A couple of my gaming friends have been cleaning out their garages, attics, basements, cupboards, etc. and giving me models they purchased back decades ago but never got around to doing anything with. The plague marines below are three such models. Someday I’d like to collect up the entire set of seven.
A little poking around revealed that my diminutive but ancient astartes date back to Rogue Trader times and are detailed in the book Realm of Chaos. Given the general zeitgeist of the 41st Millennium this makes them powerful indeed since we all know that anything really old is better than the new stuff. New stuff, for the most part after all, is simply old stuff that has been rediscovered.
After I cleaned up them a little with blade and file, I noticed that the existing bases were crumbling to pieces in my hands. (Sort of oddly fitting for Nurgle, don’t you think?) So I epoxied my lovelies onto some new bases. I was going to go with the new fangled 32mm, which is what plague marines are supplied with now, but after thinking about it I opted for 25mm because I decided to use the same size bases that were originally supplied by Games Workshop when the models were new.
Switching rusty gears a bit, I also want to give a few individuals, from this mob of plaguebearers I completed back in February, their oh so brief moment in the spotlight so here is this daemon. Her multi-hued horn indicates this was one I completed after reading the January 2018 White Dwarf with their much appreciated focus on Nurgle.
The sword was the product of many different experiments, which all pretty much ended unsuccessfully, so I threw on a bunch of coats of black ink, some bright green highlights, ended with Nuln Oil Gloss and called it a day. Pretty basic looking, but I’m happy with it.
The meat to this particular daemon are of course her posterior bits as you can see here. My mob consists of two identical boxes of plaguebearers and while I took care to try and mix the heads and arms, I wanted some of the second batch to have some features not included in the kit. So when I had a little left over kneaded green stuff from something else, I dug up a couple of mysterious spiky bits from that Bag of Endless Spikey Bits most of us acquire and just sort of cobbled something together with no particular plan.
I’m almost done with my Poxbringer aka Herald of Nurgle from the Start Collecting set, so I’ll probably feature him next time. I’m not sure where that will leave my current poxbringer, Urnafortunus. I’m sure that my forces can handle having two poxbringers, no doubt at delightfully cross purposes, or perhaps my named worthy can learn the ways of the Scrivener and use that big mouth and even bigger fist to make sure my festering legions step lively into battle.
I’m also working on finishing another poxwalker and plan to reprime the old school plague marines since we are getting some excellent priming weather these days here in central California.
Ann's Immaterium 
30 responses to “Ancient triumvirate and a plaguebearer visits …”
[…] this guy. Have been doing a lot of priming too and hope to make a start on painting my trio of old school plague marines at some point […]
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🎤 I like big (spikey, pox riddled) buts and I cannot lie, oh wait I am Pappa Nurgle and now you die! Great post once again Ann
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I had no idea you were a Poet! 🙂
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Youve missed my wednesday wordsdays i guess…🙂
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Well, talent will out, that’s for sure!
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Excellent work Ann, and great to see that butt-worms are now a thing! 🙂
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Hehe, “butt-worms” … 😛
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I have a bunch of the 2nd Ed Plague Marines, but none of those original ones. Hopefully I’ll stumble on some of them at some point here.
On the Plague Bearer, my main thought was that rear stingers usually work better with some kind of tail involved. It’s so fitting for chaos to have a mutation that’s something theoretically useful, but with some drawback that largely negates it. Also, I bet she wrecks a lot of chairs 😉
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From the pictures I’ve seen, the 2nd edition plague marines look pretty neat too.
Yes, having a tentacle, tail, prehensile appendage of some kind probably is useful for stingers, but perhaps this particular chaos boon comes with a life lesson as well as the obvious benefits (side hustle where you can sell flasks of stinger tail venom, etc.): be thankful for what you are given and not ruminate too much on what you don’t have.
Yeah, I agree, I bet she does wreck a lot of chairs.
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Nice vintage plague marines. I love all the new PM’s but I’ll always have a soft spot for the classics
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I know what you mean. I wasn’t played 40K back in the 80’s and 90’s but I was playing a lot of D&D and Runequest, and consequently have a soft spot for the miniatures of that era.
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Great to see those old-school classics. I’ve got them as well, but I don’t know how I’ll use them given just how large the new models are – it would seem wrong to have them in the same force with the others towering over them. For that reason alone, I’m interested to see what you do with yours.
Great work on the Plaguebearer. You’re consistently knocking these out of the park!
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Yes, there is that scale creep problem. I’ll probably just stick them in my forces and use them anyway as is. I don’t plan on doing anything particularly unusual with them, but hopefully they’ll turn out ok. I hope GW doesn’t continue with the scale creep going forward. The models now are about as big as I would want to game with. I’ve played 54mm historical battles and while fun, it isn’t a scale I particularly enjoy as a regular thing.
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We’d have to check sizing on the Kharadron Overlords or Sea Elves to see if the serious scale creep goes beyond the more easily justified creatures like space marines and stormcast and bloodhound.
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Lovely vintage Plague Marines. I got some old marines for those days. So much character crammed into them. It was before the whole setting was … errr … set and Marines were just normal soldiers in powered armour. Rogue Trader was such an open sandbox compared to today’s rigid lore. Not to say that is bad now. Just very different.
Cool paint job as always.
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Thank you. I haven’t read too much from the old days, but the little bit I’ve read does remind me of original D&D, which was a very open rule set in many ways compared to the later editions. Like what you said, very different. I found as a teenager I enjoyed the open rules, but into my late teens and 20’s I gradually gravitated toward wanting more concrete rules, and now that I’m in my 50’s I find I’m wanting to go back to more open rules for roleplaying.
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Another of those “I never thought I’d ever say this” moments, but nice spikey bits! I like the green sword as well! Great stuff!
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Thank you; I do like me some spiky bits! 🙂
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That’s a fantastic plague bearer, I really like how you’ve painted it up. Also appreciating the subtle conversion. and what a great find with those marines. I recognise that backpacks as being the same design as space crusade! I have on one of my possessed… and a another weird parallel, I didn’t know these minis existed, but I recently kitbashed and sculpted a marine being possessed by a plague bearer!!! Once my friend paints it up for me I’ll pop a post up on the blog linking it to hear because these old metal minis look wicked.
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Many thanks. Well, in general I primed white, then applied several layers of green and brown washes until the basic skin looked the way I wanted, and sometimes (not always) I’d blotch on some orange and/or yellow glazes. The sores are mostly Blood for the Blood God!, as well as red, black, and brown inks. Highlights were light green and a hint of off-white. The sword as a bunch of layers of black ink to cover up my failed experiments and then a final light application of glossy black ink and of course the green highlights. The spikes were layers of dark brown, lighter brown and then off-white, each dry brushed on over the previous layer but leaving a little bit to show all three colors. There was a lot of free wheeling just doing stuff as I went too with all of these daemons. I hope that helps some.
I’ll look forward to seeing your kitbashed marine; I agree the old marines do look cool.
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Ive not yet played with any glazes… s But to be honest it sounds like you put considerably more effort into your whole process than i do. Why do you use inks, how do they differ from washes/paints?
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For something that looks kind of thrown together, I do spend a lot of time on them, it turns out. Fortunately I play with my daemons while I’m watching tv with my hubby, so it is hobby and family time all in one and the hours melt away. I like the glazes because they are more subtle than washes. Of course one can just thin down a wash and then you have a glaze more or less, but I find I rather just reach for a glaze than do that when I can.
I wasn’t being as precise as I should have been: when I said ink I meant wash, such as Nuln Oil for black and Agrax Earthshade for brown.
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Oh! Ha ha, sorry. I got confused. Thats interesting with the glazes… I always assumed they were just light versions of washes, but they are just like weaker versions?
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I’ve found them to be somewhat weaker, yes. I first learned about them as something that can be used as a (nearly) final step where you put to over an area to damp down the contrast between two colors a bit. I’ve also found them useful to add some blotches of color that are more subtle than using full on washes, though one can thin down washes or paints too to achieve a similar effect.
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Pre-mixed Glazes and Washes also sometimes have different mediums, to change how they flow. A wash wants to settle into the recesses to provide shading, while a glaze wants to cover the whole area more or less evenly, to tint the entire thing.
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Thank you, Alexis, I’ve found that to be true as well. Sometimes, with the washes, like when I want a wash to settle into a pock mark or something, I’ll set the miniature to dry at an angle so the wash doesn’t run out of it.
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Oh i see! Thats certainly explains why Ann can use them to soften some contrast between two colours as she said. Thats really helpful actually. Maybe ill try some out. Im trying to get a bit better at painting and expand my toolset. Until i started writing on a blog and being actove on social media about hobbying, i never really tried that hard to paint well. More of a “good enough to look at while playing” sort of standard. Thanks everyone
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That is what I look for in my miniatures as well, “good enough (for me) to look at while playing.” Something interesting I’ve noticed is that effects that look great up close in pictures meant to go on a blog oftentimes are irrelevant on the tabletop and vice versa. I’ve also had pieces where an effect looks down right bad up close but ends up looking pretty good at a distance, lol.
A great thing about blogging and reading blogs is that for me, and I’ve noticed for others, is that it does help to improve by pushing/motivating/inspriring/etc. one, as you say.
Since we are sharing hobby tips and so on, anyone reading this have a good way to get rid of mold lines on hair, fur, plasma gun vents, and other textured surfaces, speaking of things that probably are a non-issue at tabletop distances? 🙂
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“One mutation for you, one more for you, and oh hell….that went on your posterior… Umm, that’s the new rear attack spike! Carry on! One mutation for you….”
Wicked green sword there! Love those three old minis too. I would have no clue how to paint those up, so it will be interesting to see what you do with them! 🙂
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Hehe, that sounds about right with the mutations. Thank you, I’m pleased with the sword all things considered. I picked green for the highlights because I wanted it to stand out from the mini a bit but not a lot, which would have been the case if I had gone with some other bright color. For the poxbringer, which I hope to feature next time, again his sword was a bunch of failed experiments, which ended up happily with a new blight: the dreaded/beloved (depending upon your point of view, I guess) Yellow Mold.
I’m not sure what I’m going do to with the plague marines either. They’ll be good to experiment with though before tackling my newer Death Guard marines.
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