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

Be'Lakor the Dark Master: The First Daemon Prince

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.

Be'Lakor the Dark Master: The First Daemon Prince

Be'Lakor the Dark Master: The First Daemon Prince

Be'Lakor the Dark Master: The First Daemon Prince

Be'Lakor the Dark Master: The First Daemon Prince

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.

Be'Lakor the Dark Master: The First Daemon Prince

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?)

TG9511PB: Warzone Dark Legion Undead Legionnaires, TG9505PB: Warzone Dark Legion Undead Legionnaires, Poxwalkers

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!)

TG9511PB: Warzone Dark Legion Undead Legionnaires, Poxwalkers

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.

TG9511PB: Warzone Dark Legion Undead Legionnaires, Poxwalkers

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.

TG9505PB: Warzone Dark Legion Undead Legionnaires, Poxwalkers

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?

TG9505PB: Warzone Dark Legion Undead Legionnaires, Poxwalkers

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.