Great Champion of Nurgle

Great Champion of Nurgle

Originally I saw this guy for sale popped in with some nuglings and a few bloodletters and picked him up, choosing him to be my Nurgle Champion. He didn't look like much to begin with and I didn't recognise him. Someone on the forum did.

"The weird-looking guy is Alakhai, Nepharite of Algaroth, from the Warzone/Mutant Chronicles line of games. Looks like his sword has broken off.

As soon as I got him in the post I soaked him and scrubbed him back, straightened his central horn, cut and filed out the brow, cut and filed the boot spurs, then greenstuffed the eye in place, altered the boots and patched the one which had a big hole in it.

For the missing hand, I cut up a spare orc plastic arm. the size was perfect. For the Great Flail, I used a plastic sceptre (from Diplo - I think) , cut the crucifix off and put on the chain from the Marauders set and the mace top from the Chaos Knight multi set.

A quick spray undercoat and leave him to dry.

This gave me time and the head-space to come up with a different way of painting him. Sometimes, when you get a painted model, it can be difficult to imagine a different colour scheme, so I thought about what the armour would be made of. I decided iron is far too common in my army already and this guy is a champion, so perhaps some other metal. Bronze! Yes, bronze.

I have had a lot of practice on other miniatures with doing rust - ferrous rust on iron, but bronze corrodes differently, due to the copper content, turning it green, turquoise and crumbly. Being a champion of Nurgle, everything decays and corrodes. I looked up many images of corroding bronze before I set to work on a completely new oxide challenge.

After I was reasonably satisfied with the result, I took to putting the above photo through photoshop to test some skin colours and pant/boot colours. After mucking about with colours slides and shades I went ahead with an approximation in paint.

Rusting up the Great Flail was no longer a challenge; it was just fun.

The gemstones I decided to use the new Citadel red wash to gleam them up, whilst also testing them on his creeping buboes. Also painted up his skull trophy as a Nurlge Death's Head. Nasty.

For the cloak I had an idea that it was going to be some heavy fabric used in drapes. Perhaps the Champion had looted them from a temple he had razed. I searched on Google Images for "old drapes" and saw a few horrid examples of some green/gold heavy material from the 70's that would even make the straightest of guys throw it away and hire an interior decorator. The drapes looked like they had never been washed in over 40 years. Perfect.

Family Photo to finish off.

Necromunda Gangs

I'll expand on the gangs at a later time, but let's kick it off with a few group photos.


House Delaque - Sump Piranhas

My first foray into Necromunda. I was enticed because of the small amount of models needed to play and the availability of other players who had gangs.

Bounty Hunters

OK, so one might be an assassin, or a drop-in Spyrer and one might be just Hive Scum, but I snagged these models and they have made their rounds many times. The assassin and yellow bounty hunter might be up for a repaint though. It's been a while.

Ratskins

A mish-mash of acquired models, some with dodgy paint jobs, all touched up. Just need to base them now to make them a little more interesting.

House Van Saar - UnderHive Rangers

Purchased in a single block from Forgeworld, I painted up these guys in the style of the Wasteland Rangers from Fallout 3. They can sorta double up as Arbites - and I have a few robo-hounds and a couple of Dreads to kit them out a bit.

The Wheel of Pain - War Altar of Chaos

A mostly home-built project, primarily made with wooden skewers, straws, wire and glue, this centrepiece is a real joy to bring to the table.

I started it off reasonable simple, and for every battle it was in, I added more victims to it. It has now become a thing of terror, covered in offal and wriggling with maggots. Stained with blood and excrement, this hideous altar of live offerings is the one thing to strike terror into the hearts and minds of even the bravest of warriors.

Edit: Updated the base with particle board and carved notches for the altar guards. I took up the suggestion of red clear, but couldn't get Tamiya, but got the citadel red clear instead. Definitely gives it a "fresher" feel and really bloddies it up. I can almost smell it from here. I also used the red clear for the base underneath the altar with some clear 2-part gloss poured n top to make it look like a lot of the blood and yuks have soaked through into the ground.

I finally finished off the last of the Heroquest Chaos models for the green part of the altar guard and this is - hooray! - the actual last of all the Heroquest models completed!

The next phase of this is the addition of the gallows arm and more victims.

Mortimer - Necromancer of Nurgle

Introducing my first Realm of Chaos Champion - Mortimer - Necromancer of Nurgle.

I think this model is an old citadel plastic Bright Wizard, but I cut the top of the staff and replaced it with a few skulls. Painted him up in his death-robe and rolled him up from the Realms of Chaos rulebooks. A nice level 15 wizard with a vampiric chaos sword. A fine start.

I would run many, many skirmishes with friends in 1998 and onwards; Mortimer not always winning, but more importantly, staying alive and using his warband to take the hits for him, including his never failing, trusted green crystal beastman. Summoning skeletons was one of his first moves on the field and always a great way to surprise the opponent!

Over the years he began to change, becoming fatter and fatter, balder and balder and more powerful. After a particularly savage battle, Nurgle himself decided to bless Mortimer by rotting off all the flesh from his face, thus creating a truly fearsome sight. Everyone would know to fear the Necromancer of Nurgle! 

Replacing his sword with the powerful Staff of Nurgle and creating Death Heads from his fallen enemies, Mortimer became very feared by anyone that stood against him.

Blessed again by Nurgle, Mortimer gained the ability to regenerate and a final gift from his deity was a high pitched, squeaky voice. Now he would shriek at his warband. The warband had become strong.

Mortimer finally met his death in the fearsome battle against the Dark Elves in 1989. See the battle report for details. Is it over? No. Not yet, for the champion belongs to Nurgle for a year and a day as an undead champion before he is allowed to rest in Oblivion.

Sculpey

Oh, so poor was I...

When I was a student I especially had very little money to spend on miniatures, yet desperate was I to join in on the games being run at the local hobby store.

There was only one thing to do. Make my own.

Hmmm - easier said than done. I had never modelled anything so small before and really had no idea how to go about it.

A few toothpicks, pins and some old dentists tools later I got to work on what I could afford. A block of Sculpey from the craft store.

It's almost shameful to post this, but what the heck. It's for posterity. I can afford some posterity, can't I?

Swamp Trolls

I built up the Sculpey just barely over these weird plastic featureless monster models someone threw out and then carefully baked them, cooled them and painted them. A terrible job, but trolls were neither available or affordable for me at the time, so these would do.

Much to my surprise, many of the people loved them, goofy and as fragile as they were and they sure saw their fair share of tabletop battles, (and still do).

The Giant 

You gotta be kidding me! I can't afford the GW giant! Shit, I can't even afford him now!

Enter the Sculpey giant. Based on a plastic football trophy, I moulded this guy, club, base and all. That's right. I didn't even have a plastic base. The ale barrel he carries is where the trophy was carrying a football.

Once again, to my surprise, when I busted this guy out years later at a 4 way orc and goblin vs skaven battle, everyone was amazed that I had made him myself. He is getting quite old now and the Sculpey is finally beginning to crack around his feet.

The Ogre

I based this guy around a plastic pink Power Ranger and used the dentist tool on him for a chainmaille effect.

Armed with a metallic painted, skewer mounted hammer of earplug, this is one ogre you don't wanna cross.

Occasionally, he would wear a metal painted upside-down suction cap stolen from one of those stupid "Baby-on-Board" signs hung from the back wind-shield of a car to give him a slightly Oriental look.

Father Nurgle

No, I couldn't afford the Nurgle metals either. This Nurgle Great Unclean One I slopped together right out of Sculpey and nothing else. Armed only with a paperclip and a plastic base, created an atrocity.
He used to look.... uh... better too. Years of being uncared for, banged around and covered in dust has left this guy neglected. Mebbe I'll give him some new paint and a bit of a fix-up.

Edit: A bit of a repaint, greenstuff horns and some wings with a bit of red clear too ooze him up a bit.

Beast of Nurgle

The metal Beast of Nurgle was a little weird, but I liked it. Sculpey to the rescue to sloppily recreate this slimey horror.

The Melties

Yeah, you guessed it - I couldn't even afford dwarves. This is before the age o' plastic mind you.

The thing about Sculpey is that you have to bake it. It isn't air hardening like greenstuff. The thing about baking is that it is random. Stuff begins to melt in seconds. Thus - The melties.

Anyway - along comes the plastic skeletons box some time later and all of a sudden I have good weapons for these guys that make them suck just a little less.

Strangely, and I really don't get this...but when I cautiously brought these guys to the battlefield to fill out my meagre army, they were welcomed with praise by the other players. Now, obviously they aren't terribly good, but maybe because I gave them what small life I could, somewhere, some people noticed. A little spark of life from me to them. Well, they sure fought as hard as any metal dwarf, I'll give them that!

The Fantasy Girls

Ice Elf Sorceress

The model here is the Dark Elf Sorceress from GW and I didn't mind the pointy headdress, but it lacked a little something. I therefore bect it into a different shape and inserted a bead which then determined much of the resulting colour scheme.

The staff was next to change, as I despised the stupid looking oversized skull, so I replaced it with another bead and just left it as a magical ice crystal.

I don't really collect dark elves, or any elves for that matter, but if it starts, she will be the one that starts it. The army of the Ice Elves.

Dancing Girl

This model I picked up in Mind Games in Sydney. It was such a lovely sculpt, I just had to paint it.

Perhaps one day I will have enough good models for a diorama I have in mind. This dancer will be in it.

The Female Flagellant

Can't quite remember where I picked up this model, but I'm going to hazard a guess it was also at Mind Games in Sydney. The pose in this model was too good to pass up and even though I forget the actual name of the sculpt, when I saw it I knew she was the perfect self-harmer to lead my crew of insane diseased flagellants. Yes, yes there will be a group photo when they are finally finished.

Beer Garden Beauty

A really nice and quite challenging model to paint from Impact! Miniatures. I had this model in my unpainted girls pile for way too long till the Painting Challenge went up on the Oldhammer forum to paint a non-Citadel or GW model in one week.

Gave me a chance to finish off those resin barrels too!

Good Ol' Hero Quest

Well, it was one of the games that was heaps of fun to play, had heaps of models and not a heap of rules.

I once ran a 4 board Hero Quest game with 12 people - all vying for a prize of a plaster sculpted, golden cup adorned Hero Quest trophy. Little did I realise how long it would take to finish - most people were still playing at 2.30am - but wow - what a cliff-hangar!

I ended up being given a game or two, or purchasing one from a thrift shop here and there. The models within started to grow and many of them have now made their way into armies.

Lets have a look into the glorious past shall we?

The Heroes

Goblins

Orcs

Chaos Warriors

 Fimir

Mummies, Skeletons and Zombies

The Chaos Sorcerer

Gargoyles

The Gargoyles, (being mostly terrible old bloodthirster models), were later repurposed

into cemetery gates once the undead army began to grow.