Warhammer 40K 9th Edition: Death Guard reinforcements

Here we are in mid to late 2020 and the UK seems about to plunge back into national quarantine because a second wave of Coronavirus Covid 19 looks to be here.

So my long hiatus from actually wargaming looks set to continue, just as Warhammer 40k 9th edition is released.  I'm itching to play of course, but in the meantime I'm continuing the hobby as best I can by building new units for my two armies; the Crimson Fist space marines, and in this case, adding a cohort of daemon engines to my heretic Death Guard army.

Throughout 8th edition of the rules, I ran my Death Guard as the "Poxmongers" faction, but with the recent release of new rules (in the War of the Spider supplement) I'm now able to deploy the Poxmongers with special rules of their own!

I figured therefore that I would expand the options I have for daemon engines, and added eight Myphitic Blighthaulers to the one I already have.  These plague-infested snufflers operate best in units of three, as the poor performance of my lone model in 8th showed.

These fun little models were super easy to build and even easier to paint up, and with two hours of gluing and about eight hours of painting I have a new cadre of Nurgle's servants to take to the field (whenever that may be).

Built and undercoated, they're ready to receive paint.

Basecoats done, I'm here in the process of adding all the fun "grime" with shades and washes.

Mostly done.  Just the technical paints ("Blood for the Blood God") pass to do, and the basing of course.

Finally finished (although the bases are still wet!)

Up close its not the best paintjob, but it does what I need, which is a decent looking force made table-ready quickly.  10 Hours from sprue to done for eight of these?  To quote Marty's Matchbox Makeovers, "I'm happy with that"!

The technical paint (Blood for the Blood God") really looks like congealed blood to me.

Here you can see the foul, infected mass of flesh living at the heart of these diseased living machines.  They carry heavy, tank-busting weapons, emit foul clouds of rotting toxic fumes, and are voraciously hungry.  Don't get too close or their snuffling maws will be on you like a pack of diseased cockroaches!

Overall these were kind of fun to paint, and I'm really looking forwards to fielding them as part of my Death Guard force on the table.  Whenever that may be...

Warband Barbarian Men

The virus quarantine continues and so does my progress in sorting out and getting paint on the various armies that lurk unloved and incomplete around the nooks and crannies of my Lead Mountain.  Having received my newly ordered bases, on the painting table next is another Warband army.  This time is the Barbarian Men; an army largely based on the "Sword and Sorcery" tropes of the classic works of fiction like Robert E. Howard's Conan book.

Thats a lot of bare lead right there...

Facing having to build and paint a whole army can certainly be daunting, but with a solid plan and clear procedures to follow, its actually pretty easy to power on through and get things done.  With 10mm figures, its important to remember that while you can make each miniature a work of art, for the creation of gaming pieces, you can take shortcuts and make each figure perhaps less impressive, as the visual impact comes from the overall effect.  Increasingly I've taken to a light or white undercoat and the liberal use of colour washes, and Games Workshop's "contrast" paints.  I find it a much faster way of painting large numbers of models to an acceptable tabletop standard.

After a weekend's work, perhaps 8-10 hours in total, an 11 base army is in the box and ready to take to the tabletop.  It consists of the following units now:

1 General
1 Magic user
1 Bison riders
1 Desert stingers (giant monsters)
1 Catapults
2 Archers
4 Warriors

The General unit is populated by an impressive chap who has "discovered the riddle of steel" and therefore has a large steel sword.  I filled the base with figures from other units too, to give him a retinue of guards and heroes.

Oooh...that's some fuzzy photography isn't it?

  The Magic User unit was fun to make and I drafted in some old style Pendraken gnome figures, and some "stone elementals".  I painted them up as summoned fire imps and molten monstrosities.  The Barbarian Men magic spell list is full of fire magic and so I wanted to represent this on the base.  I'm not an expert at painting realistic fire but I do my best.  Of course such creatures will scorch the ground so I painted that with a bit of black and left it free of grass to give the impression of them burning their way into reality from some magical realm.

The bison riders were fun to paint too.  I like the idea of them thundering into battle.  I was going to do them all one colour, but felt they'd look better with a lighter skin tone and darker hair/fur.

These are the Desert Stingers, which are described in the army list as a menagerie of giant poisonous snakes, scorpions, manticores, and other fantastical beasties.  Now then, I'm not too sure about how I've constructed this unit.  Perhaps its the different colours, but there's something a bit disjointed about it.  Not sure.  Its good enough though, and I'm sure they'll perform just as well in the game, irrespective of how they're painted.

Pendraken's Barbarian Men army pack includes enough archer figures for a well stocked single unit, but I feel as the Barbarian archers in game can be skirmishers, they're OK to split up into two less densely packed units.  Anyway, as these are wild tribesmen I see them as lacking any sort of formation and organisation, taking to the field in ad hoc lines of archers more used to hunting than war.  Of all the Pendraken figures, these are some of the few I've found that need a bit of preparation.  They have metal that needs to be snipped away from the end of the bows.  I presume this excess is to facilitate the casting of the bows themselves (getting the molten metal to flow into these narrow mould cavities, and its no bother to snip those extra bits off.

Lastly I finished up the warriors and the catapults.   

The Catapults were a bit of a pig to put together, coming without instructions or obvious contact points.  I think I've assembled them correctly; certainly it seems the only correct way to do them.  No matter, they look rather nice now they're done.

And finally I come to the warrior units that will form the core of the army.  Like the archers, these are not drilled soldiers, but rather tribal warriors, and ones in the "hero" tradition too!  So regimented ranks seemed out of place, which is why I made each base with scattered clumps of fighters gathered around the most impressive among them.  I imagine them bawling and wailing insults and challenges at their enemies.  The Barbarians are noted in the army list descriptions as using primitive wooden or stone weapons, with a few of them having access to metal like copper or bronze.  I decided to make them all armed with bronze weapons (except among the General's retinue who have managed to trade with more advanced folk for the much sought-after iron and steel!)  I wanted to give them a tribal motif too, and chose a simple black shield to unify the look of the force.  I was thinking about a Zulu-style black & white shield design, but with the scale of the miniatues, shape, and design of the shields, I couldn't make it look like I wanted to.  So the simple black scheme won out.

Overall, another successful army project completed and ready to go once the quarantine lifts!

Lord of the Rings

A good Saturday morning spent bashing away at and trying to sort out the Lead Mountain, and temporarily lacking 100mm x 50mm bases to continue with the Warband armies, I've decided to dive into the Lord of the Rings 28mm figures I have.  

These have been knocking about for a good while, and aside from a few boxes, I've also acquired some "pre-owned" figures over the years.  I'm sure I have more buried up there some where but these'll do for a start.

Now I was planning to do these as 28mm Warband armies, using the Lord of the Rings army lists.  But I think instead I'll base and use them as they are intended, as individual figures.  I'll likely look to use Dan Mersey's excellent Dragon Rampant rules if they ever hit my table.

Edit: A little progress.

I started with some (38) of the Rohan figures in the pile, painting them close to the "on the box" colours.

There are about another 20 to go, and then I have a new box of 24 other infantry.

The rest of the box looks like a mix of elves, men of Minas Tirith, a few dwarves and a a small number of orcs and goblins.

Looking at these figures close up while painting them, they are surprisingly poor quality for Games Workshop.  they have very simple shapes and forms, with a lot of poor, flat features, bad mouldlines, flash and other issues.  They look like cheap platic miniatures, rather than the amazing quality I've come to expect Games Workshop's products.



More to follow...

Warband Dragon Men

As my quarantine clear-up continues I came across this army in a box on the south face of the Lead Mountain.

I'm not sure what I was doing at the time, but this is a 10mm scale generic Medieval army that I'd build and based for the DBx system.

I figured that I'm unlikely to use this for anything DBx in the near future and it accurred to me that I could rebase these figures as a Warband Dragon Men army.  So, the project for the next couple of evenings will be to hack these minis off their current bases and use them to create a new fantasy army to join my Warband collection.

These are Pendraken historical figures and generally they are smaller that their fantasy figures, but at this scale I really don't think it matters too much!

Anyway, the rebasing commences...

...and in short order, two bases of crossbowmen and two bases of men-at-arms (spearmen).
  

Obviously I still have the rest of the force to rebase, and i need to do the ground texture, etc.

Anyway, the mess that's left.

Update:  I've made as much progress so far as I can. I've now proper run out of bases, and there are definitely no more in the house, so I'm waiting on the delivery from Minibits.

I'll do a decent army shot when its done, but for now, this is the result of the rebasing. I'll have to sort out a magic user base, and the dragon of course...

More to follow...

Wild West project finished

As part of the Corona virus quarantine "sort out", I've corraled my Wild West figures together and found that I had a few that I'd still left to paint.

The Wild West gathering in its new home!

The five remaining offenders...

So, about an half an hour's work later, I have five more for the posse.  That's all my Wild West figures done, so a nice quick project close off!

A Native American "scalp hunter", three pistoliers, and a curious "mountain man" with eyeglass and flintlock pistol.

I'll be finishing off a lot of these little "just a few left" projects over the next few weeks I think as well as making progress with more substantial "half finished" ones, and probably diving in to the "not yet started" pile.

Death Guard on Parade

Since the publication of 8th Edition Warhammer 40,000, I've been falteringly building up a new army, the Chaos heretic worshippers of the Dark Plague God Nurgle, the Death Guard.

I created the force through an escalation campaign at our club, and obviously units were added for practical game reasons, to try to build a competative army in the campaign.

Narratively, I considered my force part of the 5th Plague Company, "The Poxmongers".

The 5th Plague Company makes great use of diseased Daemon Engines. Its forces carry the Sanguous Flux, which causes endless, half-clotted bleeding and leaves foul red-black trails behind them wherever they go.

My commander is usually a Daemon Prince, and I make a lot of use of the flying daemon engines, the Foetid Bloat Drones.  Here is my Vectorium Tallyband in full.

Daemon Prince

Lord of Contagion

Foul Blightspawn

Biologis Putrifier

Malignant Plaguecaster

Noxious Blightbringer

Lord Felthius (painted as Typhus)

Poxbringer

18 Blightlord Terminators

13 Possessed Plague Marines

6 Nurglings

16 Plague Bearers

20 Poxwalkers

17 Cultists

24 Plague Marines

1 Helbrute

3 Foetid Bloatdrones

2 Plagueburst Crawlers

1 Myphitic Blighthauler

I have a large group of Blightlord Terminators, including an appropriate cadre of blight launchers and plague flails.

A very recent addition to my Tallyband are a group of Possessed Plague Marines.  As yet, these have not seen action on the tabletop.

The daemonic elements of the force include a gaggle of chattering anf infectious Nurglings.

And as an allied force I also have a small unit of Plaguebearer daemons, led by a Poxbringer.  I've not used the Plaguebearers yet, but the Poxbringer is very useful in supporting the daemon engines.

Early on, I used a small horde of Poxwalkers which were very useful in protecting my characters, and also did a lot of work tying up enemy tanks.

The core of my army has for the most part been the redoubtable Plague Marines.  They are tough and surprisingly mobile, with blight launchers and have won me more than one game.

I used them only once, but I have a small unit of cultists, made from a bunch of old Necromunda figures.

The daemon engines are a strong part of my force, and I have two Plagueburst Mortars.  Three is good, but given the games I've played so far, I've never needed to field more than two.  I have another one to paint up which i will at some point soon.

The main strike force of the army, has always been the Foetid Bloatdrones, flying daemon engines that operate in support of my flying Daeon Prince.  They are fast, tough, mobile, and very hard hitting.

A few of my characters on show too.  Firstly my scratch-built flying Daemon Prince.

A Biologis Putrifier, which I've not used a great deal.

A Foul Blightspawn (a real star of a unit, which wile a little unpredictable, can be extremely powerful), a Noxious Blightbringer, and Felthius.

A  Lord of Contagion.

A Lord of Contagion in Terminator armour.

 Finally, I have a single Myphitic Blighthauler.  These daemon engines really need to be used in units of three, and are underwhelming as a lone model.  They are a useful addition if heavy weaponry to the Plague Marines though.

I've really enjoyed collecting, building, painting, and playing battles with these wonderful little models.  

With 9th Edition Warhammer 40,000 just around the corner, I'll have to decide if I'm going to create another army or develop the Death Guard or my venerable Crimson Fist loyalist marines.

EDIT: I'm steadily updating both!  Here's a recent addition to the Death Guard; a cohort of Myphitic Blighthaulers.