The (International) Herald Tribune

Last week, I decided I needed some Nurgle Heralds on foot. Just basic stuff. No huge, all-conquering awe-inspiring Greater Daemon or Daemon Prince, just some lowly little Heralds. I figured I want some low-level characters for more low-level armies.

Also, thanks to the Daemonic Table, you can never tell when an enemy psyker gets his mind fried and you get a free Herald dropping out of the ether. Better be prepared for the occasion, as it would surely be considered rude not to take advantage of free models...

I wasn't really happy with my initial efforts though:

In the end, I decided it was the head, tore it off again and came up with a new version I prefer by far:

Obviously, I still need to do all the greenstuffing, but I think the basic concept is very sound.
Oh, and the model isn't small, it's just standing on a 40mm base. I was never really happy with the official concept of Heralds just being slightly beefed-up regular troopers, I always thought they should stand out, so they should be discernibly larger and certainly get a base upgrade.

I actually can't remember where I got the antlers from, but I really like them as they feel so Nurgly...

+++

So, when I said some Heralds, I wasn't exaggerating, I was working on two of the dudes at the same time. However, I was even less content with where the second Herald was going, so I disassembled it completely and now am left with just the bare bones of a model:

Still a long way to go, obviously...

The story... so far

The Daemons are coming along. It goes in leaps and bounds, though, with a lot going on at times, and then not very much or nothing at all happening when the project ends up shelved for months. I managed to get most stuff done back in 2012/13, the status after some very productive six months back then:

After that, things slowed down a bit. It is noteworthy that the army was conceived in 2011, using the old Codex Daemons from back then (5. edition). As a nice little touch, I had envisaged to have all units 7 men (creatures) strong, as an hommage to Nurgle (7 being his sacred number). However, under the current Codex, all troop choices need to be at least 10 strong, so I had had to adapt to this.

First, I upped the strength of the Plaguebrides (counts as Daemonettes) to a full 10, so they are a legal choice now:

I realize the picture isn't exactly fortunate, because lots of the girls are standing in each other's way, but I think you get the gist.

Anyway, that left me with a second troops choice missing for the army to conform to standard army selection, so I went to work on some Plaguebearers derived from several different Confrontation Mid-Nor dwarfs. You have seen these guys already, but for the sake of completeness:

You will notice that there are 4 minis short of the minimum size of 10, one of those minis has been completed since the picture has been taken, while two others are very close to completion and the final mini - the unit's champion - still needs some serious work.

I am not a big fan of armies that don't look like armies, so I will certainly paint several more troops choices before I will add more characters or big gribbly stuff. That is the one gripe I have with the army - I just painted random stuff in the beginning, leaving me with a collection of miniatures that do look good, but are not gameworthy.

More Plaguebearer Progress

...and they keep turning up, one by one, little by little. But the important thing is to keep going, and the full ten-man unit will be finished in time.

As a sort of "what I did this month" thing, here is the status of the unit so far, 6 models finished including the musician:

Plaguebearers (Progress)

I have posted some early pics of my Plaguebearers converted from Confrontation Mid-Nor Dwarfs in an earlier post. I now have something to show:

Some progress on my Plaguebearers... I have finished four so far:

while three more are in various states of unfinishedness:

and three more are still awaiting paint at the moment:

I like these models, because they were the very very first ChainsawDaemonEngines I ever put together, about two years ago now. I only ever painted two of them and left the rest lying around... until now. I promised myself to finally give them the paint they deserve and not put anything else on the worktable until all of them are finished.

Thing is, I have tried exactly that several times before, without any success at all in the past. So having finished two more models now (making four in total, see first picture), I have actually come a long way already. As I am writing this, another one is very close to completion as well.

Some more pics:

Blowflies of Nurgle (Supplemental)

I recently found a forum post where a a year ago I had shown where the markings on the wings of my unit of Blowflies of Nurgle are derived from. I had totally forgotten about that! However, I really like it, so I thought I'll share here as well:

 

The Honourable Decaying Mother

Now this model is something very special to me. When I first saw pictures of the Wet Nurse by Kindom Death several years ago,

  I was so taken back by the design and the miniature itself, I knew I had to buy it at some point and convert it. However, this resin model was strictly limited and the only source you could get it was ebay, but you had to lurk for months, and it had a corresponding price tag attached (The model is currently available again, at least the plastic version). However, I really loved the model, it was a perfect blend of the Artemis of Ephesus:

and the work of H.R. Giger:

 When I was developping the army background for my ChainsawDaemonEngines, I pondered the finer points of Daemonhood. I figured that Daemons constantly fight each other for supremacy, and while Daemons are esssentially immortal, there should be instances where Daemons (or their essence) of one side could be enslaved by the other if victorious.


So I came up with the story of a former Slaaneshi Daemon Princess that was defeated in a duel and consequently subjugated to serve Nurgle (for 7777 years), her essence broken up and reformed to please her new master, her beaty and fertility perverted to a more Nurglitch version of beaty and fertility.

Enter the Honourable Decaying Mother.

Along with her, her entire court would go over to Nurgle as well, offering me even more exciting modelling projects, but more to that in future posts.

For now, worship the glory of the Honourable Decaying Mother:

The Seventh Hound - a Nightmarish Inspiration

Originally, I had decided on a seven-strong Hound unit, with Karanak as a unit upgrade - check out one of my earlier blog entries. However, things move on as they always do, we get a new Codex and Karanak is not a unit upgrade anymore, but an HQ choice. This means I wanted to add a seventh hound so as to have a seven-strong unit, even in cases where I do not want to buy Karanak as an extra Herald.

After playing around with some ideas, I decided to take inspiration from a fellow blogger - or in this case blogerette - namely Nightmare/Ana and her great blog Gardens of Hecate. I particularly liked the following of her creations:

So I intended to go down this path, and combine a hound body with an elongated, equine neck and a horse head. Needless to say, one crazy converting session later, the initial concept had been completely turned around:

I used the body of a Confro Centaur as a basis, and as the model was rather old, it had already lost a hoof. So I simply cut off the second hoof too and replaced them with Dire Wolf legs. The whole thing still needs some green stuff, but is otherwise finished (for the time being).

This uncertainty and sudden inspiration bursts are what really makes me enjoy converting so much.

Plaguebearers... WIP

Now, for my most recent creations.

The big problem I have with my army is that it is still not legal, because I don't have two Troops choices yet. I do possess 7 half-painted Plaguebearers, but under the new Codex this isn't enough anymore, all Troops units have gone up to 10-strong as a minimum size.

So, what do I need? Three more Plaguebearers. Here they are.

And the half-painted lot so far:

Irisse the Fury

Next up, a conversion for a Nurglized Slaanesh Herald on Steed I also did some weeks ago. The model uses a Rackham Confrontation dragon (!) as a basis, and is somewhat tall as a consequence. Actually, it's more in the range of a Daemon Prince sizewise, but I don't really care.

I simply like models that are obscenely exaggerated and over the top =D
One reason why I went for Daemons in the first place.

Behold, Irisse the Fury: