“And At The Headquarters Of The Royal Flush Gang…”

"The cards give us the winning hand."

This 28mm scale pre-painted plastic model of Ace of Spades is by “Wizkids” and can be bought as number 016 from their 2008 DC Comics Crisis “Heroclix” range. A super-strong android who was created as part of the second version of the Royal Flush Gang, the villain is “continually [being] rebuilt or replaced with newer versions because of his usefulness”, and first appeared in the June 1982 issue of “Justice League Of America”.

An impressive 55mm tall, this rather muscle-bound miniature was super-glued to a “Citadel” 40mm circular base and primed with “Vallejo” White. The criminal was then heavily washed with Pale Grey and dry-brushed with more White. Finally I attached his instantly recognisable chest emblem using a decal from a packet of "At Your Fingertips UK" nail art I bought for just such an occasion.

Herald Of Nurgle WIPs - The Plaguebearer Hero has had all his internal organs 'picked out' ready for washing

Despite being an extremely straightforward paint-job I’m rather underwhelmed by this particular sculpt of Ace of Spades, predominantly because my own experience of the character is via the DC Animated Universe rather than the comics. As a result I envisage the robot as a blank-faced behemoth with no eyes, nose or mouth whatsoever. Whereas the “Heroclix” figure has both some very animated facial features and a bizarre squint, which frustratingly proved somewhat tricky to pick out with a paint-brush…

Super-villain distractions aside, I have spent some time working on the “Games Workshop” Herald of Nurgle I recently assembled in order to lead my unit of Plaguebearers for “Age Of Sigmar”. Initially I was somewhat over-awed by the seven-piece plastic miniature’s detail and complexity. But having realised that the Nurgle Hero is essentially just a slightly bigger Plaguebearer, I have made some good progress on its “massively deformed leg” and “entrails”, and now just need to finish tidying up its rotting flesh before applying my usual concoction of predominantly “Citadel” washes and shades.

Bloodhunter WIPs - The Bloodletter Champion just needs his facial features to be painted

Sticking with ‘the tabletop wargame that replaced “Warhammer Fantasy Battle” in 2015’, I have additionally begun painting an allied unit for my Host of Nurgle. Having previously glued ten of these “finely detailed plastic” Bloodletter models together, as well as primed them, I thought I would pilot a colour scheme I liked from an illustration within “The General’s Handbook” on the daemon’s leader, a Bloodhunter. That way if the paint-job didn’t work out too well, I could still make the necessary adjustments to the other figures without automatically needing to re-do the Champion; as he is arguably meant to appear somewhat different to the rest of his unit.

The followers of the Blood God Khorne are ordinarily depicted as simply being all-red with black horns, swords and tongues. However as I want mine to stand-out on the table-top a bit more, I thought I’d make their swords predominantly gold, and their horns a pinkish-red. I also felt the imagery of them all having black hands and hooves, which then blended into the red of their limbs, made them look formidably demonic too.