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.

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.

More Nurgly Goodness

Siwa Contagion Warband unit 2 shambled off the line yesterday.  These guys are a little more rusty red/decayed than unit one was but are on the same palette and fit in well.

Here you can see how the Secret Weapon "Bio Hazard" backpacks work in to the regular unit backpacks.  They are more steampunk than 40k but will be fine... although I may want to add some pipe and steamwonk stuff to the vehicles to tie it together more solidly.

I've also discovered that camera setting fail is behind the low pixel density of these last couple of picture series.  Next post will have better pixel depth again.  Oh the technology!

Moving on to the next phase... recovery of the dedicated transports for the initial two units.  The rhinos are generously slathered with green stuff so I'll skip adding Forge World Nurgle/ Death Guard panels to these and instead look for some chaos brass etch in the pile and maybe do some light drilling for effect. I'll also have to come up with some names for both the vehicles and the squads...  at the moment I'm leaning towards "Over easy"  and "Fried Hard"  for the rhinos.  Blatant egg themes for basic APCs.  Yumminess inside!

As for the squads themselves... more head scratching is needed.

Nurgle goes to maxmini for spares

 Back from vacation and painting again!

I was working on this salvage project for my Nurgle contingent of Chaos Space Marines just before heading off on Holiday and discovered that I had forgotten to pick up the loose backpacks...DOH!

 Not to be discouraged I ordered a dozen backpacks and heads from the Biohazard line up at Maxmini.

  They showed up pretty fast and I was pleased with the clean casts and the nice mounting slot which made for a perfect fit on models of widely differing vintages.

I painted them up on the sprue taking care to look at the refrence models to get a decent match.

 Here are the other three models in squad 1 that were missing backpacks.  They don't closely resemble the stock imperial pack but I like the belching low tech feel of them

With that tidied up I move into the salvage of squad 2.  Upper pic shows their starting position and the lower pic shows current progress.  I've adjusted the tints to more closely resemble squad 1 but will retain greater areas of brown rust on this second group.

Now its off to get a nap... I was up way too late for the Launch of the Raging Heroes KickStarter! ... But it was really Worth the time!

I'll need to accelerate the salvage project and wrap the Ogre Kingdoms update before I get consumed in a Raging Heroes frenzy.