the standard I wanted. Its nice to finish the challenges, but if you have a standard you want to meet and find yourself cutting corners, being sloppy, etc.... its time to walk away for a little while.  Might be a few days or weeks, but the projects always end up better for it.

[Pandoras Bitz Box]

I concur.

 

This is the coolest ball I have ever seen. It pretty horriffic and conjours up an atosphere of slow inevitable suffering while it's bloated sweaty body chitters and torments it victims.

 

It's see to think this won't see play, make it counts ass... Blight Dron, spawn maulerfied, whatever... ...ohhhhhh, DAEMON PRINCE. I would love to see this on the table opposite me and it would be cruel o you to deny people the opportunity.

 

Go industrial, rusted slabs of meta and cables, but maybe some remains,half a guardsman, pools of gore and gut...

 

I love it man. I can appreciate your too close to it and it's harder to give yourself credit. But it's due.

[Augustus b'Raass]

Dusky, about you bases. I know you hate them and are postponing them. But dude, you need to do them - as unfinished bases will always be worse than finished bases that aren't 'perfect'. Besides, there's so much easy stuff now with GW releasing plenty of options. Just pick one - so what if it isn't 'just right' - at least your army will be finished.! You could do whole swathes of batches in one sitting. Just smear on the basing paint. It doesn't require a lot of focus - you could even put on a podcast or watch a movie while doing it. Wait to dry and do the (washing and) drybrushing stage(s) in later, similar sessions. I bet you can do your whole army in three sittings of 1.5 hours or so - exactly the length of the average podcast or movie. Just get a cuppa and go! :tu:
 

[DuskRaider]

I know... I do. It seems like I have a phobia of basing my models, but it's more indecision which is replaced by another model or project and bases are put on the back burner yet again. I mean, I have based models. Look at my Death Guard and Word Bearers. The majority of my Plague Marines are on finished bases, all of my BlightLords, etc.

 

I think it comes down to theme and making it align with the idea in my head; mind's eye again. I may have found a solution, however... when you mentioned you picked up bearings on Green Stuff World I went on their site to check out what they're offering these days. They actually have these detailed plates that you cut or crush and add to bases. I'm looking at the Industrial and Steam Punk ones to utilize, especially on the Knight bases. I need to do something.

[Mechanist]

Wow. I've just rocked through the whole thread and your Nurgle force is brilliant can't wait to see more.

 

If you 'finish' the army for now that's cool take a break and try something different for a while. no doubt an Idea will hit or a new release will give you something to come back to in the future. Will the Daemons be getting some Nurgle puppies (beasts)?

 

 

 

 know... I do. It seems like I have a phobia of basing my models, but it's more indecision which is replaced by another model or project and bases are put on the back burner yet again. I mean, I have based models. Look at my Death Guard and Word Bearers. The majority of my Plague Marines are on finished bases, all of my BlightLords, etc.

I totally get this. I have a bunch of Orks that need full basing because I hadn't decided how to do it while painting the original, I did give them all a quick coat of goblin green through. My big bugbear always used to be Chaos Marine back packs they used to be such blobby messes with rubbish detail, I'm better now but still not a fan.

 

Still best of luck with it try to get a few out of the way, the problem with leaving them is that you end up with a massive daunting backlog. Try Knock a few out at a time separate to the minis and then as you build try to get into the habit of having constructed bases to hand.

With my Cron's bases I've even started to play with interaction with the models as it allows for a bit more variety in poses and becomes part of the conversion process.

[DuskRaider]

Thank you, brother. I do indeed have a Beast of Nurgle that's almost complete along with the remainder of the Daemons. It's pretty much just the contents of two Get Started boxes. Admittedly, I haven't done a damn thing with the Nurglings... gods, I hate those damn things.

[DuskRaider]

Wow... well, here we are. The end of the road (and year) and another army ALMOST finished. These are indeed the last models for my Nurgle Daemons... almost. I still have to finish those thrice damned Nurglings before I can call the force complete. As they sit they've received their base coat but not much else, they're surprisingly involved for such little gribblies. Rest assured, they will be complete soon... I'd say by the end of the week.

 

BUT here's the completed batch. I really enjoyed doing these, especially the Plague Drones. The Plaguebearers themselves were also a treat, I put much more color in this batch than the previous ones. This brings the Plaguebearer count to 90 and while that seems like a lot, that's only 3 full squads so I may eventually do some more seeing as its only 3 Troop slots worth.

 

Beyond the flesh coloration I went a different direction with a couple other things, mainly the icons. Instead of the usual bronze or brass, I had decided on red to tie the force more into my Death Guard. There's been other iconography here and there in the force I've done red, but never any this large. Originally I was only going to do the Plague Drone icon red as I reckon it would be easy for both the riders and troops on the ground to pick out, but I figured perhaps the Poxbringer's personal Icon would also be deep crimson. That's the reasoning I'm going with *shrug*

 

Comments, criticism, questions... all appreciated.

 

[El_Dicko]

They look awesome, really like the yellow wings. Are you mostly just doing them with washes?

[KrautScientist]

A very cool update! The glossy black eyes on the Plague Bearers are supremely disturbing, and while your paintjob on the Beast of Nurgle may not be quite enough to fully redeem that awful model, it does come damn close.

 

One piece of criticism/advice, though: I think you really need to take a bit more time to blend together the assembly seams when putting together models: This is quite evident on the flies and on the beast, but also on the seam where the Plague Bearer heads meet the neck, and was also my only gripe about that gnarlmaw on your fantastic Traitor Knight. It's a bit of shame when otherwise excellent models are let down by that one distracting element.

[DuskRaider]

@El_Dicko: Thank you! Now with washes, do you mean the wings or flesh? The flesh is done using various washes. The wings were based Averland Sunset, washed with Citadel Yellow Ink... a pot of which I've had for around 15 years and use very sparingly... and finally given a gradient highlight of Bad Moonz Yellow (I think).

 

@Kraut: Thank you, sir. I appreciate the kind words and yeah... I tried my best to save the Beast, lol. On the gaps and such, they've always been my weakness. Joints, gaps, etc... always have a hard time hiding them so to be honest I usually try to hide them with the paint job. It doesn't always work, unfortunately. I have gotten much better with mold lines and any burrs from the sprues though, so I guess that's one silver lining.

[El_Dicko]

Nice! Yeah I was referring to the flesh. Cool effect on the wings, thanks for the walk thru. I’ll have to attempt a blueish version.

[Augustus b'Raass]

@ ElDicko: Here's Dusky's Flesh recipe.

 

@ DuskRaider: Wow, fantastic work on the drones - I like the yellow wings. That's also the best Beast I've seen so far, although that miniature is horrible to begin with - especially with the mold and connection lines so prominently in sight. Still think your idea for creepy black eyes is the best ever. So basically everything that KrautScientist said (DAMN YOU Kraut for making so much sense to me all the time!) One thing though: the bases!  Nononono hear me out: the black bases of the drones make the miniatures look so good! So why not do that:  black bases? Just sprinkle the bases with PVA, sand (get Chinchilla sand from a pet shop - it's the same stuff GW uses but costs $3 for 2 liters), once dry paint watered down PVA to stick the top sand, then paint black, drybrush grey - done! It's a fantastic complementary colour to the army and it's very easily done :) :tu:

[Augustus b'Raass]

Also, can we get a shot of your entire army?

[DuskRaider]

I'm probably going to base my Nurgle Daemons on the Dragonforge Trench Bases, same as my Death Guard... especially considering some of the models already are (my Slimux / Epidemius, Daemons Princes). The black base idea sounds easy enough but it just wouldn't gel with the rest of my models and it doesn't convey much of a theme. I know, I know... I had actually planned on doing that last year but used the bases for the Poxwalkers instead... good thing GW didn't completely hobble the Poxwalkers and make them nigh useless *ahem*. The thing that annoys me is Plaguebearers were originally on 25mm bases but have since been bumped up to 32mm so I have to do something anyhow since about half of mine are now on obsolete bases. Maybe that'll be my project for 2019, finish basing my Death Guard and also base my Daemons, Knights and various Dark Mechanicum models (and Gellerpox & Pestigor). I'd certainly have my work cut out for me although I have a feeling I'll lose my mind after a month or two. 

 

I'll try and take an army-wide shot after I finish the last 6 Nurglings swarms, most likely after the holidays. Cripes, that'll be a table full I think... I have a queue of people lining up to fight them and my Knights too, so hopefully I'll be able to put up some battle reports sometime soon.

 

Edit: Oh, and for blue flesh... perhaps replace the Athonian Camoshade step with Drakenhof Nightshade, but I'm not really sure. You may need to skip some of the more earthy washes for it to come out better but you'd risk losing any feel of decay (if they're Nurgle). 

Edited December 18, 2018 by DuskRaider

[Augustus b'Raass]

SO YOU HAVE CHOSEN!? That's the first step. Good to hear :)

About the plaguebearer bases: the fact that they're packed with 32mm bases now doesn't mean they have to be on those. I started painting them on 25mm bases and have since continued doing it. You just have to be consistent. That's the only requirement tournaments have.

[DuskRaider]

Well, I've chosen the Trench bases for my Death Guard and Daemons, that's nothing new. For my House Makabius and Dark Mechanicum, however, I'm still unsure. I feel they should have something more industrial or techy. It is tempting to base them to match the others, however. 

[Augustus b'Raass]

If there is any chance you'll use them together, I'd really base them all the same if I were you. :) :tu:

[El_Dicko]

Edit: Oh, and for blue flesh... perhaps replace the Athonian Camoshade step with Drakenhof Nightshade, but I'm not really sure. You may need to skip some of the more earthy washes for it to come out better but you'd risk losing any feel of decay (if they're Nurgle).

Aha, sorry in this sense I was referring to the wings! I was thinking a smillar bold look but in blue for contrast because all my Nurgle daemons are based in yellow. A modified version of your recipe seems like it will work well for dingy ochre.

[Pandoras Bitz Box]

Is there no way to base them similarly? As in, use the same bases but incorperate industrial parts, girders, rivited plates, cogs, oil drums, etc? That way you something to tie them in and keep continuity while also setting them apart. Edited December 18, 2018 by Pandoras Bitz Box

[noigrim]

Noce the flies remind me of new vegas cazadors

[DuskRaider]

Well... good news and bad news. The good news is the Nurglings are just about finished! The bad news is my smartphone croaked which means no pics until at least the weekend. I'm finally picking up a new mobile device which has been a long time coming, mine was 4 years old and looks like it had been through a war (still took decent pics though). 

 

More good news! I've picked up more for Adeptus Titanicus, namely Warhounds and a Reaver. I want at least one more Reaver (probably more, I love the model) but I'm waiting for the new box to come out with the extra weapons and BRUTAL heads. Finally... and Auggy is gonna kill me... I picked up bits for basing. My AT stuff, that is. I found a great deal on old Epic 40K terrain (ruined buildings), OOP Plastic Land Raiders, and some Marines to add some character to the bases. You'll never guess the Legion they're going to be . 

 

Edit: Oh yeah, I forgot... I just bought my first house too! 30 years debt, oh boy!

Edited December 21, 2018 by DuskRaider

[Augustus b'Raass]

Congratulations on the new house (and on the basing kits, too, albeit   that it's for your AT and not your DG ). I did the same thing last year and I can tell yo: it's well worth it. :)