Realm of Chaos – The Death Guard #3: Poxwalker #7 (Zomtober ’19) (Contrast Paint Experiment #12.2)

October 28, 2019 by Azazel

I’ve started the next batch of Poxwalkers – seven of them this time (I found a couple of baggies of Poxwalker bits, but not all of them until a week after assembly). Now I’d usual;ly hold off until I had, well, more than one model of this sort, but the thing is that the Zomtober 2019 challenge asks us to post up the undead fellas on the Sunday. Now, given that I’ve already had a Sunday post, but my timezone is +10, (+11 at the moment, because we’re on Daylight Savings now), so this post will go up early on my Monday morning, but still on Sunday for Western Europe, the UK and the US. So I’m calling that good. I’m typing this Sunday nighgt my time as I wait for the PVA on the flock to dry, so I can take this little orange bastard outside and photograph him, so I can then edit the photos, insert them into this post, and then set the timer for 6am my time…

So yeah, this is the only Zombie I got done in the last week, and I only managed that by concentrating on the one of them today and putting the other six aside while I worked on thsi one and a few Orks. Pity my Dreadtober, which is looking like a bleak non-finish at this point as this working week’s going to be punctuated by a 12 or 13-hour day on Wednesday. Yeah, break out the tiny violins, but it does mean there won’t be much more time to paint before the end of the month, and definately not enough time to finish something as involved as a Dreadnought…

Something I really like about a numbe ro fthese Poxwalker figures is that they manage to tell a bit of a story in their sculpt. This guy for example wearing a torn protective suit with a cannister and gauge hanging off it. I decided to enmhance it a little by showing exactly what was in the cannister with a bit of freehand, and how much was left (none!) with a touch of colour. It doesn’t really come across in the photos, but the yellow strips on his outfit are a flouro yellow, and I’ve tried to get a rubbery grey appearance to his boots, gloves and hood.

I’ll see, but I don’t know if I’ll manage to get any more Poxwalkers done in time for Zomtober, let alone the four Zombicide Abominations that I started or the Survivor/Zombvivor. They will, however, most likely be finished not long afterwards, and if I manage to complete anything else before the end of the month, I’ll get them posted up. I’ve also got a few more greenskins I’m close to completing for Orctober, so they might pip the Zombies to the post as I need to have 25 of them completed by the end of this year…

Realm of Chaos – The Death Guard #2: Poxwalkers #4-6 (Zomtober ’19) (Contrast Paint Experiment #12.1)

October 10, 2019 by Azazel

Here’s the other three of my initial six Poxwalkers. I completed these last night and so now these will be going up as the next part of my Zomtober 2019 pledge. Technically, the challenge asks participants to finish a model per week and get them posted up each Sunday. I’ve instead batched them in two sets of three, and so now with six, I feel I’ve participated nicely even if I don’t manage to get any more of these suckers completed.

These six have been done in the overall yellow-brown-ochre flesh scheme. The next batch of Poxwalkers I do will also be in the same overall look, and then once I get to the first set of duplicates, I’ll start to go down a different skin tone route, probably a little greenish.

And below, you can see the next few. There appear to still be some missing parts from my Poxwalkers from the Dark Imperium set, so there’s not quite the full set of them below. Not sure if I’ll actually manage to get any more models done in time for Zomtober – as much as I’d like to have a few more done for each week, I still haven’t finished a single goblinoid for my own Orctober Painting Challenge, nor the Dreadtober painting challenge!

Realm of Chaos – The Death Guard #1: Poxwalkers #1-3 (Zomtober ’19) (Contrast Paint Experiment #12)

October 6, 2019 by Azazel

And with this trio of figures, my force of modern Death Guard officially begins! Initiated as part of my Contrast Paint Experiment series after seeing and being inspired to get started on them by what Krautscientist did with his GW sample models, not to mention seeing painters like Wudugast and Ann pound them out for month after month – but even so, they kind of stalled a bit on the desk – I’d planned to finish these in August, then September as part of Squaddie September, but they missed both marks. Now, thanks to the Zomtober Painting Challenge over on Brummie’s Wargaming Blog, I’ve got the first three of my initial half-dozen of the suckers finished this afternoon. For those who are unaware, the Zomtober Challenge is to paint up a Zombie or a Survivor each week and have them posted up by the Sunday.

Thankfully, there appears to be enough flexibility to allow people like me who are more likely to get the zeds (or poxies) painted up in a single or pair of batches to participate as well as allow non-standard Zombies like these Poxwalkers to contribute. So I’ve been able to leverage that into some painted models. Of course, “Poxwalkers” and the new, “horny” design tweak is simply GW’s slight reworking of the previous “Plague Zombie” concept into something more trademark-friendly for their own purposes. So it’s all the same, pretty much.

On the Contrast Paint front, these models are pretty much perfect for the stuff – organic, mutated, discoloured, not-quite-right, and highly detailed. All factors that make the Contrast Paints work perfectly with them while being quite forgiving of the colours looking a bit off or improper here and there. It’s pretty much guaranteed that once the other half of the six I started are done, I’ll be starting on some more, regardles sof whether they get finished during Zomtober or not.

And yeah, since these things aren’t Nurgle Daemons but are instead part of the chaff from the Death Guard, they officially mark my beginning to paint the 40k-Mortal half of my Nurgle forces…

Realm of Chaos – Nurgle’s Children 2019 #22: Beast of Nurgle V1 (1990) Awesome August ’19

September 2, 2019 by Azazel

I finally finished it! I’ve had this model since it was released, back in 1990-1. It’s been glued together almost as long. One of the feel fell off, and was lost to time, so I had to recast it using Oyomaru (aka Blue Stuff) and Kneadatite (Greenstuff). Luckily, because Nurgle, it being slightly imperfect was fine. Despite the base feeling a little big (especially compared to the 40mm square it came with), I’ve gone for a 60mm round here rather than an oval for consistency with the new models that I’ll be adding later and mixing in.

The Main reasons this one took so long to get painted were the gaping big bloody seam down the middle of the model’s face and body, because metal (finally sorted with putty) – as well as no pressing need to paint it for anything (now rectified with that Nurgle Daemon Army I’ve been working on), and working out a scheme (just based it on the other models in the force). So now the bloody thing is finally done! Hurrah!

Here’s a nice little gathering of the old-school, original Oldhammer Realm of Chaos Nurgle Daemons. Well, except for the damned Nurglings! I guess I will have to paint them sooner rather than later after all!

I did also pick up three more of these a few years ago on eBay. And I have a V2 Beast that I bought just to use as tentacle bits who has since lost a few, so I’ve also got that in need of repairs. I also found a metal V3 beast in blister just the other day. (And I still regret passing on the pair of those I saw second-hand that one time). Once those five are assembled and painted though – all of my metal Nurgle Daemons will finally be done and I can allow myself to start on the newer plastic plastics while continuing to work through the last few resins.

Well, all the metal will be done except for the Nurglings… but they can be done on a more casual basis, surely?

Realm of Chaos – Nurgle’s Children 2019 #18: Plague Toads (again) (Forge World)

January 18, 2019 by Azazel

Today – Miniatures! Here’s the final three of my Plague Toads. This trio bringing me to nine painted ones. This batch being the “yellow” ones, following on from the “brown” ones and the “green” ones. And yeah, I know I need to do a new Nurgle army shot sometime soon.

Individual glamour shots of each of the three, though I skipped the profile and rear shots this time. Perhaps I went a bit conservative on the “glow” from their yellow-green eyes this time as well, but I think they still stand up decently.

You can see what I mean about it it here. It’s there, but it’s subtle. Perhaps too subtle to stand out on the tabletop.

Ah well. I’m just happy to finally have the last* of these done finally!

The nine of them, with their colour coding can be used as three distinct units of three, or they can all be put together to make up a mega-sized unit of nine Plague Toads!

*of course, I didn’t say anything about Pox Riders!

Realm of Chaos – Be’Lakor the Dark Master: The First Daemon Prince – Diabolical December ’18

December 30, 2018 by Azazel

Finally, Be’Lakor, the Dark Master is complete. I originally started this figure just over three years ago, as part of the original Painting December, which was a personal challenge that became the genesis for our monthly painting challenges. It’s been a rather epic battle to get up the motivation to complete him, due to all the tons of little fiddly bits, and basically, negative inertia towards the model. This is why the challenges exist. To motivate me to get models like this one completed. I based him on the rolled-edge 50mm round base, as a regular 60mm base seemed much too large, while the regular 50mm base seemed a bit.. I dunno. Boring? I didn’t have any official GW 50mm bases at the time (that I could find), so I only had those alternative ones that are a mm or two shorter. I also mounted him up on some cork to increase his height and make him look a little more imposing.

His colour scheme is different to the “official” GW one. It was inspired by a google search I did when trying to figure out how to paint him. It may have been inspired by Noridicus‘ paint scheme, over at Heresy-Online, but given that he talks about how he’s also seen this sort of scheme used, it might have been one of the models that inspired him that also inspired me. I dunno. I know that Nordicus’ model looks great, and I think my rendition also looks pretty good as well.

Finally, I thought a scale shot would be in order, as without it many of these larger models seem to be much smaller than they actually are – so here he is alongside those two bastions of model scale, a Space Marine and a Primaris Space Marine! So, in the end it took three years to get him painted. I’m not sure that it’s been worth the wait, but I’m very definitely happy to have gotten him completed finally!

…now there’s one model left from that original Painting December trio. The Marauder Giant, an otherwise wonderful model with a stupid patchwork tunic. There’s no way he’ll be completed for Dauntess/Diabolical December, but perhaps as a centrepiece model for January?

Realm of Chaos – Nurgle’s Children 2018 #17: WarZone 1st Edition Dark Legion Undead Legionnaires (as Poxwalkers): TG9511PB & TG9505PB (Unit-Ed October ’18) (Zom’tober?)

October 30, 2018 by Azazel

Yeah, another bloody mouthful of a post title. Maybe the worst yet. Still, there’s a lot of crossover with the content of this post.

Firstly, the models themselves. They’re 7 of the 8 models from the two old-school WarZone blisters, TG9505PB: Warzone Dark Legion Undead Legionnaires and TG9511PB: Warzone Dark Legion Undead Legionnaires. Clicking those links will take you to Prince August’s site where both are still available from original stock after all these years. Pretty good sci-fi zombies, to be quite honest. Old-school WarZone collectors often get in contact with me and ask if I have anything to sell so I like to point out when the figures on show are still available where possible. (If I ever do sell any, I’ll post them up here – I promise!)

The missing eighth of the models was actually painted a few years ago. Now, I haven’t played WarZone for many, many years at this point – but some of the models were real crackers (some were awful as well, no argument there!) These sci-fi zombies with guns were always pretty cool looking, but I never really had much of a use for them. Still, I did a bunch of Blessed Legionnaires when I gave the Nurgle Cult army a first-go-round back in 2015 or so. Need to rebase that Spawn of Demnogonis as well onto a proper 32mm base.

Obviously, this lot fits in with my own monthly challenge – that of Unit-Ed October. Because it’s a unit of models. A unit of 7 in fact – Nurgle’s (un)holy number! Coincidence, yes – but a fitting one. Paint scheme-wise, I painted 6 of them in the same Auscam as the main elements of my Imperial Guard force – the 11th Terror Australis Regiment. The 7th has his carapace armour painted in greys in a nod to his Warzone Bauhaus roots.

And finally, I found out via Rantingsfromunder’s blog that there’s a thing called Zom’tober in the minis blogging community – though it’s one of those Blgospot ones, and we know that WordPress and Blogspot are a pain in the arse when it comes to getting on with one another. Unfortunately, it seems that Zom’tober has some pretty specific rules about completion that rule me out participating …pretty much ever.

To take part you just need to paint one Zombie or Survivor (or more!) each week, in any scale you like, posting it to your blog by that week’s Sunday (we use Sunday’s as the end of each Zomtober week). So that means posting one or more newly painted Zombie or Survivor minis each week on or before the 7th, 14th, 21st and 28th this year.

Doesn’t really work for me. I finished 4 of these suckers at once 2 weekends ago, and then the final three last weekend – with the blood effects across all of them applied yesterday evening in two sittings. I mean, they’re zombies! Are there any other figures that lend themselves so well to batch painting?

So while they don’t exactly fit into the Nurgle Daemons army, I’m sure that nobody reasonable would complain about a bunch of poxwalkers thrown in there as well. I’ll have to figure out where I’ve stashed the Blessed Legionnaires and that other zombie and pool the lot of them together for the next time I do an “army in progress” type shot for the Nurglites.

Oh. And after taking the above photos, I found the 8th model. While he’s fully painted, he does need a bit of touch-up to get him to the point where he’ll nicely fit in with the rest of his cohort here. I might attempt to get him done before the month ends, so I can bump my monthly total up that little bit more towards the 31 I want to have done…

Edit – Got that last one touched up, retook three of the photos tonight (following night to original post) and replaced the original pics of three with the four.

Azazel's Bitz Box.

Painting, Modelling, Miniatures, 1:6, Games… Whatever else I find interesting.

Category Archives: Realm of Chaos