Category Archives: Warhammer Fantasy – 9th Age

Realm of Chaos – Nurgle’s Children 2018 #3: Trish Morrison’s Great Unclean One (1996-8) Painting Decemb-uary 2017-18: Part 5

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Trish Morrison's Great Unclean One of Nurgle (1996-8)

This post is doing double-duty. I’d mocked up a draft post for a couple of WIP shots from the same series I took last week, but I’ve been working on the Great Unclean one pretty constantly whenever I have some hobby time, so the model’s been changing apace from the shots I was going to post about.

Trish Morrison's Great Unclean One of Nurgle (1996-8)

I had also planned to post a more general Painting Decembuary update this weekend, but there’s only been one update from the participants regarding it in past week, a rather lovely dreadnought from Tinpotrevolutionary, (go check it out!) so given that, I’m making this post about my own model, and hold off until late next week for the wrap-up Decembuary post.

Trish Morrison's Great Unclean One of Nurgle (1996-8)

So the double duty is for my own Nurgle Daemon army build, and my own entry to Decembuary. You’ll notice the odd years up above. The model has 1996 carved into one foot, yet the model doesn’t show up until the 1998 Citadel catalogue, so my best guess is that it came out in late 1997. I could check old White Dwarves for the exact year/month, but ain’t nobody got time for dat right now.

Trish Morrison's Great Unclean One of Nurgle (1996-8)

The model is fucking busy. There are SO many little buboes, maggots, rot-worms, rents in the skin, pustules and whatnot, and I was determined to do a job on it that I’d be satisfied with – unlike my fast job on the original GUO that’s always bothered me a little (he’s getting renovated now with a new base). This meant no “wash and done” since I knew it’d just bother me later on.

Trish Morrison's Great Unclean One of Nurgle (1996-8)

Given that I really didn’t get much done in December at all because of what happened, I really thought I’d fail to get anything finished this year – let alone this guy, plus my overly-optimistic “stretch goals” of Mamon, maybe Cor’Bax, then onto completing Be’Lakor and maybe even the Marauder Giant. But yeah. Under the circumstances, I managed to finish this guy, and I’m happy with that.

Trish Morrison's Great Unclean One of Nurgle (1996-8)

Mounting him raised up on some slate has given his Flail of Skulls the effect of being sort-of swung behind him, off the ground. Anyone familiar with the original model will also notice that his tongue has been swapped out. I hated the original head-on-a-tongue sculpt – not conceptually, but the execution – so I replaced it entirely with a metal tentacle from the original Chaos Spawn model from the 1990s’. I bought a few of them just for the bits, back in the day.

Yeah. This guy was a lot of work, but I’m quite pleased with the final result.

Trish Morrison's Great Unclean One of Nurgle (1996-8)

Happy, but not satisfied. Therefore I’ve also restarted work on Mamon, and I’m hoping to have him completed before the end of the month. It’ll be close, either way. I also seem to have misplaced all of my Nurglings. Once they’re located, I’ll paint some up and place them on appropriate models – this model for example, will only get 2nd-gen metal Nurglings.

Oh, there’s now also THIS guy on the horizon. Not for awhile though, as I want to finish all my Nurgle metal and resin before starting on the plastic. When this guy becomes a thing, this old Great Unclean One will probably have to be demoted to Daemon Prince of Nurgle – just as the OG Realm of Chaos GUO will be once he’s rebased. The size discrepancy will just be way too much.

For now, I’m happy to let him lord it over his minions…

Citadel F3 Barbarians (Alan & Michael Perry, 1987)

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Ok, so only our friend here with the double-bladed axe “Gerloc” actually appears in the 1987 Citadel Journal under the F3 banner, but the other two models are both variants on “Gudrud”, who is on that same page, so I’m comfortable with placing these in the same vintage.  A further variant appears in the 1988 “Blue” catalogue under the Barbarian range, along with a Valkyrie-styled figure who I kept in a baggie alongside the boys here for many years. She’ll be painted alongside the Shieldmaidens and Valkyries from Foundry.

This first figure clearly draws heavy inspiration from Frank Frazetta and Boris Vallejo’s Conan artwork, as do so many barbarians from so many ranges.

This figure was a real motivator for me to learn new techniques for painting black hair, which (let’s face it) can be a right pain in the arse, since we don’t want it to look blue, or grey, or dark brown. Hopefully I’ve managed to pull it off (thanks, Duncan!) and if I haven’t – blame Duncan!

Gerloc here is pretty much also Conan. The spike from his helm was lost long ago, but at least I managed to keep the rest of him intact enough over the years.

I painted these three together, and tried for a slightly more tanned look to their skin than my usual Caucasian skin without appearing too ruddy or too orange. Not that you can really tell here with no models to compare the trio to.

Also on these three, I avoided painting on any tattoos, as I’d be temped to with any models that have a lot of muscular skin showing. Given that they’re old-school models that are a representation of a particular style of artwork (Frazetta, Vallejo) I left their bare skin bare of ink.

This third figure is actually not Conan! He looks and feels to me like a barbarian warlord. The stance, topknot of hair, helm under his arm and especially his cape really work together to suggest a veteran of many battles who now leads a party of warriors to battle.

Of course, his stature being that of a figure circa the late 1980’s means that he looks like a peon when stood next to a newer Barbarian from pretty much any company – let alone something like a Khorne Bloodbound (his spiritual successors), so he may well be relegated to veteran warrior or even a regular warrior/cannon fodder when/if he’s used in any games.

I was painting a similar Chronpia model alongside these guys, but he got bumped at the 11th hour so I could concentrate on this trio of truly old-school models. He’ll be done soon, and the four shall again be united!

Finally – a note and shout-out to those people whose Blogger/Blogspot blogs that I follow – especially Curis and The Responsible One. For whatever reason, either my computer, or my browser, or something is screwy and so when trying to leave a comment in Blogspot blogs using my WordPress account often (almost always) throws me into some weird loop of selecting my username and “publishing” my comment, but then it goes back to selecting my username, and then round and round we go. So I might not be commenting much – but I’m still out here watching and reading! And if you’re unfamiliar with their blogs, you should definitely check them out!