Budgethammer for Bile

Month 2 of Hobbypocalypse 3 rolls around, and it's back to my favourite Chaos Space Marine warband.

Let the Bile flow!

Fabius Bile's Consortium is always recruiting fresh apothecaries, and I was in need of a new Exalted Champion since the rules insisted they all have to carry axes and combi-meltas (Chaos loves standardisation, I guess).

I picked up a Plague Surgeon and swapped around his weapon army, backpack and slung on a combi-melta. I now have a Nurgle-aligned apothecary, ready to exalt the troops to excellence (any kind of aura-buff is useful with the Master Is Watching stratagem).

And that was the last model that I had to buy, since the rest of this month was foraged. 

Starting with the squad of Chosen: I wanted them to have human-skin apothecary garb, like the boss, so I picked up a set of Dark Angels-style robed bodies from Kromlech and kitted them out with spares from the new Chosen sprue.

There's plenty of options for the Chosen, but I think boltguns and accursed weapons are a good way to go for the most part. I'm also very much in favour of amalgamating all the power swords/mauls/axes/claws into a single statline. No-one needs that level of admin in a squad.

Although I clearly couldn't make things too easy for myself and threw in a power fist and plasma pistol, just for a bit of variety.

I'm going to try out these guys as Mark of Slaanesh (the Plague Surgeon's backpack will be their icon), since they're the guys that will be most likely to congregate around Fabius Bile, and the combat bonuses will suit their style (so would a Rhino, mind you, but I've painted enough of those).

Standard paint scheme for these guys, although this was a particularly frustrating paint job. Whether my mojo was off, or there was something in the resin bodies, but they never seemed to look right until the very end. But in the end, we got there.

• Armour: Wraithbone base, Seraphim Sepia wash, Bleached Bone drybrush
• Gold: Retributor Armour base, Agrax Earthshade wash, Golden Griffin drybrush
• Flesh: Bugman's Flesh, Reikland Fleshshade, Kislev Flesh layers
• Red claws: Khorne Red base, Nuln Oil wash
• Robes: Wraithbone base, Gulliman Flesh contrast, Agrax Earthshade wash

And now for the star of the show - a Daemon Prince!

Being an army filled with daemonic astartes, I thought I had to add one of the big fellas (even if a superior model was released at the same time - which happens a lot with me). A Slaanesh Daemon Prince was the only one missing from my roster, which perfectly suits Fabius Bile.

This one was constructed from spare daemon prince pieces from my bitz box, with the back part of his torso being a greenstuff mould (what we did in the days before 3D printers). The head was a spare from Magnus the Red (looking suitable statuesque and arrogant), the lower half was a toy snake that I'd sawed in half, with a couple of Tzeentch Acolyte shields (with the symbols filed off) to hide the join.

The complete the effect of him being an artificial construct (I reckon he's been Frankensteined in Fabius' laboratories, as much as summoned from the Warp), I added cables here and there.

I painted him Grey Seer, with Apothecary White and Ulthuan Grey highlights - that got me the Slaanesh look, but he was looking a bit washed-out. So I tried a wet blend on the wings with Carroburg Crimson and Doomfire Magenta (adding Lahmian Medium to keep everything blending).

The snake half was Sigvald Burgundy contrast - one of the new range and a lovely one to use. The usual metal effects, some heavy drybrushing on the sword (it looks worse on camera), and I was done!

A healthy new chunk of reinforcements for the Creations of Bile (although I have more, of course I do), and just in time to lead my army in Weekend at Burnie's 4!