Nurgle's Morbid Termies and a pair of Kurganovas

Today I'm looking at Olga and Malinka Kurganova and Terminator Squad Morbid of the Siwa Contagion.

I had a some trouble, and only limited success, with these two Kurganovas.  They are inspiring miniatures that are heroically posed and full of character.  Admiral Olga and her Bulldog Charlie are just dripping with aristocratic disdain and the Jaunty Kommander Malinka is full the arrogant confidence that makes me imagine her as a bold, and fast burning, commando or privateer. 

I worked these up over a black base and was aiming for a cartoon version of weathered and gritty.  I struggled a bit with color schemes as I'd already gone the red route with Ivanka and her Red Caps.  Malinka ended up in a khaki variation and the Kurganova Regulars are likely to be in that vein.  Admiral Olga is a Naval Officer and I went with mustard yellow.  I wanted a light color to contrast with the dark cloak.  Fortunately the naval troops are mainly in the liaison role so I haven't thought much about the enlisted uniforms.  I put these on Secret Weapon bases from the Trenchworks line and plan to continue this theme through the entire HSF.

This approach works pretty well on GW minis since the detail has so many sharp, hard edges and deep recesses.  The Raging Heroes minis, on the other hand, are very subtly sculpted and its less easy to make the sculpt do the painting for you.  On this pair its been a struggle to get anything approaching a clean line and I've not yet got it nailed down.  Its getting there and I remain smitten with the sculpts so I'm just going to have to up my game... and probably the magnification on my glasses.... EVIL RANGE DEPENDENT VISION!  Nothing like not being able to focus on anything closer than two feet as a disad for a mini painter... yeee HAW!

The Siwa Conatgion's second brotherhood of Terminators is lead by a Champion of Nurgle called Morbid.  A veteran of the Death Guard he brought several of his battle brothers with him to the Contagion.

This squad is a little more of a murky green hue than Squad Typhus, which is more bone and brown.  The two basic schemes are similar enough to mix together if I need the flexibility but are different enough to be easily identified as separate squads in a complex melee if fielded as imagined.  The main difference between the squads is the heavy weapon option with Typhus taking Heavy Flamers and Morbid preferring Reaper Cannons.

For this squad I did a heavy brush up of Bone Jack followed by a dry brush of Menoth White (both colors from the P3 range) and washed it with Sewer Water from Secret Weapon.  Highlights were added in using RMS olive highlight.

Corroded areas were done with the brown and red/orange splatter or with a rose flesh through salmon and light flesh work up.

Bases, as they are for all the Contagion, are either MicroArt or are worked up with greenstuff to look similar to the MicroArt bases.

Ivanka Kurganova and Charlie

Ivanka Kurganova in the role of Commissar/Political Officer of the Red Caps,  The Red Caps are the elite Inquisition Storm Troop element of the Heresy Suppression Force. (HSF) 

This model does have a lot of red on it which is broken up a bit by the dark oiled canvas/leather cape.  I'm thinking officer capes would be leather while troopers and NCOs would have coats/capes in oiled canvas.

The base is from the excellent Trench Works series from Secret Weapon Miniatures.  It gives a good range of visual locations being equally at home in an urban assault, a siege setting, or even indoor combat!  The HSF being tasked with suppressing cults and internal disturbances will spend a lot of time indoors in the SWAT role.

These Raging Heroes cloaks are just awesome with the script being clean edged and in high relief.  Sharp lettering is usually a bit of a pain to do but these make it as easy as can reasonably be expected.

Some of the other details are a bit soft and nebulously defined which makes painting them a bit more challenging in some ways but always worth the effort.  It also makes the miniatures easy to modify in the fine details.

Charlie is Admiral Olga Kurganova's bulldog  and will be added to her base.  All of these Kurganova women have wide stances which is tends to make them look like Superheroes when viewed as a group so I'm hoping that the addition of the dog to the Admiral's (not pictured) base will break up that dynamic just a bit.  I do like the heroic stances for the officers and character personalities as its very 'comic book cover' in feel.

Check out the Raging Heroes TGG Kickstarter   to see a full range of complete Armies in three factions based on this figure series..

Kurganova WiP and NurgleTermi Squad Typhus part 2

The Raging Heroes Kickstarter has me looking to solidify some color thoughts about the Heresy Suppression Force (HSF).  Since I do have the Kurganova Sisters I thought I'd mess around with some ideas in advance of fielding the full army.

I quickly settled upon a basing scheme using the awesome 'Trenchworks" series from Secret Weapon and got painting.

I started with a black primer and then a weak wet-brush of off white to show the detail a bit more clearly...  these eyes ain't getting any younger!  This was followed by a rough in of the flesh and some shading/highlighting of the skin tones.  Facial detail isn't in place yet but the basic textures are coming along.

 I decided on red backgrounds and yellow/gold lettering for the cape details and yellow/gold for the shoulder boards and braids.

Ivanka is trending red.  As a political officer/commissar I thought she'd need a different color scheme to the main body of troops.  This is in keeping with my initial inclination to use a lot of red trim for Elite Inquisition troops.  I'm thinking the Kurganova Heavies will fill this role eventually.

The main body of regular troopers I'm thinking about an ochre, white, and brown leather scheme.  I've started this on the Admiral.  In retrospect I might not want the Admiral in 'Ground Pounder Brown'  oops!  Have to decide on a Naval Scheme as well!  She's also set far back on her base so I can accommodate the dog!

 I'm thinking about the cloaks and am torn.  I think I'll go with winter white/gray for Ivanka and her ilk while using a brown for the other officers and regulars.  Kind of an old Soviet look.  Still undecided though as the winter white/gray is kind of appealing in an urban oriented force.

 Termis Squad Typhus part 2 is similar to the first part and is also using the Heavy Flamer.  I'm really liking the Secret Weapon washes for making grime in the folds and really layering things up.  Like the first part the weapons are corrupted but very plain and may be revisited to add a few details like colors on fuel tanks etc...

 I do like the relatively monotone appearance of these guys and have gotten a few comments on the bases.  I think the color contrast is nice and anyway how often do you get to use pink for a base!

Tentacles! 

Come to Papa Nurgle!

Nurgle Termie Squad Typhus

 The first group of 5 models in Terminator armor rolls out.  There are 20 of these to fill up the two Land Raiders,  This group is provisionally Squad Typhus until the 'counts as' Typhus character is named.

I was channeling my inner Blanche for this group, and likely will continue on the remaining 15 models, keeping to a very limited palette and relying on multiple layers of texture.  I may revisit these later to add some additional detail to the weapons like colored fuel tanks etc...

This makes for contrast with the bases which reduces the tendency of Nurgle CSMs to look like something retrieved from the litter box when viewed at tabletop ranges.

The leader is a metal model of Typhus that was missing its head.  I've replaced it with a seriously shaved down Bio-hazard head from Secret Weapon Miniatures.

15 More termies/character termies on the table this week then....

Land Raiders "Pox" and "Rot Gut" ready to spread the Contagion

The Nurgle salvage operation continues as the Siwa Contagion adds a grisly pair of Land Raider Crusaders to their frightful armory.

Of course the Crusader variant does not appear in the CSM Codex and is not available for regular games.   If this had not been a salvage project I'd have gone with the standard vanilla Land Raider.  That being said these will be used by agreement primarily in narrative campaigns or to proxy the allowable models in regular games.

The corruption of the Crusader variant seems poetic and may play into a narrative rivalry between the Siwa Contagion and the Black Templars.  I'll need to get the naming details of  my nephew's crusade fleet (The Gol'rethian Crusade as it turns out) and work it into the fluff!

These began with a basic two tone green base spray over black.  From here I had to adjust the green tint to resemble that on the troopers and begin the blight corruption process.

Several irregular brown stains later it was time for the red/orange speckling.  This was a little rough as some of the patches dried too much prior to getting their edges abraded.   I adjusted this for the second vehicle and the splotches trended towards more consistency with the troopers.  Some bright orange patches retained more definition but that generally seems to have improved the effect.

 The two were named "Rot Gut" and "Pox"  in part because the names were short and could be rendered in an angular script visually similar to the Dark Tongue and yet remain legible so they'd be easy to use in army lists.

I also discovered a standard bearer for one of the squads that I'd overlooked.  I had thought that the numbers were a little off and here is why!  I'll need to do a little more greenstuff... to the broken backpack vent and then should knock this guy out next.

I've actually run through my supply of greenstuff a this point and need to get some more.  Work work work!

Next up some terminator squads and Typhus.

Imperial Guard Nose Art Inspiration and Blowing Bubbles for Papa Nurgle

 Today features the work of guest painter Eric O.  He's building a winter themed IG army that uses WWII style aircraft nose art on his tanks!  He used reference photos to capture the feel and the execution is a very convincing simulation of crew supplied art.

 In true fanboy fashion I'm planning to swipe this feature and include it in the Heresy Suppression Force (HSF)!  Of course I'll have to make some adjustments given that the HSF is a female based force...  I'll probably go for a more propagandtastic approach using old recruiting posters for reference but this is where the basic idea comes from.

I like the snow saturated camo  nets and the faux airbrush winter stripe scheme.  He says he made some rough shapes out of card board and held them about 6" away from the model while spraying the stripes.  This yielded great fuzzy edges to the stripes.  I'll be stealing that technique as well since I'm kind of air brush phobic...>.>

The great addition of external crew sets these up to look like they rolled right out of an Eastern Front newsreel.  All in all a really good looking, consistently themed, armored group.  I'll have to keep the various elements of this in mind as the HSF starts getting into gear.

I had to show a few of the infantry just to enjoy the theme.  Here we have a Commissar Yarrik painted in good old soviet style and notice the Anti Vehicle Rifle conversion.  That is really evocative and shows how much impact a very simple conversion can have. There is also some fine freehand work on the sleeves and capes.

 Several more views of the Armored Group I like the snow effects on "Aces High" and the use of the Spade symbol.

Thanks to Eric for allowing me to grab some shots of his work to share.


Now on to more Nurgly Goo...

 A Forge World Sorcerer was in the pile of "to be salvaged" stuff.  It was missing the blade of its Force halberd so I rooted around in the bits bins and came up with a spare Ogre Kingdoms Cleaver to replace it.  I prefer the low tech blade since  its the magic rather than tech.

 While I was painting the Sorcerer and the Rhinos I realized that I'd been describing the brown areas as rust red but I'm really thinking about them as visible evidence of corruption rather than as areas of actual corrosion.  Kind of like a malignant patch on the skin. 




These two got named "Over Easy" and "Pan Fried" but in retrospect maybe "Pain Fried" would have been better!  In any case I think of these things as fragile eggs with a precious and deadly cargo!

Next up Land Raiders, which are a salvage paint job similar to that last couple posts and Terminators but they require a bit of work in the old green stuff and are unpainted and  so will take a shade longer to turn out.

Following that I'm thinking of doing the Konigsmark sisters and the three Brunhildes (from Raging Heroes) to use in a Mordheim game.  We'll see though... best laid plans and all....  there will still remain more Nurgle and that may preempt the sisters for a few more weeks.