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.