"Age Of Sigmar" - Nurgle Rotbringers - WIP - Part One

Plaguebearer WIPs - Plagueridden, Plaguebearer and Icon Bearer

Recently I’ve found myself once again drawn to the “jovial and utterly revolting Great Unclean One”, and as a result have decided to dedicate the vast majority of my hobby time over the next two months to (finally) painting up a fledgling Befouling Host of Nurgle for “Age Of Sigmar”. The plan is reasonably realistic in that I hope to not only ‘finish off’ the unit of Nurglings and party of Plaguebearers I started assembling and priming in February this year. But also complete a unit of either Putrid Blightkings or Plague Drones of Nurgle, as well a general… the Lord of Plagues.

To begin with I have finally finished super-gluing together my old box of “Games Workshop” Plaguebearers of Nurgle. These multi-part plastic miniatures don’t seem to have changed since “Warhammer” Fantasy was replaced by “Age of Sigmar”. Although I did need to purchase some of the ‘new’ “Citadel” 32mm round bases for the models, as mine came with the old square ones.

As far as command figures were concerned I was initially only interested in constructing the unit’s Champion, now known as the Plagueridden [with Two Attacks], and the Standard Bearer, or rather Icon Bearer [potentially adds D6 Plaguebearers to the unit when making a Battleshock Test]. However having read the superb Grand Alliance – Chaos book, and discovered that Musicians may force nearby enemy units to reroll successful Battleshock Tests, I have subsequently assembled the wonderfully characterful Piper as well.

Plaguebearer WIPs - Plaguebearer with Nurgling, Piper and Plaguebearer with Nurgling

The rest of the plaguesword carrying fiends have simply been pieced together using the assortment of bellys, heads, arms and torsos found on the unit sprues. However in order to create a couple of crude vignettes, I have added a couple of intestine-pulling Nurglings onto some of the bases as well.

The vast majority of these miniatures have now been treated to a double dose of “Vallejo” Heavy Khaki and a heavy wash of “Citadel” Thrakka Green. But I have managed to make a bit more progress on my Plagueridden by picking out his weapon, horns and sores with Abaddon Black. Likewise I have picked a reasonably simple Plaguebearer to use as my test piece, and having painted all of his boils, teeth, tongue, entrails and cyclopean eye, I am now ready to apply some final washes to the grisly warrior…

In addition to my rotting foot soldiers I have also managed to make quite a bit of progress on the back row of two of my three Nurgling bases. I can already tell that these cheerful psychopathic terrors are going to prove somewhat frustrating to paint, as much of their detail actually becomes lost once you place the middle and front rows onto the base; and thus mask the majority of the creatures behind them. I did consider simply sticking the entire base together and painting them as a whole. But felt the fact I couldn’t therefore reach any of the partially hidden figures with a brush tip would probably annoy me even more.

Nurglings WIPs - These razor-sharp toothed terrors are slowly have their horns, eyes and teeth 'picked out'

For now I’ve simply picked out all their horns with either “Vallejo” Iraqi Sand or “Citadel” Abaddon Black, and undercoated their raw sores with “Vallejo” White or Heavy Red. I’ve also added several sets of eyes using Dark Vermillion. Once I’ve tidied up their rancid flesh with some Heavy Grey, I should be able to start applying a series of finishing washes to these disease-ridden terrors.

Indeed I’m already mightily tempted to include a second batch of these tiny razor-sharp toothed fiends to my Unclean Host as each base has 5 Attacks and Endless Swarm [allowing any base which hasn’t been slain to immediately heal back up to their starting 4 Wounds during each player’s Battleshock Phase].