Games We Play

Monday, 6 January 2020

A Plague Marine on both your houses


Stylus has been bugging me for a while to get some pics of my Death Guard up. I painted some of these nearly a year ago and finished most in time for Woffboot in May, but I've only just got round to taking some pics with some decent lighting, so here they are.

Starting off with a basic Plague Marine champion:


This guy just has a bolter and plaguesword and leads a regular squad of marines:


I wish now I'd followed Stylus's idea of re-purposing this model as a character, but in the meantime he leads my close combat squad:

Four of these guys are magnetised and can swap between second plague knives, bubotic axes or bolters:



This champion leads a squad with multiple plasma guns:

Here are the special weapon marines:



The first Plague Marines I painted used the "standard" method of Death Guard Green with an Agrax Earthshade wash then highlighted up, but it ended up much too clean and bright for my tastes. After a bit of googling, I found this method, which I love:

- Base coats are Death Guard Green, Leadbelcher, Rakarth Flesh (both horns and fleshy bits - they're distinguished later on), Retributer Armour with various bits of Screamer Pink, Naggaroth Night and Mephiston Red.
- Everything gets a wash of Nuln Oil, then, when that's dry everything gets Agrax Earthshade. When that's dry everything gets Seraphim Sepia. This really brings out a nasty putrid yellowy-green in the armour and adds a rusty tone to the metal.
- Fleshy areas get a wash of Carroburg Crimson.
- Highlights are the same base colours initially (but only a little to avoid going to bright again) followed by "normal" highlights for the green armour of Elysian Green and Ogryn Camo.
- The bases are a layer of sand on PVA glue followed by a dip into rough sawdust. I used Waargh Flesh as the base colour for the leaves to avoid it being too similar to the armour tones.

More posts to come imminently with the rest of the core army...


6 comments:

  1. I love the darker Deathguard green look, I enjoyed painting three of these the GW way, but yes they were quite 'cartoony' bright.

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  2. Sterling work! Great to see them closer up, they're very good!

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    1. Cheers Kraken - it's a bit like your scenery: when you gave me a video tour of the battlefield last time I was blown away even though I'd seen individual pieces on this blog and the whole thing from a distance on Skype.

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  3. Lovely stuff. That's a cracking look for the Death Guard - the multiple washes work well.

    Glad you pulled your finger out (before it rotted off) and posted them!

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    1. Thanks, and sorry for taking so long - you'll have spotted that I've started drafting other posts and will send those out in due course. The main barrier will be thinking up a punning title.

      The multiple washes really do bring out the "worst" of some lovely sculpts.

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