With 10th edition on the horizon, and where I’d given my Eldar plenty of recent love, I wanted to make sure that my Death Guard got a few reinforcements too. With the re-release of the blind bag Plague Marine boxes from Space Marine Heroes 3, I wanted to get my hands on a few of the fancy lads and bring in a few weapon / equipment options that were missing in my existing squads. I lucked out by finding a few in a lot of used Plague Marines on Tistaminis.com and got them at a steal.

As much as I like making my own Plague Marines with my own customizations and twists, like my Plague Sisters, I gotta give some love to the sculpts in the blind box set. Specifically, I feel like I have to call attention to the Marine-to-Nurgling ratio. Amongst these four Marines there are five-to-eight Nurglings depending on which of the gross little monsters on the bases and climbing over the Marines that actually count as Nurglings. That puts us at 1.25 Nurglings per guy on the low end of the scale, or 2 Nurglings per model on the high end. As a Death Guard player, could you really ask for anything better?

I capped things off with a repaint of my Plague Surgeon from the ground up, so that I can add him to some of my squads. He’s so detestable though that he doesn’t get a Nurgling. I added some Apothecary bits for flavor purposes and to let him stand apart a little, and I tried this time to make sure his paint scheme integrated more with the rest of my army – I think I can happily put him next to the Putrifier now as a character that fits right in.

While I don’t know how actively I’ll play Death Guard this edition, won’t be the last time I paint gross little green dudes by a long shot – I have a build coming up that’s going to integrate some more Nurglings in a fun, dynamic way. I’m very happy with how my Death Guard scheme and painting recipe has evolved over time, and I think if I had to pick out something I’m especially happy with it’s how the “stippling-but-not-stippling” effect works to give a distressed armor look. If I’m lucky I might eventually invest in the rest of the blind box set, but if these end up being the only pulls I get from the set I think I’d be satisfied with that.