40K Death Guard Army: More devotees to join the cult of Nurgle. More Chaos Cultists…

Ok, so these lot are new editions to my cultist units, and a mixed lot they are. all the ones you can see here are virtually kitbashed from a variety of parts and models from all different companies to fit with the ones I already have. You might recall that my existing cultists are the trencher models from CP Models range, and as such those models have a sort of uniformity with the whole WW1 scifi vibe.

Wanting to continue with something similar, but add in some random chaotic elements for good measure, so I got hold of a load of bits and part sprues from some sellers on Ebay and got to work cobbling together new weirdos for the cult.

These first lot are the combination of the now out of production sci-fi germans plastic kit (sorry, can’t remember the company who made them) and some Gripping Beast Saracen warriors for the bodies. I only had the heads, arms and backpacks to work with from the German troopers, but wanted the look of greatcoats, so combining the two, I think worked well, and fitted with what troops I already had. I do wish I had more, but since they are cultists, I don’t mind too much since they are supposed to be corrupted planetary defense troop types, that had turned to chaos.

This bunch are where we get into more mix and match territory, kinda like total mental freaks from the civilian side rather than military. These were made from a whole variety of different parts. Some old plastic Warhammer fantasy empire models, WW2 Germans, the sci-fi Germans for their heads, Chaos marauders with the flails, and odds and sods from whatever I could find in my bits. They still fit the look I wanted since their faces are covered in gas mask type breathers, and are scabby enough to fit right in.

These three consist of the first being again like the previous, a mix of said bits from all sorts of bits, while the standard bearer and the end one were from resin figures I got from Curtis at Ramshackle Games. These were miscasts and broken, so I got to work repairing and adding to them to fit the army. the banner was made from Milliput and then painted up with a suitable Death Guard cult pattern that will be present in any additional cult iconography and vehicles (and trust me, I plan on making a proxy Rhino or vehicle dedicated and crewed by cult members with that colour scheme)

So, here is the entire lot so far. This isn’t all my cultists by far, I think I have at least 40 other models I could add, although I have none of them finished. I may save some of them for my proposed Thousand Sons cultists as they might be a better fit there (robed nutters much like the old Necromunda Cawdor gangers in style) and for sure I’ll be adding a whole box of the Mantic Plague zombies I have to act as either cultists, or proto-poxwalkers sort of like a precursor to what will eventually happen to cult members, they are just fodder after all, aren’t they?

I’ll be back later with more stuff, probably with my Assault Drill or maybe something else…

40K Death Guard Army: Brother Fingaz enters the fray.

Back with more from my horde of Nurgle’s finest. This time I’m going to show you one of my personalities in the army, someone who I’m calling “Brother Fingaz”.

Brother Fingaz is a big and tall fellow (80mm from bottom of the base) and some of you miniature connoisseurs will recognise the model from CMON’s boardgame “7 Sins” Apocalypse expansion, which I acquired at a bargain price for my chaos boys. Here’s a comparison pic to show size.

I named this guy Brother Fingaz as I thought he had a striking resemblance to a popular YouTube cartoon character you may or may not know about, Salad Fingers (a creation of famous fellow Doncaster creator, David Firth.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qeE-J-GjAyQ to take a look at an episode.

Ok, he’s not exactly like good old Salad fingers, but I did think the aesthetic was a good match. I was planning on adding a little Hubert Cumberdale flesh boy familiar on the base, but decided against it.

Originally I was thinking as using him as a proxy for a Daemon Prince, but may end up making him my plague surgeon, as I think he might fit better, although he’s a little big for one (not that I care, the aesthetic is what matters to me more) but he could fit the bill as my Lord, or plague caster too, if I want to. I do have a plague caster in the wings (2 if I think about it), and a Lord, and a Prince. Whatever I use him as, He’s going to be a bad ass to help bring the blessings of Papa Nurgle!

Like I’ve said before, I have a LOT of other stuff to add to the horde, which I’m thinking of calling “The Sentinels of his Garden” or something smilar, since my thinking is that once these lot hit planetfall, they begin seeding it with their corruption, introducing diseased spores, plants and all sorts to recreate Nurgle’s garden. This gives me an option to add a bit of scratch built scenery additions like these:

These little Gnarlmaws I will show you in the next post. See you then!

Death Guard Proxies: Nurgle Ceros APC Scratch build. (Proxy Rhino/Landraider Build)

It’s been ages since I’ve shown off any of my Nurgle Deathguard Army lot, and whilst looking through my photos, I remembered that I haven’t shown you this build.

Given that many who read here are dedicated miniature addicts and tabletop wargamers, I thought it was time to showcase this one, as I am quite proud of this baby. May I present, the proxy Deathguard Ceros pattern APC.

May I present my scratch built Chaos weapon of mass destruction, the Ceros pattern APC. This is entirely scratch built from whatever I could get my hands on, and from my own imagination. My main aim here was to create a vehicle that would serve as either a Rhino or Land raider type troop transport for my Deathguard boys, and be easy enough to replicate at a tiny fraction of buying a genuine GW or other proxy type. It’s not meant to be flash, or accurate a copy of said APC in 40k, just a cool looking beefy armoured thing to strike fear into the enemy.

I made a set of templates for the main shape of the un-mutated vehicle, then constructed the body from foamboard, then just Nurgled it up (I know that is not a real word) to make it fit in. I had already made a less diseased looking one for my son (a Khorne version without the mutations) but I’ll post pics of that later. I’m pretty pleased with it to be honest, and given that it probably cost less than £5 to make both in total, my intention was to make a fleet of them for my plague marines. My Army has taken a bit of a respite, but I won’t give up with my plan, and eventually I will get round to completing them, at some point.

I still have the templates around somewhere, so maybe at some point I’ll release them, or may actually do a tutorial if enough of you out there want that, maybe a PDF book with them included. This one was a test to see what needed doing to it to make them as disgusting as possible, which now I made it, I can say that the next one would be even more weird than this one. I’d like to let my imagination go wild with the other two I plan, maybe some demonic attributes and things bursting out from the hull, far more complex that this one was.

With the templates it’s very easy to replicate the design, so I would love to build some more, even some standard looking ones and maybe get a small force of normal marines, just to have a bash at them. It’s just that the whole idea of being able to mutate them into unique models really appeals to me, and I’d love to do several different ones, Thousand Sons, Emperors Children, Imperial guard, or whatever, I’d like to have a go at each and everyone of them. Sadly, I won’t get round to them all, things take time, but I will end up doing the other two Nurgle ones, and another two Khornate ones, each getting more twisted as I make them. I can imagine by the last Nurgle one, it’ll be half daemon or whatever, and the Khorne ones will end up bristling with spikes, skulls, weapons and death dealing articles (well, I did promise my young un’ two more) I just thought I’d show this one off, as I’d totally forgot to do so. I’ve even got a whole heap of industrial style modular terrain already built, and I haven’t shown them off too! Very Necromunda, and again made from scratch. If I can get some good lighting to give them a decent set of shots, I’ll do it in the next week, and bear in mind that I created all these things months ago, a long time before many of the various Youtube Terrain channels did similar as well! I’ll be pinning these pics to my boards on Pinterest and would appreciate it if you frequent there, to share them about, and you can see the other finished bits of the Deathguard Proxies there too: https://www.pinterest.co.uk/grimacereaper73/

Please give me a follow and share on there, I actually get a ton of traffic from Pinterest to here, and I quite like the site no I have the hang of it! I don’t have a ton of followers there, but would be very grateful if you are a regular there to give me a follow, it helps this site, and gives me a bit of a boost to see people sharing my content, and it’ll make me more determined to put more stuff on there. (Trust me, I only show a small fraction of hobby related stuff I create, so the boost would give me the incentive to put more stuff up!)

Like I said, if there is enough people asking for a sort of tutorial type of thing that shows how to make one of these brutes, I will do it, but only if you lot ask, or it will be sporadic when I get round to it. I have too many of my fingers in too many pies, so unless there is a call, I’ll just do it when I can/feel like it! I’m thinking more like a PDF manual type thing, with the patterns in and a load of nice photos, maybe a PWYW or cheapo price, just so the effort is worth my time (I’m a busy dad of 4 sprogs, so time is precious you know!)

If you want to ask anything about how I made it, where I got the bits, how robust it is (yes, it’s quite robust enough to take being knocked about and such) then please do, leave me some likes and comments, heck, ask me to post more shots if you like, or if you want to see the prototype (Khorne) APC, then let me know, and I’ll happily do so.

By the way, if you are wondering what the name of this proxy comes from, well if it’s not obvious, Ceros is the Rhino proxy, so Rhino + Ceros = RhinoCeros! It just seemed fitting!

Anyway, hope you enjoyed the pics, don’t forget to check out the Payhip store for stuff: https://payhip.com/grinningskullstudios which is slowly gaining momentum (Thanks for all the views and orders there too!) and the DriveThruRPG pages too for loads of ever growing hobby stuff: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/browse/pub/8807/Grinning-Skull-Studios

(Gotta keep plugging away!!) Again over on Pinterest and our page on Facebook (Give us a like, go on, you know you want to!) If you are a linked in user, feel free to hit me up on there as well on my Linkedin profile page (I’m now a Linkedin L.I.O.N. now, so join my big network if you like! Nearing almost 6500 connections there, so if you use it, check me out there too!) I’m on Twitter too, but not that active, but a follow would be noice!

I’ll be back later with more stuff, perhaps the Khorne APC to show the difference, but for now, I hope you have a great day and may Grandfather Nurgle bestow his pungent effluent upon you (Wow, an Osric Tentacles reference…) I’m almost done finalising the latest Pointless Classics PDF, so I’ll be posting about that too, so see you then!!

40K Deathguard Army: Proxy Poxwalkers (Probably) : CP Models Plant Creatures.

So, more Nurgley Chaos goodness with this possible proxy unit of poxwalkers that I painted. Now, this lot were originally from CP Models (apart from the front model, which I’ll address in a bit) and are from their sci-fi range and are intended to be B-Movie type plant creatures.

(These models can be found here if your interested: CP Models Plant Creatures)

So, seeing though I had a unit of 10 of them laying around, I thought it might be a good idea to press them into service as a sort of fleshy, diseased and pox ridden shamblers, kind of overtaken by a chaos zombie mushroom/plant based contagion. However, I’m not too sure if they’ll make the final cut and instead be replaced by zombies and GW poxwalkers.

These models are pretty low on detail, so I had a hard time trying to get what I wanted out of them. That’s why I say probably they’ll end up as proxies. They do look OK when massed up together, I had thought they would be like the infected are slowly being turned inside out and becoming a steaming pile of gore, pus, flesh and tentacles eventually as the infection takes over. Which is why I added this next model to the unit.

This is a shoggoth from Black cat bases range. I’ve had this for years, lurking in the back of my stuff, just never really had a need for it until now. I’d like to think it’s what the rest would end up becoming, sort of like a chaos spawn flesh mound.

I’m in two minds about it. On the one hand, the are quite disgusting, but on the other, I’m not 100% happy with them. I know they are not fabulous paint jobs, but they were speed painted, so didn’t get a load of time spent on them.

Anyway, let me know what you think, and if it’s a good idea to use them, or maybe I should give them a few more washes in some extra gore…

40K 8th Ed: Deathguard Army: Chaos Spawn models part 1: Scibor Chaos Snails.

As an alternative to the standard GW Chaos Spawn models for my Deathguard lot, I wanted some old skool weirdness and something that would be sticky and icky, with a Nurgle-esque vibe.

Scibor has some lovely models from their Chaos Dwarves range, and I’ve been eyeing them up for ages. The price was a prohibitor, so when I saw a couple of lots on Ebay, I had to get my grubby mits on them.

This first lot are now finished, bar the other two I have, which I need to finish. Plus I need to add some slimy sticky gloss varnish to add to their yuck factor!

The last two need finishing, but I’ve added a few CP Models 15mm snail things for more detail and fill up space on the 40mm bases.

Next up, will be my next unit of Chaos Spawn, which are Worm/Maggot based creatures and some other models taken from CMON’s The Others: 7 Sins.

Anyway, as ever let me know what you think, and give us a like or share!