Herald of Nurgle: The Carcasse - Painting done

The Carcasse is finished. I am not super happy with the result, but after a week of painting and fixing I decided to keep him like he is... for now. I started the Daemon army because I saw a good opportunity to get a fully painted force relatively fast and being too nitpicky won't get me anywhere.

Maybe it is just a figment of my imagination, but as said in the previous post, there is something wrong with the miniature. It's possible that I had a hard time painting the Herald because I am not a fan of the miniature in the first place. However, it was an experience and a learned a couple of new things. What was interesting was that the things that I thought would be though were easy and all the low hanging fruits turned out to be challenges.

What turned out well...

• Rusty Sword
• Nurgling
• Horns 

What didn't turn out well...

• Skin
• Pustules 
• Wounds/Guts 

The things I don't like that much are unfortunately the ones that really define the Herald. I might do some touch ups on the wounds when I am going to do the next unit of Plaguebearers. The problem I had (and still have) is that the one on the arm it is rather big and with just using a wash respectively applying the blood effect (Tamiya X-27) it either looks dull or too cheesy. Currently the later is the case but with him being within a unit of Plaguebearers it doesn't strike too much.

Herald of Nurgle: The Carcasse - Painting WIP

My plan was to paint my two Heralds at the same time; after painting 13 Plague Bearers at once I thought that should be possible. Fact is, it isn't. I started with both, applying the base coat, wash and the first layers of drybrushing. There it showed that the GW Herald of Nurgle (The Carcasse) is somehow flawed compared to the GW Champion of Nurgle which I used for the conversion of The Corpse.
I did everything in parallel but the results were different: the transitions between the colors were smooth with the conversion, whereas with the original Herald the result was rough and rugged.

I decided to paint them individually, starting with my Herald of sorrow first, The Carcasse. Current state is, that all the base color is where it's supposed to be. Next step will be all the detail work like the transition between the necrotic flesh and the black horns. I also will do some touch ups on the skin and the pustules which are way to bright.

I hoped that the Heralds will be just as straight forward as the Plaguebearers but unfortunately this isn't the case. At the same time I won't rush anything and take the time needed to get the quality right. I am a bit bugged by this little mess and I might work on my Nurgle Aegis when I am not in the mood to paint.

Maybe all this is also just Tzeentch's doing. As the Changer of Ways he is also responsible for the weather and currently it is incredibly hot here in Germany; the color is basically as almost dry when it reaches the miniature.

Chaos Daemons - Portal Glyph

I recently found the base of the Eternity Stair in my bits box and figured that it would be a nice piece for an elaborated Portal Glyph marker. The portal has the size of a large blast template and the upper platform has exactly this size. As I wrecked my small drybrush I didn’t continue working on the two Heralds this weekend, but worked on the Portal Glyph instead.

The terrain piece as a nice hole in the middle, perfect for daemons to appear. I thought about having a Plaguebearer crawl out of a pool of slime. However, I went with a more simple, less time costly version, a brass plate with a Nurgle rune… for now. The rune plate is magnetized, so I can exchange it later with the slime pool or another chaos god-specific one (I might do a blood fountain for my Khorne daemons).

The painting was mainly done with drybrushing and washing. I never was a big fan of either of those methods, but since I got the right brushes (long and soft bristles) and did some reading on the right usage of washes and glazes I actually like them quite a lot. The oxidation effect was achiever with Nihilakh Oxide from Games Workshop. I am quite happy with the result, even though I am not completely sure if I will keep the deposits in the eye sockets of the brazen skull and if the ones in the plate are too subtle.

Rumors: Space Wolves and Nurgle Releases

I follow the rumors around the hobby, mainly via Faeit 212, and I always take whatever comes up with a grain of salt and the thought "this could be interesting, but let's wait and see". And - very important for the mental health - I never ever read the comments on those rumors!
Today I got a bit exited over two rumors that popped up over the weekend.

1. New Starter Box with Space Wolves and Orks: I still have my old 2nd edition Space Wolves and they will be brought back to life at some point. Getting more variation (no marine should look the same) is great. Also getting the Sons of Russ in a starter box means that a new codex is on the horizon for sure.
2. New releases for Chaos Daemons. To be more specific: Nurgle! The rumors say new plastic Plague Marines with Terminator bits (about time), plastic Beasts of Nurgle (ABOUT TIME!) and something big (always welcome).

Yes, I am a bit exited. But let's wait and see.

Herald of Nurgle: The Corpse - Conversion done

The Corpse conversion is done, and as much as it frustrates me when things don't turn out as intended as much it feels my heart with joy when everything comes together as hoped. With The Corpse this is the case.

Even though I got lost in details again (the fingers of the Champion would have been fine, but I wanted the Herald to have proper claws) it didn't took me too long. I had to do several passes of modeling with green stuff and letting it harden to do next pass made the whole conversion almost a week long endeavor. Pure conversion time was though pretty reasonable.

As the big guy won't fit into one of the swamp bases he will be put on the little rock plateau that came with the standard Herald of Nurgle. I started with it, but it will need some more work as I want to have a tree stump on the base as well. Painting of The Corpse and The Carcasse will start this weekend.

 

Plaguebearers - 1st unit completed

I finished the unit last weekend already, but didn’t have time to take any photos. I would love to do some proper ones, but I don’t have the best equipment… but I am thinking of buying up a lightbox to improve on the quality of the pictures.

As mentioned in a previous blog post, the test bases turned out well. The day after the test (Sunday)I went all in started filling up the bases of the Plaguebearers. It was a messy - because the epoxy has the consistency of honey - and fiddly - because there was a lot of stuff on the bases - endeavor. I used a syringe and toothpicks to get the epoxy where it should belong. This went more or less successful. I was able to not smear it over the miniatures, but I got the epoxy on the edge of almost every base. This wasn’t too bad as you can overpaint it, which I did when I made the last touch ups.

I filled the epoxy in around 2pm and was checking it every hour; mainly to get rid of any bubbles; all you have to do is punch them open with a needle or toothpick. After around 5 hours I pushed the epoxy down where it crawled up. This wasn’t too bad, with the exception of the heels of the Plaguebearers. Those I really wanted to be as cleaned up as possible to keep the impression of the daemons walking through shallow water.

Afterwards I thought that I should have tinted the water a bit, so it is more dirty, but the clear water shows more details of the ground, which I like as well. Overall I am very happy with the result.

Before I am starting with the next unit I will get the Heralds (Carcasse and Corpse) done. I also have a couple of bits lined up to build a themed Aegis Defense line and Portal (when using the Portal Glyph). I will do a separate post on those accessories soon.