An Old Plague, Part 1

Games Workshop plague marine from the Dark Imperium boxed set
and a plasma gun upgrade of unknown source.

I didn't start working on my Death Guard when I started this blog — I'd already completed a handful of units. The first to get paint, of course, were a pair of heavy-weapons-toting plague marines. There's nothing really more Death Guard than a bunch of plague marines with big guns, so that's where I went first.

It helped that Dark Imperium loose models were relatively cheap on the secondhand market and that the Easy-to-Build Death Guard Plague Marine kit wasn't a painful buy — I snagged a bunch of marines, a few foetid bloat-drones and too many poxwalkers for way less than retail.

I ended up painting 14 plagues — 4 with bolters to fill out the mook requirements for two minimum squads, 2 champions with plasma, 4 plasma grunts and 4 blight launchers. Because non-champions must choose between plasma and blight, this setup will let me field two minimum squads with maximum firepower (3 plasma or 1 plasma and 2 blights). While plagues are almost hilariously resilient, their high price tag limits how useful they are on the table, even when they're counting as troops in a dedicated Death Guard list; they just don't bring a lot of firepower per point. They're all anvil, not striking hammer. Don't get me wrong, there's a place for that — it's just limited enough that I don't think I'll ever need to field more than 10 in anything but a joyously fluffy list.

Games Workshop's plague marines from Dark Imperium combined with
bits from its Putrid Blightkings kit and, at left, a mystery plasma weapon.

The biggest challenge in preparing these models was a simple one: Since these are all plagues from the Dark Imperium and Easy to Build Death Guard Plague Marine kits, they're all snap-together, single-pose models. That's great for quick assembly, but it's bad for battlefield immersion — there's a grand total of 10 of these sculpts, and they're so detailed that duplicates stand out. (That's compounded by the fact that those 10 unique sculpts feature painfully awkward weapon loadouts — too few blight launchers, too many power fists, etc. If you go stock, you'll end up fielding the same model four times if you use blight launchers — that's 40% of your force as identical models!) I ended up making a few small alterations to break up the repetition:

• I liberally used head swaps. Even with the monopose, easy-to-build figures, this tried-and-true approach was easy — GW clearly designed these guys to be cut up and repurposed. Head swaps are also nice because they're high-impact changes; a new head will have a drastic effect on a model's silhouette, as seen in the photo above. There aren't many other changes to those figures, but they read totally different than their stock counterparts.
• I snipped apart one of the plasma-bearing champions that comes in the Easy to Build kit to spread out the plasma weaponry — again, an easy conversion.
• Finally, I ripped out the square posts that held arms at specific angles and completely reposed the shoulder joints on a handful of the models. It's a simple touch, but one that can effectively hide the similarities between two models when combined with a head swap or some other trickery.

For the most part, I didn't use green stuff or any other putty to sculpt or hide details — I wanted these conversions to be simple so that I could get to painting (and fielding) these dudes as soon as possible. The only major exception was the addition of a crab claw to one of the champion models. I'd cut off his power fist, since these guys will only see melee on a bad day.

A plague marine champion from GW's Easy to Build Death Guard Plague Marine kit.
Its claw hand has been sculpted from green stuff, sand and wire.

When settling on a paint scheme for these guys, my guiding principles were basic:

1. It had to be simple and easily repeatable. Anything that would require careful blends was a no-go across 14 models.
2. It had to look Death Guard without slavishly copying the legion's core color scheme.
3. It needed to contain its own splashes of color — these guys are "only" troops, but they're iconic. I wanted them to pop on their own merits, rather than in relation to the army as a whole.

Early on, I knew I wanted ivory and green as my core colors. I also knew I'd be using red as a spot color; since green and red are complementary, I wanted to avoid similar complements in my primary paint scheme. My ivory naturally has some subtle orange/red (it's Golden High Flow Acrylic Titan Buff, spotted with GW's Druchii Violet shade and Privateer Press's Yellow ink, then hit with a few washes of GW's Agrax Earthshade. Earthshade is the primary pigment in the final effect, and it's a neutral-warm brown); that combination pushed me toward orange as a tertiary color. Each of these guys has their right shoulder pad layered with GW's Fuegan Orange several times to build up a muted brown-orange; I carried this orange theme through by hitting the trim with GW's Warplock Bronze layered with Agrax Earthshade. I applied the complementary red — and its resultant pop — to the various tentacles, sores, tongues and other gribbly bits. To provide some depth to the red, I used some layering: an undercoat of FW Flesh Tint, shaded with Secret Weapon Blue Wash, FW Purple Lake, and whatever bold red I have lying around (often Privateer Press' Khador Red Base or GW's Evil Sunz Scarlet); I then glazed it all with whatever medium red I have at hand (often GW's Khorne Red or PP's Skorne Red). Finally, I wanted a ghostly, swamp-light theme in the army, so I picked out censers, orbs and active plasma coils with sickly oranges and yellows — Wicked's Golden Yellow and PP's Sulfuric Yellow and Yellow Ink.

Dark Imperium plague marine, left, and Easy to Build Death Guard Plague Marine, right.
The Dark Imperium plague is stock, while the EtB plague has had two weapon swaps —
its left arm is an EtB champion's arm, and its right arm is the same EtB champion's plasma gun.
There's also some green stuff filler work.

The yellows were the original kernel of an idea for the army — I initially imagined a cadre of implacable marines marching forward in the face of withering enemy fire, their dim lights floating in a sea of darkness like will-o-wisps. (The name of my vectorium — Lux Larvalis — is manchild Latin for "ghostly light.")

While most of the models came out as "decent for tabletop," a few of them do a little better than that. My favorite plague marine — in fact, one of my top 3 favorite models in the army — is one of the plague marines.

A Dark Imperium plague marine equipped with a blight launcher from the Easy to Build Death Guard Plague Marine kit.

It's simple, but it's got a great sense of forward motion. (Most of this model is stock, by the way. The only conversion is a simple weapon swap of its left hand for a blight launcher.) Its steely gaze, its cool preparation of a blight grenade and the purposeful stride combine to elicit a real sense of menace. An excellent figure all around.