Nurgle obliterators

Since the nurgle taint hasn't been all that present lately, with today's entry I'm going back to plagueville to bring you...nurgle obliterators! Check out the rest of the post to read the lenghty WIP description and find out why these guys are so special to me.

 
First of all, I'd like to say that I'm really happy with the way they turned out. I think it's my best work so far. I really feel like with these guys I leveled up a bit, mainly because there were quite a few new things that I tried, with which I'm like 90% satisfied. These novelties include: painting a metal model (!), using water effects, armor weathering (never actually did that on nontanks before :O ), painting soot stains on guns, using glaze, a slightly new way of painting flesh and last but not least, using the new GW barbed wire :)

Let's start from the beginning. This was my first encounter with metal miniatures and a tough one at that. Really, it took me like 2 weeks before I finally built up the willpower to sit down and actually assemble the models. Sure, the torso is just 2 parts but the fuc.....g guns, seriously. Metal is not really all that great to glue together so after some contemplation I just decided to green stuff all of it. I figured that it's the nurgle way to go :) Drilling barrels is also not so pleasant. HOWEVER, once all is said and done, the feel of the models when you hold them in your hand is unmatched by any of the plastic/resin kits. Their heft is just too good. That being said, I'm not really looking forward to painting any more metal things in the future.

As usual, I started off with a black primer. Then I decided to chose a different path than before and went with a knarloc green basecoat. I didn't want to have the same dark green outcome as with the first plague marines, so I figured it would lighten things up compared to going straight for catachan green. Nevertheless catachan green was next, followed by a generous dual wash of thraka green and the new athonian camoshade. The outcome was quite perfect because it was just slightly darker than pure catachan, so I had the fist blending layer cut out for me. Catachan it was. After that it was a few 50:50 mixes with loren forest and then with camo green and finally rotten flesh. I don't remember the exact number of blends but it was roughly 6-7. Lastly, I took a deep breath and applied the new green glaze from GW. I must say that it smoothed out any rough highlights perfectly. I was actually quite stunned by how awesome the effect was.

Once the armor was complete, I started working on the flesh. Those large flesh parts were done with my old technique, namely doing dark flesh base, then dwarf flesh layer, ogryn flesh wash and elf flesh highlights. The way flesh is built on this model is just perfect for drybrushing so I went ahead and did just that. Simple stuff really, but so much coverage that it really took a lot of time :)

After the flesh, came the brass parts. At first I was thinking about going full silver (rusted) but decided that it would come out too dull and monotone. Brass it was. Tin bitz followed by a badab black wash and then 50:50 mix of tin bitz and burnished gold for highlights. Silver parts where so standard and straightforward that I'm not even gonna go into details :)

Weapons were next. Unlike the terminators and berzerkers, this time, I didn't have a huge batch of models so I decided that I'll try my best with weapons and actually give them some color instead of the classic, metal look. Bolters were pretty straightforward with scab red base, light badab black wash, 50:50 scab/blood red highlights followed by pure blood red finish. I chose red not only because it's a popular bolter color but mainly to get some contrast to the overwhelming green. Then I did some freehand yellow stripes on the chain weapons (also with highlights) and finally did the soot stains on big gunz by first drybrushing tin bitz and then pure chaos black up to halfway of the previous layer.
 
Finally the details. Bone parts were done with a tried combo of kommando khaki + devlan mud + bleached bone; rivets in silver. I also did the gem/visor thingies above the heads with the classic 3 layer blend from black to bright red with a white dot. Then I decided to finally build the courage to potentially totally screw up the paintjob and do weathering. Simple black lines with highlights but I've never actually done that before on any of the "footsoldiers" - only on the 2 tanks I've done so far. The reason I was so scared is that on a model like this, where you have 6-7 blended layers of highlights, you screw up with those black lines and there is no going back :( That's the main reason I held back before. This time, I manned up though and it turned out ok. Last touch was some nurgle like rust done with pigments which I applied by simply dabbing them with a dry brush. The matt varnish will hold it in place, once I spray it on.

Bases. Those were actually a big problem because of 2 things. First of all the models are quite heavy so you need to stick them firmly to the base. Second obstacle is the way they are posed. If I put them flat out on the base they would be tilted to the front so much, that most of the details would simply be invisible. Therefore, I had to think up a way of adding some "stumps" underneath the left leg to raise them up a bit. On top of that I really wanted to use the water effect to make a nurgly slime pit as well as utilize the newly aquired barbed wire. You don't have the space to use them both on one base and not have it too clustered + I thought that duplicating bases would be dull so in the end I did one with the slime pit and one with barbed wire. I dug into my bits box, chose some suitable heads to dunk into the pool and a spare vehicle ornament piece to serve as a frame for the barbed wire.

Making 2 bases took 2 evenings :) On the first evening I sculpted the cork to an appropriate shape, glued it onto the bases, cleaned up the plastic accesories from mould lines, poured the water effect paste into the pit and dunked the heads. Once that dried, on the second evening, I primed it all black and started painting. Rock/rubble parts where first heavily drybrushed with charadon granite, followed by a light coat of chainmail and mithril silver highlitghts. Slime pit was done similar to the armor so catachan green base, a few 50:50 mixes with camo green and finally pure camo green and rotten flesh highlights. The space marine helmet was a straightforward blue paint job (again, contrast color) but the other head was done a bit differently. Dwarf flesh basecoat followed by ogryn flesh wash, kommando khaki (!) layer and some elf flesh highlights. The reason I used khaki instead of pure elf flesh was because I wanted to get a "deadish" look and figured that this color will tone down the "lifelikeness" of dwarf+elf flesh.

The second base was done in pretty much the same way except for the ornament. Here I went with scorched brown base and dabbed scab red + blood red + blazing orange randomly with a sponge. Afterwards I dabbed some chainmail, also with a sponge. When that was complete, I wrapped the barbed wire around it, primed it black, painted chainmail + badab black wash + mithril silver highlights and to top it off, dabbed some rust pigment with dry brush, the same way as I did on the armor. Before I attached it to the base, the last thing left to do was to do the ground itself. Like with my previous models, I went with the new GW texture paint - armageddon dust, followed by devlan mud wash and bleached bone drybrush highlight.

Finally, I decided to once again use green stuff, in order to attach the models to the bases. Same goes for the ornament. Gluing it was pointless because the barbed wire made the surface so uneven that it pretty much lost all good "attachment points". Right now this setup doesn't feel too firm but I guess the GS hasn't solidified fully yet. Anyway, my plan is that even if it breaks off at some point, I'll at least have an even surface to apply glue to because right now it was next to impossible. Final touch was painting the rim of the bases with calthan brown and adding some static grass. Voila!

I must say this was a great project. Quite a bit of thought and planning, lots of new stuff, and a few risks to spice things up. In the end, I'm very pleased with the outcome. Next up will be the newly acquired urban barricades and then the new starter set! (chaos first obviously :) but I'm pretty sure I'll end up painting the whole thing to see how DA pan out on the battlefield.