Slow & Purposeful - Minor Updates

Not a lot of things happened the last couple of weeks. I was on vacation for two weeks with my family, then I was at home (and at work) for a week and now I am on a business trip a gone for another two weeks. So there wasn’t much time for the hobby, but I got a couple of things done nonetheless.

Second Plaguebearers Squad - WIP

While on the vacation in Austria I managed to clean up the second squad of Plaguebearers which is, following Nurgle’s (un)holy number,14 daemons strong. I love this hobby, but getting rid of mold lines and other cast impurities is most properly the part I like the least about it. When done right it takes time, but no matter how accurate you try to do it there is always a spot or a line that gets forgotten and will unveil itself with the base coating.

The assembling and conversion-work was done when I got back home. All of the different Champions of the three units will get a trophy of one of the other chaos gods lesser daemons in their claws. For the first one I got the head of a Daemonette which I still have to paint and then glue onto his hand. The Unit leader of the second squad got the head of a Bloodletter; both heads were taken from the Grey Knights sprues. Aside from the Champion I also did some minor conversions on the musician (he got the instruments from the Plague Drones kit) and the banner bearer. I didn’t like the second banner top that comes with the box as it looks too man-manufactured and too clean compared to the daemons weaponry and the crude and corroded metal fly banner top. So I did my own custom version out of plasticard. It’s just the simple sign of Nurgle with a bell and a death head, but made in the same style of the fly banner top. I will start painting the squad once I have finished the The Corpse. It’s ambitious but I hope to have them done by end of September.

Modular City Terrain Boards - WIP

While visiting my parents on the way to Austria I took along a set of cramps to paste the polystyrene boards into the frames. As the special glue needs around 12 hours to dry out it took 5 days to get all boards in; I have four cramps but as I need all of them to have the pressure equally distributed I could only glue in one board at the time. Next step is to sand off the boards to get rid of redundant glue remnants or protruding board pieces.

Nurgle Aegis Defense Line - Concept Phase

I used the two weeks I was absent from my hobby tools (except a knife and some sand paper to clean the daemons) time to think about how to build a Nurgle themed Aegis Defense Line. I experimented a bit with the corpse heaps from the Undead Corpse Cart some time ago but I never was happy with the setup (pure corpse heaps, some corpses stacked up on a wall, etc.). I now will go with a combination of tumbled trees, rocks, corpses and swamps to follow the theme of the bases.

Herald of Nurgle: The Corpse - Painting WIP

Last week I was busy with building frames for the modular gaming table, but I managed to apply all the base color on the second Herald of Nurgle aka The Corpse; the first stage of the skin (base, drybrush, wash, drybrush) was done at the same time when I kicked of the work on the first Herald aka The Carcasse.

On the weekend I started with the detail work, with the focus on all the metal parts. The brass bells and little emblems that are dangling in front of his loin cloth were a straight forward washing and drybrushing job using Warplock Bronze (basecoat), Sycorax Bronze (Drybrush), Balthasar Gold (Drybrush), Agrax Earthshade (Wash) Gehenna's Gold (Drybrush) and Runefang Steel (Edges). The rusty metal parts were a bit more challenging. Once the layer of Typhus Corrosion on the base coat of Leadbelcher it was a constant back and forth of stippling, gently drybrushing and blending Ryza Rust, Typhus Corrision and Leadbelcher until I got the effect I was looking for.

Something I did was  - as I would call - reverse-drybrushing or true dry drybrushing (I have no idea if there is a technical term for it. As rust is normally in the recesses and doesn't make sense to use Ryza Rust for drybrushing. What I did instead was applying the technical color into to recesses like normal paint and then use a dry brush for blending and smoothing it. It had been said before on various sites, but I will say it again: GW's technical colors are marvelous.


Another little useful insight I got by experimenting was the use of varnish to protect already painted parts (yes, there are masking tapes and paints available but what to do when it's late at night). I applied some Army Painter Anti-Shine Matt Varnish on the brass metal pieces with the result that I could swipe of any paint that got there while doing the messy washing/drybrushing work on the rusty metal parts with some water pretty easy.

Overall I am pretty happy with the result, even though I might touch up the brass emblems as they are still a bit too shiny compared to the bells. Next I will paint all the details like bones, horns, leather straps and the loin cloth (which most properly won't be grey) before I will do touch ups and the final highlight pass on the skin. The very last element I will paint is the raven. I have got an idea how it should look like, but it will be a bit of an experiment to see if I actually can achieve it.

Modular City Terrain Boards - WIP

I build a prototype tile for a modular city terrain board for 40K and Infinity some time ago. The idea behind it is to have hard polystyrene boards within a stable frame to keep them protected. The frame has two magnets on each side so it can be connected to other boards. Instead of having any elevated elements I thought - also because cities are normally rather even leveled - about adding some low-lying details like blasted open paving tiles, cargo locks, pipes or water basins. All those should have a reasonable size, so you can place other terrain on top of it in case you don’t want any of this (mostly) impassable terrain in your game.


Beginning of the week I built five more frames to be able to set up a 6“x4“ modular table. The most tricky part was to get the frames all the same correct size, the right angles and stable. But thanks to my tools I wasn’t too much of a problem, it just took some time. The next step is to paste in the polystyrene boards and this will be a tricky one as I need some 800mm clamps to make sure that there is sufficient pressure to keep the frame and the board together. Unfortunately I don’t have those at hand and they are too expensive to buy them for just that. However, my parents got a couple of those clamps and I will borrow them next time I am going to visit them (which will be next week already). Until then the modular city terrain boards have to wait.