A Fistful of Buboes

I said that last battle report had inspired me to paint some Death Guard!

These putrescent lads are a mix of the easy-to-build and Dark Imperium kits. They've actually been built and primed for more than a year (longtime readers may have spotted them in early Black Legion battle reports - keeping behind the painted minis).

As I'm currently in the mood to paint whatever takes my fancy, I grabbed this squad from the painting queue, as I really wanted to try out the 'overbrushing' technique from the Deployment Zone tutorials.

It's basically like drybrushing, but you start with more paint on the brush over a black undercoat, essentially leaving the dark areas in shadow as you work up the colours, with less paint each time, until you're properly drybrushing (the tutorial explains it well, and it's worth a look).

Really effective for armour - and quick too. I got through all seven on them in just over half an hour!

I went with a really orange metal trim, to show rusted decay and also to differentiate from the gold of my other traitor legions. Screaming Bell looked extreme, but it calmed down a bit with a wash.

• Armour: Death World Forest overbrush, Nurgling Green overbrush, Zandri Dust drybrush, Althonian Camoshade wash
• Armour trim: Screaming Bell, Agrax Earthshade wash
• Weapons: Mourngfang brown, Agrax Earthshade wash
• Metal: Leadbelcher, Agrax Earthshade wash, Typhus Corrosion wash, Reza Rust drybrush
• Mutated flesh: Screamer Pink, Agrax Earthshade wash, Reikland Flesh highlights
• Horns: Dryad Bark, Zandri Dust drybrush
• Buboes: Ulthuan Grey, Lamenter's Yellow glaze
• Nurgle's Rot effects

Once the armour was down, the rest wasn't pretty straightforward. There's a lot of expected bits and bobs to paint, so it's not a quick as Primaris marines, but the whole thing is meant to be a mess - so you can't go wrong!

Naturally, I couldn't build these without going off-script. I used the extra plasma gun from the champion's backpack to make this guy into a second plasma gunner - holding it by the stock, just like a Coldstream Guard!

The champion got another head swap, since this is may favourite Plague Marine head, so I thought it deserved it.

And that's the squad. Pretty quick, very enjoyable, and if I wasn't flitting everywhere like a mad hobby butterfly, I'm sure I'd have a Death Guard army done in no time!