The Heresy project is going great! With the World Eaters ticked off my list, it was time to add the Death Guard to my army.
I had managed to grab a bargain on EBay. Nine 2nd edition plastic Plague Marines for £11. They’re not the greatest sculpts, but I have some ideas on how to improve them and get some more interesting results.
My plan is to paint these in the colours of the Death Guard, but add in some of the more Nurgle stuff we expect from 40k. I’m also hoping a slight green wash over the white armour brings a nice transitional look to them.
First things first, I added some greenstuff to the shoulder joints on some of the miniatures. They’re all the same monopose plastic, so I’m hoping to make some of them look a little more dynamic and Interesting with this. Plus it’s easy to make this look Nurgley…like some huge overgrowth of sinew and skin.
I actually did a quick video of this process. A link to it is here: https://youtu.be/PCpAMzFSKz4
I also removed the spike from some of the helmets, just to mix up the squad and add some differences. The next step was to paint them all with an undercoat of Grey Seer. Then add in the legion colours on the shoulder pads and backpacks.
The Nurgle fleshy bits, I painted pink and Cadian Flesh tones. I then used a purple wash to add some infected looking sections. I used pink & purple as they naturally sit well with green and white. So the colour palette on this squad should help tie them all together nicely as a unit. I also used the purple wash on the blades of the knives. As I want to have these also look weirdly infected.
I actually had one mini with a missing arm. Luckily I had a spare shoulder pad and bolter, so I sculpted a quick hand made tentacle arm, and gave it the same colour treatment as the other nurgley sections. I think they’re looking lovely and revolting so far!
The final step was to add detail. Here I used the lessons leaned from the World Eaters and I just used a sponge with white paint to create flecks in the armour. I then went back over these with a brown contrast to pick out the deeper chips in the armour.
This squad was painted up fairly fast. So with some unexpected free time, I decided to add a Plague Banner to my squad. Heres what the 2nd edition rules say about the banner…
A frightening creation of rotting hide, flapping in the breeze…ooh. Sounds like great fun! And only 15pts!!
My main idea for this was a combination of Evil Dead style necronomicon and the old Ian Miller illustrations in the Lost & Damned books. With these in my mind, I set to work with some greenstuff.
I also cut away one of the plague knives and drilled out the hand of one of the marines. Turns out they quite suit a banner pole…
Once I let this base piece harden, I then built up the sculpt to give it more depth. Adding eyes and a little more nastiness in general. I also had some pieces from an old Nighthaunt model which I wanted to include. So I cut these up and added to the banner to give it that, ‘flapping in the breeze’ feel. Plus some old heads from the bitz box for the top.
Painting this up was fun! I wanted it to look fleshy, rotten and just icky as possible. However, I also wanted to match the colour scheme I’d already established, so that purple and pink needed to be part of the mix. Again, I did a little video of the painting process. A link to which is here: https://youtu.be/uOScrVepxDk
A suitability nasty looking Plague Banner..
So that’s the Death Guard done. Time to go full circle and return to my Sons of Horus. I’ve already given them a base coat of Sea Green. More to follow next time…and yes, that is a Space Crusade chaos dreadnought! 🤓
