Tag Archives: Chaos Space Marines

Poxwalker #13: Done and then Done Again!

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Today’s offering is (surprise!) another poxwalker.  I’m doing this instead of the Dave’s Blood Bowl Dwarves, which I promised last time, because I want to squeeze another model in under the wire for Azazel’s February 2019 Neglected Models Painting Challenge.  This means I have a score of two completed zombies for this month.  By my somewhat lugubriously somnolent yet hopefully consistently turgid standards this is magnificent progress indeed!

In the grim darkness of the far future there is only slow painting.

Little Number Thirteen is especially neglected in that I started it back when Dark Imperium first came out, ignored the poxwalkers in general for quite a long time, though I finished this one back in July 2018, ignored it for about seven months*, decided the model needed more work, put in about another hour or so on it last night and then pronounced it done done not just done unless I decide to drybrush the horns a little more, and then it finally might be done done, though I think I’m going to call it done done the way it is.

I might drybrush the horns a bit, but (meh) probably not.

Here is a roundup picture for the Neglected Model Challenge.  Two done in the same month!  How my fabulously fetid forces ferociously fester!**

Neglected Model Challenge Roundup Pic:  I wonder if I can paint two more for March?

I also made a little progress on the Nurgle Blood Bowl team, getting some shade and even some paint onto one of the rotters.  Rotters are the basic linemen of a Nurgle team.  My plan is to paint their helmets and armor bright yellow, their clothes (or what passes for same) and their gloves orange, and their shoes brown or black.  I might even try my hand at some decals.

For next time (and I mean it this time since I won’t have any painting challenge deadlines to slither under) my plan is to present the much eagerly awaited Dave’s Blood Bowl Dwarves.

Yes, I probably will use my Nurgle football team in 40K/Kill Team as well. 🙂

Nurgle image 125 wide

* Additional Neglect Points are gained for Little Number Thirteen because it appears our new friend was a no-show for my July 2018 roundup of then completed zombies.  I thought it was in there somewhere but it appears not, unless it had gotten into some Tzeentchite Invisibility Juice again.

** Say that ten times in a row really fast!

 

Poxwalkers #12 & #14 and Blood Bowl Update

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My go-to models for Azazel’s Neglected Model Challenges are my hideously neglected* poxwalkers, and this lucky fellow (?) is number fourteen of twenty.

Got to get that cat hair up with a lint roller next time.

Painted him a lot like the others, predictably, though I decided to go easy on the blood/ooze/pus/etc. this time and not turn him into a somewhat juicy mess like his messmate below.  Perhaps his cocktail of diseases included a touch of desiccation and a pleasing whitening of the flesh?

I used Pallid Witch Flesh for the white and then some Skull White over that.  For the rims of the open sores I used various flesh tones, but finished with the lightest I have (without mixing paints), Kislev Flesh.  I used Nurgle’s Rot to give them a little shine.  I was originally going to go for, as I said, the dry look, but I decided upon reflection he did need a touch of satin.

Might whiten up that one worm a bit, I don’t know.

I tried an experiment with texture pastes on his air tank, which didn’t work out well at all.  I scrapped most of the paste off, though it turns out the stuff can be stubborn so I left a veneer, which I think came out alright.  (Thank goodness I didn’t try this experiment with someone, who is more fastidious, like say a Khorne Berserker or anything Slaanesh.)

I ended up, as I so often do, splotching random inks and such on the tank until it seemed advisable to call it a day.  Finally, I wanted to give the it a little metallic shine, but I didn’t want to lighten the tank up too much, so I drybrushed on a little Vallejo Gunmetal Grey (70.863) instead of the usual steel colors.

Where’d that piece of hair come from on his horn between pictures?  Danged cats!

This mob is characterized by the innovation that all of the zombies with reddish skin are wearing yellow and the green ones are wearing orange.**  These two are wearing identical, reversible jumpsuits, as you can see.  Even the web gear is reversible.

Recycled Poxbringer Pic:  Proudly showing off their yellow mold.

I am looking forward to trying out the new (to me) basing video on my nascent Blood Bowl team.  If I like how it turns out, I might do something like it for my desert bases, instead of going the simple route of just slapping some sand on it and calling it a day.  For now though, I’m going to continue as I began with my zombies because I want them all to more or less match.

All of my Blood Bowl team are on bases now, so that’s a little progress.

Speaking of Blood Bowl, I did get a little more priming done, but it is back to cold, wet, and humid so that’s on hold for awhile.  I did get them all based, and my experiment with priming before affixing the models to bases went well in that I decided I liked affixing then priming better than priming then affixing.***

I also green stuffed a made-between-two-combs-that-my-husband-hopefully-isn’t-using-anymore tentacle to that bloater I was talking about before, where I put the model together out of order and had a horrendous gap I had to do something about.  I’ll show him next time, when I post some pictures of my friend, Dave’s, Blood Bowl dwarves he recently painted and was kind enough to let me play against him in a game against his orks.  After that hopefully I’ll have a rotter or two to show you.

Nurgle Blood Bowl Icon 125

* “Hideously neglected” might be a bit of an overstatement since the Dark Imperium box came out in June 2017, so I’ve only been working on my Death Guard zombies for less than a year now, which isn’t bad for a squad of twenty by my standards.  Frightfully neglected, perhaps?

** In case I’m insane enough to try and paint another mob of these guys in accordance with my original, crazy plan of eventually running a zombie horde once I get back to playing 40K again.  “Horde” for the sized games I generally play(ed) would be about 80 to 100 bodies, which would include extras for (hopefully) turning some enemy infantry into more poxwalkers.

*** For one, I didn’t like having to either scrape or tape the bottoms of the feet so I could use cement.  I could use super glue, of course, but I sometimes drop my miniatures and with super glue most of the time the miniature (at best) comes off the base or (at worst) explodes into its constituent parts like my friend, Dave’s, poor metal Blood Bowl troll.  Still, it is superior in some ways, such as getting those sometimes hard-to-reach nether regions and if you want to spray the base a different color than the miniature.

Another cultist stumbles in …

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It has been a long time since I’ve stumbled in from the warp,  so … hi.  What with the holidays being upon us, it seems a good time to polish up my tentacles, extraneous external organs/lesions/so on and put in a December appearance with a finished model,  however humble and mundane in form, function, commonality, etc.*

My magnificent offering this time is a chaos cultist.  He bears a familial resemblance to this guy, to be sure.  In fact, he’s functionally identical at tabletop distances.  There are some variations however, which become apparent at painfully-close-to-eyeball distances, such different colored hoses, skin blotches, dangling gears, etc.

The new guy with his completed brothers.

My rate of cultist completion thus far has been one model every two years.  I know, not too shabby, huh?  🙂  At this rate I will have the entire mob completed by 2052 or so, maybe 2053 taking into account the extra effort that will probably be required for some of the fancier dudes like that guy with the pigsticker and the shotgun.

Rifle highlights work way better at a distance, I think.

I experimented a little on his arms (much more on the left arm) with a red wash and then blotching some flesh back onto it.  Wasn’t sure what I was going for exactly.  Maybe a tincture of Khorne, maybe a burn, maybe just some random mutation, maybe all or none of the above.

Happy Holidays!  Dropping in for a holiday visit.

Despite my long absence, a truism for me with gaming matters is that even if I stay away a long time it’ll never be forever, and this time is no exception.  I find the mild itch to pick up a paint brush returning, so I’ll probably pick away at a miniature that I friend asked me to paint for him, but it has been sitting hideously neglected with the rest for many months now.  May also work on another cultist so I don’t fall behind my Complete a Cultist Once Every Two Years schedule.  I’ll need to be very careful and nurture my fragile ambition/mild itch like a youthful canker in its first stages of bloom.  We’ll see what the future and the gods bring….

*  I thought I’d say my obligatory “how come I haven’t posted so long, busy, blah blah blah” explanation/bit for a parenthetical aside, rather than my opening paragraph.  I’ve found that since I started my new job (after many years of housewifery), back around the beginning of the year, the energy that went into my painting has now been going into the job.  So I haven’t been painting or playing miniature games much in general (except for the occasional Friday get-together with some friends and mostly we play board games when I’m there), and thus I haven’t been posting, this after all being a painting blog.

I might have to start posting some other aspects of my hobby life besides miniatures to keep this blog going, unless I revise my thinking of “going” to mean posting a picture of a completed miniature every 6 to 12 months as the mood strikes.

Chaos Symbol Clip Art

Thirteen Poxwalkers

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I’ve always found thirteen to be a lucky number!

Today’s offering is a quick picture of my poxwalker mob as it stands so far: thirteen strong.  Since a minimum-sized mob is ten, and I started the month of June with less than ten, this completes Azazel’s June painting challenge.

For July I plan on completing more poxwalkers with the goal of finishing the full twenty, if not in July then certainly before the end of summer.

 

Another Painted Poxwalker

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I offer up another painted poxwalker this week in my slow, grinding way that sort of mirrors the Death Guard itself: I take forever to get a model/unit done but just when you thought it would never get done it is. +  This guy is the companion to last week’s Beach Boy Poxwalker.

I went with the tried and true Emerald Pox, though for the final pustule drybrush I decided upon a more muted Skarsnik Green instead of the usual Moot Green this time.  I didn’t spare the yellow wash either, and I drybrushed a little yellow on the back of his left leg as well with the idea that perhaps we have a small but developing case of some yellow mold.

If you look closely, it does have the coveted Mark of Ann!

This zombie firmly cements my having a completed unit for Azazel’s latest painting challenge.  I have one more that I’ll probably finish up tonight, along with a cultist, and then I’ll have to wrangle up all of my painted poxwalkers for a group shot for the painting challenge.

 

+ For some reason the phrase “painted poxwalker” causes that Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers tongue-twister to run over and over again in my head.  I hope that doesn’t happen to you too.  Oh no, too late!

 

Cultist for Azazel’s Challenge

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I completed a second cultist to go along with this guy and also to complete Azazel’s Neglected Model Challenge.+  The idea is to finish at least one model that you started painting at least six months ago.  My Dark Vengeance guys certainly fill that bill.  I bought the box in 2012, as so many others did, started working on them and they have been scurrilously popping up in a primed and semi-painted state in games ever since.

Wonder what’s under that hood?

So this guy is the second completed cultist now.  I did a pretty heavy highlight job with Dawnstone on his rifle with the idea that it would be noticeable at tabletop distances.

For the skin this time, I went with something a little different than the recipe I used with the first cultist.  I based with Cadian Fleshtone, then washed with Gryphonne Sepia.  Highlighted with Cadian Fleshtone again, then Kislev Flesh and washed again with the sepia.

The red scarification or whatever on his right shoulder is Bloodletter wash, though I forget where in the process I applied it.  Probably after the highlight but before the final brown wash.  I almost decided to turn that sprue scar on his tricep into something, but in the end figured that it was unnoticeable at tabletop distances so I left well enough alone.

Painted Cultist One now has a colleague of sorts.

I used Rhinox Hide on his gaiter buttons, but that seemed to mostly disappear when I did a moderate to heavy dry brush of sand color onto his boots.  I probably won’t go back and fix it but moving forward with the other guys I’ll try and be aware of that issue when I’m dry brushing.

So this completes Azazel’s challenge, but I do have another horribly neglected (in more than one way as it turns out!) daemon miniature I’m almost done with.  I’ll post it along with this guy in a daring duo sort of group shot if I complete my daemon before the end of the month.  That miniature will be a sort of double threat in that not only will it count toward this challenge, but it can be seen as a species of plaguebearer and I plan on it counting for Squaduary as well.  Then it will proudly take its place in my swelling (in more than one way) ranks of Nurgle troops.

A slightly confused but ultimately effective advance of my Swelling Ranks.

A couple weeks later, tearing down a house to get at a vindicare assassin.

+  A warning to John and any others, who may be slightly sensitive to Nurgle-related posts that this post, while it may be primarily about a soldier with human elements, does contain some content that may possibly be Nurgle-related and involve posts about inappropriately happy zombie-like entities in oddly colored pants.  You have been warned!

Flesh Nurgling 100 pixels wide no background

Urnafortunus: Herald of Nurgle

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So I’ve been working on Becky the Bloat Drone still, but I also finally got this handsome fellow done.   I’ve had him for a very long time.  Despite having only now finished painting him, he’s been popping up primed with various colors in games now and again since 2013.  Talk about an Unpainted Veteran of the Long War!

He’s a Kromlech “Morbid Spawn” model.

This resin mess started out his (?) career as a nameless chaos spawn in equally nameless space marine armies.    He spent most of his early days furiously trying to come to grips with fire warriors before they gunned him down; usually quite successful thanks to the prevalence of doomcasters in those days.  He’s also run with Daemonkin, and there was a Chaos Undivided time, which he doesn’t like to talk about, when he had a green body with one blue tentacle, one red, and one purple.  His colleagues gave him the name Ezekyle to mock him.  Those were dark days indeed.  Happily, he has more recently found a new calling as a Herald of Nurgle or as they are styling them now, a Poxbringer.

His mighty array of weapons, the huge, rather nasty maw, that monstrous right arm (talk about a power fist!) and of course the varied spiky bits and last but not least that deadly triad of tentacles fully equips him, I’d say, to be every bit as formidable as a jumped-up plaguebearer with a balesword, a prehensile tongue, and a mouthy nurgling sidekick.

Once I get the Poxbringer, which came with the Nurgle battle force, painted then Urna will probably graduate once again to a counts-as Spoilpox Scrivener.  His visage certainly seems to fit the powers a Scrivener brings to the table, i.e. makes plaguebearers step more lively and fight harder.  I imagine any daemon in the ranks foolish enough to slack off or malinger will soon regret it.  Pop said malinger into his Motivating Maw, give him a bit of a chew then spit him out again.  I bet the rest of the unit would be falling all over itself to be the first to expend that extra two inches of movement or roll a 7+ with his sword!  His motivating speech:  “Shirkers will be shredded, malingers mauled and thieves throttled!”  Perhaps instead of counting diseases he has a mania for perfect formations with lovely, straight columns and ranks?  Who knows the mind of Chaos?

Always finding odd uses for that Nihilakh Oxide paint!

I call him (?) Urnafortunus or Pot Luck, because that is how I felt painting him.  I tried various experiments or just went with my whims of the moment, and kept what I liked and repainted what I didn’t.  A lot was done on the fly while watching Netflix with my husband.  As usual I’ll catalog some of what I remember doing for anyone who is interested and my own future reference.

I did the skin with the usual white primer followed by Athonian Camoshade, then Agrax Earthshade, more Camoshade with some patches of yellow and orange glazes.  Highlights were done with Nurgling Green.  Used rust washes, some Baal Red, Carroburg Crimson, Nurgle’s Rot, and of course Blood for the Blood God on the skin until I liked the final result, or more accurately I had reached that sweet place where if I kept working on it I would be more likely to make the model worse rather than better.

Some of the small, bright red tentacles were painted with Tallarn Flesh, then washed with Bloodletter and then brightened up with a gloss varnish.  With others I experimented with a bit of watered-down Blood for the Blood God.

Not his best side, but I’m not really sure he has one….

For the three big tentacles I used  a mysterious and seemingly endless series of green, black, brown, purple, and blue washes.   Then a final wash of glossy Nuln Oil, followed by giving the suckers a final wash of Biel-Tan to brighten them up a bit with regular Nuln Oil on the tentacle talons.  The teeth and horns were just multiple coats of Nuln Oil.

I decided to use rust washes in the mouth and also where the bones are sticking out.  I was going to paint the bones more traditionally, but in the end I decided this daemon had a weird, blackened skeleton so more Nuln Oil there.  Going back to the mouth, I decided the various nasty bits in there needed a little brightening up, but not too much, so I did some highlights using various colors such as Ratskin Flesh and so on.  I might eventually brighten it up some more but for now I’m happy with it.

Posting with a cultist for a size comparison shot.

So I’m going to continue my work on my bloat drone, though it is looking more and more like I’m not going to get it done by the end of the month in time for Azazel’s Decembuary Challenge.  Still he has apparently become the challenge guy extraordinaire, which is fun, and he has one for February as well.  So if I must eat the bitter ashes of defeat and disappointment in January, then perhaps for next month I’ll finish the bloater and complete the next challenge too and taste the ambrosia of victory with both the paintbrush and the dice cup!

Chaos Symbol Clip Art

Dark Vengeance Cultist

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So I’ve been squeezing in a few other models while I’ve been working on Becky the Bloat Drone, and one of them is my first Dark Vengeance cultist.  Considering how much I use these guys in games it is sort of shameful to let them linger unpainted so I finally made a start.

That cudgel doesn’t exactly look standard issue.

I decided upon my usual desert theme, then painted and based accordingly since this will go with my daemons.  I messed around with a bunch of washes on his one shoulder guard as a sort of a test for plague marine power armor.  Good job I did too, because while it is fine for this guy, I wouldn’t have liked it on my plague marines.  I guess that is why one does tests on guys like this.

Decided to go for yellow on his respirator tank to add some needed contrast to the model.  I’m finding the cultists useful for getting some experience painting skin that could conceivably be called human.

Need some steel wool to sort out that pistol, but it could be far worse.

Only 19 more to go and my Dark Vengeance cultists will a force to be reckoned with, Tide of Traitoring, Cult Ambushing, and so on their way to victory.  For now it is just this guy.  Occasionally squeezing one into the queue from time to time, I’ll probably have the unit done by 2022 or so.

Next time I’ll post another Bloat Drone update.  I should have the flesh more or less done by then.  I have a Herald of Nurgle-Poxbringer-Kromlech Chaos Spawn I need to put up here as well when I can as well.  I’ll use this guy with him for size comparison purposes.

Chaos Symbol Clip Art

 

Poxwalkers by Charles Gao

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Charles Gao, the mighty Chaos Lord of Ancynt Battles fame was kind enough to share some of his recent work with me: his mob of 20 poxwalkers.  I quite liked them so I thought I’d post them here.

Glad to see this worthy knows which way to hold an autogun!

Commissar Poxwalker of Orange?

I liked how the rotting bone-colored shoulder guard turned out.

Mob of twenty ready for bubblewrap and tarpit duties!

In the meantime, I’ve been chipping away at updating some of my blog pictures that were broken when Photobucket went to a pay-to-share-your-stuff model.  My plan is to finish with that before the end of 2017.

Also, I am pretty close to wrapping up my mob of ten plaguebearers.  My next post will be some pictures of the champion. I’m currently putting the finishing touches on the musician and the banner bearer and then I’ll make sure I didn’t miss giving any of my new rank-and-file guys their brief moment in the sun, and wrap it up with a group shot.

 

… and two more poxwalkers

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I finished up two more poxwalkers, numbers five and six of the requisite twenty-strong mob from the boxed set.  I continued with the idea of having two general schemes:  the green ones with orange clothes and the reddish ones with yellow clothes.  That way I could use them as two units as well as one big mob.  In a bigger mob, they have a little variation makes them look a little less like they are in lockstep, but still somewhat unified.

One little trick I tried this time was using Vallejo rust wash around some of the open sores on the red-colored poxwalker.  I noticed that the areas I applied it to looked more inflamed without being bloody.  (Shows up better in person, as is often the case with my cell phone pictures.)  I haven’t tried the technique on the green ones yet, but perhaps I will if I remember.

For next time I’m hoping for another Nurgle trio since I have poxwalker seven all done except for the base, and number eight is about half done. The plaguebearers are no problem. They paint up much more quickly since they don’t wear clothes or carry much around other than swords and the burden of their self-imposed accountancy of Nurgle’s Gifts throughout the universe. I imagine the musician and the standard-bearer will take some more effort though, once I turn my brush in their direction.

I’ve also added a small project to my queue painting up some old metal models I found in a game store bits box.  I scrounged almost enough for a little warband of sorts. Hoping to do some green stuff work on one of them this weekend.