warhammer 40k – Twitchy Bristles

Plague Surgeon and Noxious Blightbringer

After writing last week’s battle report, I realized I’d missed a few essential characters in my Death Guard army when I did up my galleries – sort of! They showed up in the background of some of the other pictures but I wanted to give them a dedicated spot of their own to shine. They’re two of my favorite miniature designs in the Death Guard line – though all of the recent Death Guard Elite characters are pretty great in that regard.

Pictured: Nurglings, still being my favorite part of painting Death Guard.

And now with my whole batch posted, I find myself thinking about what I’m going to do with the next batch, once my Masters’ is done and once I have more free time on my hands. As it stands I have the Death Guard half of a Know No Fear starter still needing painting (along with a few fun other models), and as good as my first “batch” has turned out I want my next Plague Marines to stand out even more.

Pictured: My typical Death Guard character lineup.

As much as I like the color scheme that I went with generally and the rust effects, I think my next batch is going to emphasize a more Horus Heresy color scheme, where armor is visible, and I also think I’m going to try and switch up the brown color I used for cloth. It blends too much with the other colors, and when I’ve seen people go for violet or red-colored cloaks it looks like it pops much better. Maybe something like a wine-red? We’ll see.

Sinister, hooded figures, Plague Surgeons drift through the mayhem of battle like ghoulish spectres of death. They were once Death Guard Apothecaries who brought healing to those who could be saved, and absolution to those who could not. Damnation transformed their order, rendering them the dark antithesis of what they once were.

Crusade Continues – Mistakes Were Made!

I’ve been playing Eldar for a long time – maybe a little too long! Taking my Death Guard out for a spin over the last couple Crusade games with KinpatsuSamurai has been a blast, but it’s definitely come with a sharp, blight-ridden learning curve. The first game against the Sisters of Battle was a train wreck – pun intended – with my Thomas the Chaos Rhino and Plague Marines all being bogged down in Repentia Sisters while the Sisters’ Immolator picked off cherished Nurgly characters.

Pictured: “Thomas had never heard of such bullsh*t before.”

I think in some ways I learned more in the second game, on a much more open board, against the Death Watch. Compared to Eldar, I definitely need to be more conscious of movement limitations, and I need a solid “delivery method” for my heavy hitters. KinpatsuSamurai won this one by a pretty wide margin, but the final melee between the Death Watch and my Biologus Putrifier and Foul Blightspawn was – pun once again intended – a blast.

Pictured: Two Elite Death Guard characters, soon reduced thereafter to mist and bone chips.

As always, Noble Miniatures in Paradise, just outside of St. John’s, was a fantastic location for the games and the setup for both games was great. I’d like to extend a thanks and a shout-out to KinpatsuSamurai for the awesome match, and for doing a battle report of his own on the second game, which is hosted on the Rolling Intentions website. They’re a group of awesome people writing on the tabletop scene in my neck of the woods, and definitely worth checking out!

The Death Guard on Castiel thought they had found hosts for their innumerable plagues, and passengers for their dreams of a planetary railway industry. Instead, they found a thrashing at the hands of the Adeptas Sororitas and the Death Watch. They will return – the Death Guard are nothing if not disgustingly resilient.

Preview: Taste the Rainbow Cannon!

This is a model I’ve poured a lot of effort into over the last month – originally I was going to build it after I finished writing my Masters’ research project as a reward, but then a local painting contest came up and I thought it would be a great chance to get some local exposure for my work. The contest is part of the Sci-Fi @ Home convention, based out of St. John’s. I’ll have a proper gallery done up soon, but in the meantime, here’s the video that I sent in as a demo of the lighting system!

Pictured: The lighting demo for my Eldar Fire Prism, in Craftworld Ulthwe colors.

(www.youtube.com/watch?v=67FDkVV4CgY if you can’t see the embed.)

Thrilled to get my name out there as a painter, and I’m excited to run this in my Eldar army soon! Full gallery on this coming next week!

It lives! Lighting test for my Fire Prism

Just a short, sweet update for today. I’m still hard at work on my thesis and won’t have the chance to do any major hobbying for a while. But I did have time to do this: (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=67FDkVV4CgY if you can’t access the embed)

Pictured: Left to right, the engine, prism cannon, and cockpit lights.

The lights and the battery pack and other accessories were all bought via https://evandesigns.com/, and they were relatively easy to put together (even for someone with no real knowledge of electronics, wiring, circuits, etc.) The shipping was relatively quick and to be honest I might pick up more lighting sets from them in the future if I light other 40K vehicles.

My plan is to use the blue lights for the engines, the four white lights for the two cockpits, and the color-changing LED to give my Fire Prism a bright, shiny rainbow cannon. There’s a local convention doing a miniature painting contest this month, so if I can work a little more efficiently on my thesis and free up some spare time this might be the right time to bring this to life.

Lord Felthius and the Tainted Cohort

Pictured, Lord Felthius – a Lord of Contagion model with a lot of personality.

With Games Workshop recently removing most of the line of Easy to Build kits introduced in 8th edition, I’m glad that I got a hold of these models when I did! I hadn’t done much in terminator-sized models up to this point and initially I found the sheer number of details on these a little daunting, but each of the models in this set ended up looking really distinct with their own individual presence and personality.

Pictured, my favorite part of painting Death Guard – the Nurglings!

With recent Power Level updates I’m not altogether sure the Tainted Cohort can be fielded on its own anymore, which means it might be worth picking up the regular Blightlord Terminators at some point, but even once I do I think I’m going to find excuses to use these models as part of that squad because they just look so imposing. And, as always, I love Nurglings.

The superhuman frame of a Space Marine can survive more mutations than any other mortal could bear. Heretic Astartes become marked by mutations, such as tentacles or bestial visages. Over time, the corruptions grow. Yet time moves strangely within regions that are awash with the unnatural energies of the warp.

Eldrad Ulthran

*Although many Aeldari seers sensed the nascent presence of Ynnead in the infinity circuits, it was Eldrad who put into motion a daring ploy to awaken the slumbering God of the Dead.*

With playing Ulthwe since I got back into 40k and painting, having a psyker HQ in my line-up has been the bread-and-butter of my lists, and this is especially the case with Eldrad Ulthran later in 8th edition and early so far in 9th. With the new Crusade campaign I’m in I wanted to have a nice, shiny new Farseer for the tabletop and so I took a crack at painting the former High Farseer again.

Pictured, a Farseer painted a year ago, left, and the recently-finished Eldrad for comparison.

I’m thrilled with how the model came together – I used a combination of some of my own methods for the gems and cloth and some of the recommended colors and placement from one of the old Warhammer TV tutorials (praise be unto Duncan and his two thin coats). This is another model where I feel like the improvement I’ve made in the last couple years really shows, and makes me glad that I took another shot at this.

Eldrad Ulthran was once chief among the Farseers of Ulthwe. Eldrad has lived for over ten thousand years, and has successfully guided his people among the twisting paths of fate since the Fall, and throughout the rise of the Imperium.

Embarking on my 9th Edition Crusade

Pictured, 25 PL of my Eldar, taking on the Deathwatch after exiting their landing craft.

I’ve wanted to do narrative-style play in Warhammer 40K for a long time, so when a couple of friends of mine wanted to start up a Crusade game and came up with a strange new world for us to fight over, I couldn’t have been more thrilled. I packed up my Eldar, and a friend of mine packed up their Deathwatch, and we went to our FLGS – Noble Miniatures in Paradise, Newfoundland – to kick things off.

Pictured: The Eldar take some calculated risks, but boy are they bad at math.

I brought a squad of Storm Guardians with fusion guns, my Howling Banshees, Jain Zar, and a Falcon transport and we went up against a squad of Primaris Intercessors, a Redemptor Dreadnought, a Primaris Captain in Gravis Armour, and an Inquisitor. The dreadnought was definitely the target that gave me the hardest time, but in the end my space elves recovered most of the supplies from their crashed cruiser’s debris and escaped.

Pictured, my Guardians defending an objective (and also coming to space elf Jesus.)

There were definitely some lessons learned this game but the fusion guns worked brilliantly, and I think I’m getting better at playing my Banshees to their strengths. Looking forward to switching my roster up a little for the next Eldar game, and looking forward to debut my Death Guard on the tabletop sometime soon, too, in this campaign. As always, I can’t say enough good things about Noble Miniatures and about their table setups. They’re a phenomenal shop and made for some great pictures, and a great starting point for our Crusade.

Rattled from their escape pods and landing craft, the crew of the Sunstalker retrieved most – though not all of their supplies from the drop site. Their good fortune in reaching a habitable world is befouled by having reached one inhabited by the Deathwatch.

Crusade Upgrades!

Pictured: My “Crusade” Howling Banshees with updated runes, bases and power swords.

Recently with my ninth edition handbook I picked up one of the Crusade journal; a narrative-style campaign in 40K has been on my to-do list for a long time, and since I’m lucky enough to have a few friends locally interested in the same thing I’m giving it a whirl. I hope to post and chat about different games that I’ve played and show a few battle reports on the site, but before getting too carried away I also decided that some of my existing models needed a little more love before hitting the tabletop.

Pictured, my old Farseer model vs. Eldrad Ulthran, playing the part of my Crusade Farseer.

Not that I always play favorites, but if I did they’d be Jain Zar, my Banshees, my Wave Serpent, and my psykers, so those are some of the models I either redid from scratch or refitted. Guy from Midwinter Minis has an awesome tutorial (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4gNfrCS263s) for using nail flakes and I tried to apply this to all of my power swords, which gave them a really nice new glimmering effect under natural light.

Pictured, my Wave Serpent post-upgrades with a higher base. Vanes make a big difference!

All in all I think I’m ready for this campaign now and ready for my Eldar to make a splash on the tabletop. Eldrad’s going to be getting a gallery of his own in the next while, too, and I have some other galleries (and battle reports) planned over the next while too. Still going to be slow going till the thesis is done but I’m pretty excited with where painting and playing are going from here!

Before, After, and Next Steps

Pictured, Guardian from 2018 vs. Storm Guardian from 2020.

Felt like I needed a win today, so I’m posting something fun. When I started painting Warhammer again back in 2018 I started with a handful of Guardians, Howling Banshees, and psykers, and after a couple of years I thought it would be neat to compare some of the first models I did with the models I’ve been painting more recently.

Pictured, Howling Banshee from 2018 vs. Howling Banshee from 2020.

I’m happy to say that I think I’ve made strides as far as my painting goes – the more recent colors pop better and I think I’m getting better at picking contrasting colors that look good together. More than that, though, using occasional resin bases, kitbashing, and my basing have all moved a little out of my original comfort zone and I’m excited to see what kind of improvements I’ll have made in another two years’ time.

Lastly, I want to add that because I’m working on a thesis right now and moving into “crunch” time I’m likely not going to be uploading much over the next month or so. Hoping to focus on that for a while and hopefully come back to painting refreshed – I have a few Eldar and Death Guard projects primed and ready to paint and a new “mystery” army I’m excited to build too.

Thanks for the support and views, and see you on the other side!

Myphitic Blight-Haulers

Pictured, 100 points’ worth of teeth and heavy weapons.

These are probably one of my favorite Death Guard models, and these demonic little roombas have carried the team so far in test games I’ve done with my Death Guard army for 9th. I got one of these from a friend as a gift a while back and picked up two more to complete the set. Really looking forward to busting these out for the Crusade games that me and local friends are going to be doing soon.

Pictured, the whole squad – since running them in threes gets a juicy BS and WS bonus.

I did these up in the same style as all of my other Death Guard, with magnets for transport and for securing them to the bases. I’m really happy with how the rust effects turned out on the copper, and how the colors blend together!