Nurgle Plague Marines for sale

One finely painted squad of seven plague marines, plus a rhino, available on ebay. Funds are needed for new hobby ventures and I have to accept that I will never play a chaos marines army. It's a shame because I really liked the way these turned out. I painted them using a number of new techniques, including chipping using hairspray. The rhino was also chipped and weathered using MIG pigments. More pictures below. Please pass on this post to anybody you think might be interested. Thanks!

Death Guard Rhino

The chaos marines are proving surprisingly quick to paint up. I suppose being basically one colour helps! This is proving to be one of the most relaxing armies I have painted. Adding a unit or vehicle once per month is a nice pace to tick along to.

I tried the hairspray technique on this vehicle, having already experimented a little on the squad. Each time I do it I learn something new. The patches of flaked paint are still a little bit too large to be realistic, but I am getting there. I have two more to do, hopefully I will be hitting the nail on the head by the time I get to them.

Nurgle Death Guard

Happy Nurgle Day!

The first squad of Death Guard painted for my Nurgle Chaos Marines army. These are mostly plastics from the chaos marines box, one of the flamer armed guard is a metal model.

I tried out some new techniques on this squad. The models were primed black, then painted in chainmail. Then I applied some elementary shading in a black/brown wash. Then I painted the models browns and oranges, to emulate rusted metal. At this stage I gave them all a coat of Klear floor polish to act as a varnish.

The next stage was the radical bit, as I sprayed them with hairspray. About an hour later I painted over a pale cream colour on all the armour bits. When this had dried, I took a few old splayed brushes, dipped them in warm water, and scrubbed off the pale cream. The warm water dissolves the underlying hair varnish, leaving a very nice random scratched effect. Then I glazed the armour with Gryphone Sepia to give this mellow yellow armour. Then it was back to more conventional painting methods as I picked out the remaining details.

It's a technique used by military armour modellers, google "AFV hairspray technique" for dozens of articles and tips. I believe it's also covered in the Forgeworld painting manual. I will be using it again on the rhino for this squad, a subject better suited to the technique, though I am pretty happy with the way it has turned out on painting the individual squad members.

Nurgle Marines WIP

These figures have been lying around in my cupboard for a long time, I think I sculpted the greenstuff on to them about 5 years ago. Back then I did not play WH40K, they were just some models I had left over from a commission and were suitable fodder for practising my sculpting. When I eventually took up WH40K as a game, I plumped for orks.

Recently, I have been frustrated by a lack of progress on some of my armies, they all seem too big! So I wanted to switch to a smaller force, one that I might conceivably finish in a few months. And then I remembered about the chaos marines. Things have changed in five years, I now use grey stuff rather than green stuff, it's a little more pliabe and better suited to organic sculting like rotting torsoes.

The metal figure is not mine, it's on loan so I can copy it while trying to sculpt on to the plastic bodies. I have also added to some of the earlier green work. This is the first of a planned three squads of Death Guard, chosen because they are fairly easy to sculpt, they are very expensive in points and thus small in number, and let's be honest they are far better than Chaos Marines with a mark of Nurgle. I am aiming to get one squad complete each month, it should be all over by Christmas. Where have we heard that before?

Plaguebearers

I am taking a break from Warhammer Fantasy for a while, I think I have overdosed on it, so the greenskins are on the back burner for the time being. It was a nice change of pace to paint up these plaguebearers, with virtually no green paint needed.

Just a minute, are those round bases? Does that mean, surely not another army? Well, yes and no. Yes, in that these plaguebearers will be part of my new 40k army, which has specifically been chosen as it's small (in number of models) and will allow me to try out lots of new techniques. And no, not a new army, these will also be used in my fantasy daemon army, with the use of some clever movement tray building. Well, not that clever, think of the War of the Ring movement trays and you will know what I hope to achieve.

These are the first models I have painted that are not highlighted in any way. It's a technique I have been experimenting with for some time. Over a light basecoat, glazes and washes are used to build up some subtle colour and shade. Some of the skin colour is achieved through the stippling of thinned paint. The metals and bases are quickly and easily coloured using a mix of brown paints and MIG pigments. It's a system that works particularly well on models such as these.

The next regiment in the army will be chaos marines, which I am currently building and converting with my limited sculpting skills. More on that in a future post. I will also be trying out a few new games over the coming weeks, having decided that there's more to this hobby than just WHFB. So a hotch potch of posts coming up in the summer months.

Nurgle marine

Here's a Nurgle marine I have had lying around for some time. I wanted to try out some techniques for rusted armour before I painted the chaos knights and this was the perfect subject. It's a metal model so easier to strip if things go wrong. But they seem to have gone quite right, so I will probably paint the knights in a similar way. It also encourages me to have a play with the plastic chaos marines, I have a fair number of them in the unpainted pile of plastics. I could knock out a couple of squads of these in the same time it takes to paint up one squad of orks, so it's a possible extra 40k army if ever I fancy a change of pace at painting. Definitely on the back burner at the moment as I have other things to do.

EDIT Just noticed that's my 66th post, though I guess for it to be really spooky it would have to be the 77th!