Chaos Decimator: Ready for Priming

I finally finished off the Decimator. I had no more flat surfaces to cover, so I had to stop.

Chaos Decimator. GW bits: Primaris Redemptor Dreadnought; Nurgling from unknown kit; cloth and torsos from Putrid Blightking kit; unknown Eldar weapons; flesh sacs and pipes from unknown monstrous Tyranid kit; Plaguebearer head, arm and icon; leg from Skeleton kit; monstrous fangs from unknown Tyranid kit; head and arm from Helbrute kit. Forge World bits: plate from Nurgle dreadnought; shoulderpads from Plague Marine upgrade kit. Privateer Press: skeletons from Cage Rager; back from unknown Trollblood kit. Kneadatite, chains, framing wire, framing nails, pill bottle, pumice grit and bells.

I'm only partly kidding: I had a lot of fun adding layers upon layers of junk onto this model, so I just kept going until it got difficult to do more.

Another Quick Aside

When I reviewed my collection and realized I had holes in it — as shown in A Tiny New Project and A Tiny Project Continues Apace — one of those holes was a barebones Chaos Lord. Volero Scalpondus, the head of Lux Larvalis, is a Chaos Lord on Palanquin of Nurgle; he's too big to really be a standard Chaos Lord, and I don't really want to use him in every single matchup, anyway.

In any case, I resolved on creating a quick-and-dirty Chaos Lord: Something horrific, but relatively simple.

I had a vision, and I started here:

Chaos Space Marine kit with Plague Marine Upgrade Kit pieces.

A Tiny Project Continues Apace

A little confession — while I have most of the strategic particulars of Lux Larvalis dead to rights (how many tanks, how many warriors, intelligence assets, etc.), I only have three characters sketched out to any degree. This guy is not one of them.

Chaos Sorcerer on Palanquin of Nurgle. GW pieces: head from Plague Marines kit; front torso from Putrid Blightkings kit; back from Tyranid Raveners kit; lower body from 3rd Edition Hive Tyrant; left arm from an unknown Ork kit; backpack from Chaos Space Marines kit; exhaust port from an unknown Ork kit; arm and staff from unknown kroot kit; power scythe head from Deathshroud Bodyguard kit. Forge World piece: Plague Marines Upgrade Kit shoulderpad. Wyrd piece: arm from Rail Workers from Rail Crew kit.

A lot of the creatures and forces of Chaos I put together start with an internal vision — some idea, usually inspired by some bits I have lying around. This piece came together from two items I've been tinkering with, one of which didn't make it to the final product: The body of the metal Hive Tyrant (The long tail on this guy) and some Forge World plague marine upgrade bits I've had lying around forever and a half (I went with the heftier blightking/new plague marine pieces instead for size reasons).

What I didn't start with was a backstory, a formal position in Lux Larvalis, or even a name.

Chaos Decimator, Part 4

"Unleeeeeash meeeee": Primaris Redemptor Dreadnought (GW) with Plaguebearer head and arm (GW),
Skeleton leg (GW), Putrid Blightking torso (GW), Cage Rager skeletons (Privateer Press), miscellaneous plate
from Nurgle Dreadnought (Forge World), and various Tyranid spikes/fangs (GW).

There's one last thing I want to do to this plaguebearer — I want to add a breathing mask to its mouth. I'm a little torn on how I'm going to do that; I'd like it to be clear plastic, which poses a half-a-dozen hurdles, but I'd settle for a green stuff mask. We'll see.

But there's more!

An Old Plague, Part 2

I'm mixed on poxwalkers. Yeah, I get that they're good (probably still decent even after GW toned them down), but ... like, zombies, man. They're a little played out. Still, I managed to accidentally my way into about 60 of them while picking up various Dark Imperium lots for the foetid bloat-drone. Since they were decent fodder at first, before Chaos cultists and plaguebearers got significant boosts from updated rules, I ended up fielding them a lot at the start of 8th Edition.

Long story short, I painted a full unit before moving onto my plaguebearers. It's likely going to be, say, 13% of an eternal shame that I finished them before I dug into my favorite one-eyed daemons. (That's almost a full e-shame, for those who count things like that.)

Poxwalkers from the Dark Imperium kit.

A Tiny New Project

While I stick closely to the core of my Nurgle Daemon lists — plaguebearers, plagueburst crawlers, foetid bloat-drones, and poxbringers — I often swap out various support pieces and leaders. One of the key pieces I go back and forth on a lot is Chaos Lord v. Chaos Sorcerer: The former offers decent accuracy buffs to all my artillery, while the latter offers a significant accuracy boost to a single model. (There's a signature Chaos Sorcerer ability called Warptime that would tilt the decision for most armies ... but I don't use it all that often: I don't run Mortarion, a giant model that really likes getting the massive movement bonus from the ability, and my daemon big bads don't need the speed since they fall from heaven like lightning ... and they're not legal targets for it anyway, natch.)

But I realized the other day that I had a hole in my collection: the palanquin-riding Chaos servants have the daemon keyword (and thus help Epidemius provide boosts to my entire army), but I didn't have a Chaos Sorcerer on Palanquin of Nurgle.

Well, Smite — the Sorcerer bread-and-butter shooting power — can kill things pretty good, and daemon killing power is what powers Epidemius. I set forth with half a dozen boxes full of bits to rectify my mistake.

Chaos sorcerer on palanquin of Nurglings. This kitbash includes: A head from the new Plague Marine kit (GW);
a torso front from the Putrid Blightkings kit (GW); a torso front from the Tyranid Ravener kit (GW); a backpack
from the Chaos Space Marines kit (GW); a bit of pipe from an unknown ork kit (GW); a drill arm from
Wyrd's rail worker (part of The Rail Crew kit); an arm from an unknown ork kit (GW); a rifle and arm from
an unknown kroot kit (GW); a power scythe from the Deathshroud Bodyguard kit (GW), and the tail of
a 3rd Edition Hive Tyrant kit (GW). There's also a classic metal Nurgling and just a smidge of a modern
plastic Nurgling (both GW) in the background.

Chaos Decimator, Part 3

I'm coming down the final stretch on my Chaos Decimator sculpting.

Decimator-in-progress. Bits catalog: GW — primaris redemptor dreadnought; putrid blightking torso;
Tyranid monstrous creature weapons; skulls kit; unknown eldar gun; Tyranid monstrous spines;
plaguebearer arm and head; PP — unknown trollblood kit.

You can see some of the progression here, with the biggest change being the putrid blightking torso hanging off the left leg. That's in the process of being converted into a grub or some other kind of disgusting Nurgle creation.