"Not all who worship the plague god gain the mutations of the truly devout. That is not to say that they are no less fervent in their devotion, but they lack the strength of will to attract the attention of their dark patron. But these cultists are the most worrisome, for they can blend in with the imperial masses to plot and scheme."

"And when the Plague God show favors upon those humans that flock to his cults, he sometimes bestows upon them mutations to make the cultists resemble the Plague Marines who's aid they pray for. Even though they look like the dreaded heretic Astartes, they are not. But they do posses greater strength and resilience then regular humans."

A VERY large cultist heavy weapon trooper

Ah, 'tis the season of year-end review blog posts! Much like last year, I am going to continue to focus on what I did not finish, versus what I did finish. After all, if you want to see what I painted, it's all (mostly) up on the blog.

First things, first, I did finish a few of the projects from last years list: the Lord of Worms, the dark future car, and the Magewraith Throne.

Unfortunately, there are still a few projects that I didn't touch during the entire year! You may recognize these two as being in exactly the same state as last year:

The chosen of Mortarion are a particularly deadly breed of heretic. Unlike the World Eaters and Emperor's Children, which descended into anarchy, or the Thousand Sons, which seem to have disappeared altogether, the Death Guard have retained much of their previous structure. When facing off against the forces of the Death Guard, we cannot rely on their lack of organization to provide exploitable weakness, as we can against other traitors. Although followers of Chaos, they possess a strange order...

The Lord of Worms was conceived to lead the Nurgle Contingent of my Age of Sigmar Chaos force. I wanted a mounted lord to be able to include with the Knights in the event that I wanted to field a pure Nurgle force. For his mount, I chose Nurglings as they're easy to obtain and are distinctly Nurgle. I was able to fit about a base and a half of Nurglings on a 50mm square base. Through the back of the first stand, I ran a large brass rod through the Nurglings. I wrapped the rod in greenstuff and used the roll maker from Green Stuff World to simulate a giant wormy tentacle. I also wrapped several pieces of thinner brass wire in greenstuff and repeated the process to make the other tentacles, making sure to use various size and textures to simulate different types of worms.

The torso itself is mostly a stock Blight King. The only real change I made was that since the Chaos Lord Warscroll has them equipped with a hand weapon and shield. I shaved off the hand that was molded on the shield piece and sculpted a worm wrapping itself around the handles. I made sure to add the clitellum to distinguish it from a generic tentacle. I wanted his arm to look like it was in the process of mutating into a worm, so I left the striations to be painted on.

I left the model in several pieces for painting: the nurglings, the worms, the torso, the head, and the right shoulder pad (due to a head hanging from it on the back that would have blocked access to the model).

The nurglings were largely painted with GW warboss green highlighted up by mixing in P3 Menoth White Base (essentially bleached bone) and washed with a mix of Army Painter Soft Tone and Green Tone inks. The bellies were highlighted up to pure Menoth White Base. Thinned GW Bloodletter Glaze was applied to the pustules. A few of the Nurglings were picked out in alternate colors, most noticably the ones painted with some pink flesh tones from the Vallejo Model Color line and washed with GW Baal Red and Leviathan Purple. The two stragglers at the very back were painted slightly different shades of green and flesh to stand out. The green was GW Loren Forrest highlighted up with Krieg Khaki and the flesh was Dwarf flesh highlighted up with an old shade of Vallejo Model Color whose name has worn off (it's another soft flesh shade).

The armor for the Lord of Worms wash airbrushed with Vallejo Game Air Dead Flesh (it is slightly different that the original GW Rotting Flesh) with highlights applied by mixing in white. Then I applied Ammo of Mig's Streaking Grime and Streaking Rust effects, both in streaks and as an enamel wash. Once that was dry, I applied rusty patches by stippling on GW Rhinox Hide, Dark Flesh, Vermin Brown, and Averland Sunset. Finally, I re-applied pure white to the edges of the armor, but I did so solely in vertical motions to continue the streaking appearance.

The metal spike and axe blade were painted with GW Ironbreaker and washed with Ammo of Mig Light Rust Wash and Streaking Grime applied in splotches. I also added rust using the same metho as above.

The flesh was painted using the old GW Ogre flesh recipe: Graveyard Earth mixed with Shadow Grey and highlighted by adding in Bleached Bone (although I used the current GW colors and the aforementioned P3 Menoth White Base). The shield arm was blended into GW Skrag Brown with the highlights applied as stripes by mixing in P3 Midlund Flesh and then Menoth White Base. Finally, the arm was finished with a wash of Army Painters Soft Tone ink.

The other worms were painted largely the same way, except with Vallejo Game Color Dwarf Flesh instead of the P3 Midlund Flesh. The grey worms were painted with GW Skavenblight Dinge highilighted by mixing in P3 Menoth White Base and washed with Army Painter Soft Tone ink.

The Shield was painted with Vallejo Game Color Brassy Brass and washed with P3 Turquoise ink. I then painted stripes of GW Hawk Turquoise, Ice Blue, and Ice Blue mixed with White to simulate a very exaggerated verdigris.

The gold fly and shield boss were painted with Vallejo Model Color Old Gold washed with Army Painter Soft Tone ink and highlighted up by mixing in GW Stormhost Silver. They were finished off with several thin layers of GW Waywatcher Green glaze.

Once it was all assembled, I mixed Uhu glue with Tamiya Clear Red and Army Painter Dark Tone ink to simulate gore, which I applied to some of the Nurglings with open wounds. Then I mixed the Uhu with GW Nurgle's Rot to simulate the slime. You have to work fast with this because the Uhu dries quickly. It is applied with a toothpick and stretched from piece to piece.

Maybe, just maybe, I went overboard on the rust on his back...

When Nurgle's children are around, you really, really don't want to eat the yellow snow.

I have a worm crawling out my eye hole! Grrrrrr!

Hmmmm....My own guts are tasty!

Wait up!

Closeup on the shield. I'm very happy with how the rust came out.

Much like the Nurgle Warriors I recently posted, this Nurgle Sorcerer was designed for a 7th edition Warhammer chaos army. However, unlike the warriors, there was no meta considered when adding him to my army. I just think this model is great.

As far as painting him, he was painted really quickly because he's a pretty simple model. I don't recall the base mix of the black, but I do remember I highlighted it by mixing in Nurgling Green. The brown was scorched brown, highlighted up to Bestial Brown and then Mornfang Brown. The staff was P3 Bastion grey highlighted up with Bleached Bone. The flesh was Knarloc Green also highlighted by mixing in Nurgling Green. The maggots began with Nurgling Green, washed with a green and brown mix, and highlighted by mixing in Vallejo off white (I forget the exact name, doh!).

This was where the real fun began though. I used a greenstuff cable maker to make a giant maggot sliding out of the ground. Then I mixed Uhuh glue and Nurgle's Rot and quickly stretched it across the staff and the giant maggot and glopped on some more around the skulls on the staff. This was a hugely fun model to paint.

As I've previously mentioned, I began working on a "modern" chaos army way back in 7th ed. Warhammer. At that time in my life, I was still struggling with the balance between playing Warhammer for fun and playing Warhammer to win and I still cared about army lists. So when I saw that the mark of Nurgle granted a +1 to hit and a -1 to be hit, I had to have a unit. It only took me eight or so years to finish the ten of them!

The final three warriors were painted pretty similar to the other seven. The armor was painted based with Knarloc Green (or whatever the current version is called). I then shaded this by mixing in Necron Abyss. After the shade, I highlighted by mixing in bleached bone. I tried to mix up the leathers amongst all ten of the unit, but these three were done largely the same for speed purposes. The belts were Vallejo English Uniform Brown highlighted up with Vallejo Buff. The gloves and boots were a mix of scorched brown and bestial brown highlighted up by mixing in deathclaw brown.

The nice thing about painting Nurgle stuff is that metallics are a lot easier. The steel was painted chainmail and washed with Ammo by Mig streaking grime and light rush wash. Then stippled with various red browns and oranges to simulate rust. Rust spots were also applied to the armor in the same manner. The brass was painted Vallejo Brassy Brass, washed with Devlan Mud and then oxidized with Nihlakh Oxide.

I'm pretty happy with the way these came out. And they look great with the rest of the unit as well (Special thanks to Urion for painting the banner for me!)

So I've seen a lot of other bloggers doing an end of the year review for 2016 and I wanted to get in on that action. However, I wanted to do something a bit different. Where a lot of other bloggers have shown everything they painted or focused on stuff that was painted but did not feature on their blog, I wanted to showcase the stuff I started but didn't finish, since virtually everything I painted in 2016 has been shown off here (or it will be over the course of my next few blog posts!).

First up, is a Chaos Lord for my modern-hammer chaos army. I've named this chap the Lord of Worms and he's born aloft by a horde of Nurglings. As you can see, the Nurglings are pretty much done and the bulk of the lord is converted. He needs some more work though, as I have a lot planned for him.


The fact that this model isn't finished yet makes me sad. I converted it as a test model for Dark Future about two or three years ago. This year, I put the base coat down. Next I have to apply chipping medium and then the paint. Part of the problem is I can't decide what color I want the top coat to be!
Although this is a GW kit, it's intended for use in Frostgrave. The throne and platform are finished and I've done the gap filling on the two gargoyles on the side, but haven't sanded them flat yet. Once that is done, it's ready for paint!

So with the Kingdom Death Kickstarter this year, it reminded me that I still haven't touched my stuff from the original Kingdom Death Kickstarter! So I decided to start working on the Adam model that with my pledge. At this point he's mostly built. I've got a slight gap on one of the wrists to finish and I need to prep his spear and shield and he'll be ready for paint as well.

And finally (and I apologize for the lighting, resin is hard to photograph with my crappy phone), a townhouse from Table Top World. As you can see, the bottom level is complete. I want to add some stucco textures to the upper levels and I have to figure out how best to attach the porch piece so that I can use the inside of the building.

So there you go, hopefully I'll finish these projects in 2017!