Work continued on the Daemon Prince. The hardest part was going to be designing the legs. Originally I thought of making hooves or a snake like lower body, but that seems to be used too often with daemons. After reading through a post on From the Warp: Making Plasticard Plates that gave me the idea of making terminator legs instead.

After some sketches and browsing through some pics I thought I'd give it a shot. The most time consuming part was making the shape of the boots fit with the body. A few times it looked like he was wearing leg warmers. Yeah nothing says "intimidation" like leg warmers.

I decided to make the Daemon Prince's look more like termie legs. Originally I was thinking of Hooves, but almost all the tuorials I saw had the same style of legs so I wanted to be different.

After sculpting the boots (which remind me an awful lot like Mega Man's lol) I stretched a thin amount of GS over the thigh areas.

I followed the same process over the boot area. This will help bond the glue to the plasticard better.

The reason I made him so big is because he is a Heavy choices in the Chaos Daemon codex, unlike the Chaos Space Marine's counterpart being an HQ instead

While that cured I got to work on the shin armor plates. I had some 3x5 cards lying around and made a template. Let's see how it fits....

As you can see it's a little too big. It almost looks like he's wearing soccer shin guards, lol. Nothing a pair of scissors can't fix.

After cutting the stencil down a bit I traced the image onto a sheet of plasticard.

The upper leg plating was a bit easier. All that had to be done was cut a strip of plastic card and bind it to help with the bend.

I started the process by gluing the inner part and holding in shape for a few minutes.

After 15 minutes I glued the rest in place around the leg.

The shin plates were glued in the middle then folded back. After this comes my favorite part; playing with the hot glue again. The hot glue gun is great for making quick drying texture. Although it doesn't hold shape like clay does, it can be heated and re-sculpted easily so it's very effective for this sort of thing.

Escalation in the Man Cave round 2: 500 points 1-on-1

Here are the results of the second round of the Campaign. This time it's the forces of Nurgle vs. the Necron.
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Chaos Daemons of Nurgle:
8 Plague Bearers w/ Icon (team A)
7 Plague Bearers (team B)
9 Nurglings (team B)
1 Bight Drone (team A)

Special Rules: All but the BD have +5 inv. sv. and FnP. Blight Drone is a fast/skimmer and treats it's own destroyed - wrecked as destroyed - explosion.

The Necron:
1 Lord +Res Orb
10 Warriors
3 Destroyers

Special Rules: Necrons can resurrect on a 4+ the controlling player's next turn. Lord equipped with Scythe that can ignore invulnerable saves.
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Round 1 Necron: He won the initiative and decided to go first. The Warrior and retinue moved to the left flank and the dstroyers to the right.

Round 1 Nurgle: Again praying to the dice gods I was denyed the 3+ I needed and deployed team B instead. The Nurglings and Plague Bearers landed on target and ran to cover ending my turn.
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Round 2 Necron: The Destroyers moved 12" to the right flank to gain line of sight on the Plague Bearers and opened fire. The PB made their saves. The Warriors, wanting to remain out of assault range, fired 10 shots into the nurglings but were also denied any kills.

Round 2 Nurgle: Again needing 4+ to bring in reserves the gods granted my wish as Team A now came on the board. Again the Bight drone deviated the same direction barely missing the Nurglings in cover. The other Plague Bearers landed on target and ran to join their brethren.

The Blight Drone opened up first with Phlegm with a direct hit causing 4 Necrons to burt apart. The Reaper Cannons failed to penetrate.
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Round 3 Necron: Kyle rolled his We'll be back roll, but all the damaged Necron failed to stand. His Destroyers moved further to the right flank and opened up on the Bligh Drone, causing a shaken result and denying it the chance to shoot again next turn.

The Lord and his retinue moved further back into cover and fired again into the swarm of nurglings, but again we're denied any wounds thanks to a 3+ swarm cover save and 4+ FnP.

Round 3 Nurgle: With the Blight Drone unable to attack he retreated to the farthest back left corner. He faced towards the right side of the table to deny any side hits. With any luck the destroyers would flank the left side instead which would bring them into assault range of the two PB squads hiding behind the middle pillar.

The Nurglings and Plague Bearers made their move and ran towards the Lord and his retinue. Still out of assault range they managed to keep themselves partially behind cover to soak up some more potential damage.
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Round 4 Necron: The Warriors remained where they were and opened up on the Nurglings. This time they were rewarded with 4 unsaved wounds scoring a kill for the Necron and the first of the game.

The Destroyers moved to flank the Blight drone and managed to score one penetrating shot, destroying the drone with a roll of 5. Out of assault range he ended his turn.

Round 4 Nurgle: The Nurglings managed to close the gap and got into assault with the Lord and his warriors. The Plague Bearers, on the other hand, rolled poorly on their slow-and-purposeful roll and we're slightly out of range of assaulting the destroyers.

The Lord went first and with four attacks causing 3 wounds to the Nurglings. Another squad of Nurglings went down. During their counter attack they caused 1 wound to the lord and one more death to the warriors.
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Round 5 Necron: Realizing his Destroyers were about to be assaulted he moved them as far away as possible and opened up on the plague bearers, but again was denied any wounds.

The assault continued as the lord managed to score another 2 wounds and the Nurglings, with their poor WS, finding it difficult to land anything at all.

Round 5 Nurgle: This time all the Plague Bearers were in range and joined the assault. Again the lord attacked with his scythe, this time to the plague bearers causing one more kill point. The warriors and nurgle forces exchanged blows leaving 3 necron dead and another plague bearer the same.
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a 4 is rolled and it continues to turn 6

Round 6 Necron:
With nothing to target his destroyers join the fray as all models are now tied ino the same assault.

At this point it's the same result throughout. The Necron Lord causes another death as do the plague bearers, but this time all previously killed warriors get back up, denying any kill points from the previous round.

Round 6 Nurgle: Now with the Destroyers in assault everyone focuses their attacks on them, as they are worth more in kill points than the warriors. Two Destroyers are taken down as the Nurglings take another wound.
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a 6 is rolled and it continues to turn 7

Round 7 Necron: The final turn of the game. One of the two Destroyers gets back up, leaving two still alive and most of the warriors intact. Attacks are exchanged again as the lord kills another plague bearer. The forces of Nurgle strike back killing a warrior and the remaining destroyers.

Round 7 Nurgle: With the Destroyers out all attacks are focused on the warriors. Although the Lord is worth more points, he has managed to shake off all but one wound the entire game. Killing warriors would up the kp tally a little, making it a close game.
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The game ends with the Necron scoring 205 points and Nurgle with 150. Denied the kill points of the warriors (since they were just over 50% strength) put the Necron over the top. The Nurgle lost by 5 points lol

Summary: This was a pretty close game. The changing factor was that the Lord was carrying a scythe that ignored invulnerable saves. This denied the Nurgle forces unsaved wounds. Every round the Lord was putting up about 1 kill, but it was enough to edge them to victory.

This was a fun experiment running mostly nurgle troops. They managed to soak up a lot of damage, though due to the low ws and str. made it hard for them to kill anything without support. They are great at tar pitting strong enemies until your stronger units can join in to the fray.

Escalation in the Man Cave round 1: 500 points 1-on-1

Here are the results of the first round of the Campaign.
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Chaos Daemons of Nurgle:
8 Plague Bearers w/ Icon (team A)
7 Plague Bearers (team B)
9 Nurglings (team B)
1 Bight Drone (team A)

Special Rules: All but the BD have +5 inv. sv. and FnP. Blight Drone is a fast/skimmer and treats it's own destroyed - wrecked as destroyed - explosion.

Orkz:
3 Killa Kanz
3 Killa Kanz
10 Boyz squad +Boss Pole
1 Big Mek +Kustom Force Field

Special Rules: Kanz are walkers with AV 11F/11S/10R and the Big Mek's shield gives any units within 6" a 4+ cover save.
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My plan was to tie up his boyz to get enough kills to force a draw. The Blight Drone was there to try and pick off some Killa Kanz.

Round 1 Orkz: I won initiative so I decided to go 2nd. The Orks proceeded to move towards the middle of the board. With nothing to shoot they decided to run then ended their turn.

Round 1 Nurgle: Praying for a 3+ to bring in team A, the dice gods favored me with a 5. Placing the Blight drone safely in the back center of the field was a good decision as he deviated 11" to the left side. He shot his Phlegm large Blast but it deviated completely off target. With his twin linked Reaper Auto Cannon he scored two hits, but failed to penetrate any armor. The 8 Plague Bearers squad fared better with no deviation. The PB squad ran to the back left side to try and find cover.
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Round 2 Orkz: The Orkz moved forward and began shooting. The 3 on the right opened up and scored 15 hits from 6 small blast templates on the Plague Bearers. All but one managed to make his save resulting in 1 KP for the Orkz. The other 3 Kanz focused on the Blight drone and ended up destroying the Maw-cannon taking out the Large Blast Weapon. Still out of range the remaining Orkz ran and ended the turn.

Round 2 Nurgle: Needing a 4+ to bring in reserves, the dice gods agreed granting both remaining squads the 4s they needed. The Plague Bearers and Nurglings in reserve were placed safely withing 6" of the Icon. The two squads that came in couldn't do anything more so they sat and waited as the team A moved forward 6" towards the Boyz squad. The Blight drone moved laterally to the far corner behind the other troops and shot his Reaper Cannons at the other 3 Killa Kanz, but again failed to do any damage.

With shooting complete the 8 Plague Bearers ran into assault against the only Boyz squad denying them the furious charge. One Plague Bearer fell from combat as two boyz died in the melee. Rolling for fearless they made their saves and round two ended
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Round 3 Orkz: The Kanz began to move away from the remaining nurgling forces, but then decided against it and pushed forward another 6". They unloaded 6 small blast againt the Nurglings resulting in two wounds.Being a swarm the wounds doubled making the total, killing off 1 swarmling and giving another a wound. The other 3 Kanz shot into the Plague Bearers, but thanks to their 5+ inv and FnP they avoided taking any wounds.

Assault: 3 Kanz assaulted the 9 nurglings, while the other 3 Kanz assaulted the other 7 Plague Bearers. Since the nurgle units have such low strength, none were able to penetrate a walker's front armor, so they did not attack. Due to the Kanz having Dreadnaught CCW they denied any forces a FnP save. The asaults ended with another nurgling and plague bearer failing their 5+ inv saves.

Meanwhile the Boyz and PB continued assault. Both sides trading attacks at the same time. This time the Plague Bearers took 3 Boyz down while losing 1 themselves. The Orkz rallied and avoided a sweeping advance.

Round 3 Nurgle: Unable to do anything the nurglings and PB of team B took additional wounds. The Blight Drone with nothing to shoot at moved to the other half of the board in attempt to set up some shots, knowing the nurgle forces tied up wouldn't last long.

Failing their saves the 8 plague bearers are wiped out and the Orkz move towards the Blight Drone for an assault.
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Round 4 Orkz: Unable to return attacks and denied FnP, the Nurglings and PB of team B continued to take losses. At this point the best they could hope for was tie up the Kanz long enough to force a draw.

The Boyz move into assault to the Blight drone. The Nob scores a penetrating hit with his klaw and destroys the drone. They consolidate towards the remaining assaults.

Round 4 Nurgle: The remaining Plague Bearers are wiped out and the 3 Kanz move towards the last squad of nurglings.

The Boyz dropped a few more plague bearers making the kill count 5 of 8 now. The Plague Bearers answered with another kill, and managed to make their fearless rolls to avoid any more casualties.
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Round 5 Orkz: All remaining Ork forces converge on the remaining Nurglings. The additional wounds done are by the power weapons. More casualties and wounds are added.

Round 5 Nurglings: The Nurglings attack the boyz but fail to do any damage as they continue to take losses.
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a 4 is rolled and it continues 1 more round

Round 6: The Orkz manage to kill the last of the Nurglings
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Result: Nurgle loss

Summary: I knew ahead of time that the Orkz were using the Kanz and hoped not to play them, but fate can be a bitch sometimes. The best chance I had was to force a draw by killing the Boyz and Big Mek and maybe a Kan or two.

Although I was lucky with deployment, the combination of low weapon skills, lack of strength, and some bad rolls almost guaranteed a loss. Still, I came into round one knowing this so it's all good.

For the upcoming campaign I wanted to try something new so I decided to try my hand at scratch building a Blight drone. This model is a based off of the Forge Model normally used for Apocalypse games (in greater numbers of course). Looking through a lot of Death Guard and all Nurgle lists and noticed a lot of people fielding these.

This model was built based off a few different tutorials. The one I found most helpful was Animerik's at the Papa Nurgle forums. He really does a nice job of modeling and explaining the steps. If you're interested in making one of these please check his tutorial as it's pretty detailed :)

Every model I build I try to use the cheapest or common materials I can find.

Tools used:

• Tin Foil
• 12 gauge planting wire
• Hobby knife
• clay sculpting tools
  
• never dry modeling clay
• air dry modeling clay
• green stuff epoxy
• Plastic card
• 3/8" solid rod
  
• Hot glue gun
• Soldering iron
• and anything else laying around :)

Total material cost: about $15. Not bad considering the plastic card and green stuff would be the majority cost. They could be replaced with cheaper alternatives, but I suppose it's opportunity cost at that point; spend a little more for better quality materials and save time in the long run. Still, $15 is decent considering the original FW model costs over five times that amount.

I was lazy this time, so I didn't take pictures of the process, but for the most part it's identical to the tutorial up to the assembly point. The only big difference is I twisted 12 gauge wire to make the ties and such.

The problem with this model is all the modeling clay was making it tough to keep it mounted. The cheap clay I used underneath was too soft to glue the rod to and the GS had to much flex to keep the model in place.

The solution was to break out the soldering iron and melt some plastic to the model. It cools fast and creates a rock solid surface to work with. I melted plastic up the base to the bodem of the Blight Drone. After that I used hot glue to texture the model and tie everything together (and more importantly hide mistakes lol).

I used a black primer then gave it a light amount of brown followed by a dark green over that.

I started adding boltgun to the metal areas like the cables and gun components and Goblin Green to the slime areas.

I'm satisfied for the results, especially since it was finished before the Campaign. The hardest thing about this model was getting the cheap air-dry clay to stay in place so I could tie in the GS over it. It worked out, but if I were to make another one of these I would probably try a better alternative.

It may not look like it, but there was very little GS used. I stretched it out as much as possible to cover just the top layer and add a stronger surface to detail. To put it in perspective, I could use a full $15 tube of Green Stuff to make three of these and still have some left. That's not bad considering that these models are $75 a piece from Forge World!

My lists for the upcoming Escalation campaign. I decided to drop Khorne and go all Nurgle instead.

500 points
8 Plague Bearers +Icon = 145 pts
7 Plague Bearers = 105 pts
9 Nurglings = 117 pts
1 Blight Drone 12F 11S 10R = 125pts
Total: 492 points

750 points
Epidemus = 110
8 Plague Bearers +Chaos Icon = 145 pts
7 Plague Bearers = 105 pts
9 Nurglings = 117 pts
1 Blight Drone 12F 11S 10R = 125pts
Daemon Prince: MoN, IH, CoF = 145
Total: 747 points

I had to drop Daemonic Gaze from the Daemon Prince. It was between that or Iron Hide, but the 3+ save is too good to pass up imo.

These lists aren't very powerful, but the following week I can start beefing up the DP a little more and add another HQ. We're playing to 1500 so I'm hoping in the later weeks to fully unleash the power of Nurgle, mwa ha ha.

Recently my buddy over at WH40k by S2ua7 gave me some IG and Nid bits to play with. WooT! I was going to use them as accessories for my other Soul Grinder, but then I came up with this idea.

I need another Daemon Prince and at $35 each (pewter too) it's a little steep. This one started to come together over the course of a few hours.

The head is from the GUO kit, horns from KoS alt head, and other than the chest armor, most of the model is kit bashed from a Soul Grinder kit.

I have another matching claw which I'm thinking of using on the other arm (the melted gun was just a fun experiment lol). The legs are going to be filled out and armor plated. Once that's done I'm going to model a SM backpack and have the wings "tearing" out of the top vents.

Still a lot to work on, but I'm pleased with the results so far.

Here are the recent poll results...

What tutorials do you enjoy the most?

Painting Techniques	3 (33%)
Green Stuff/Sculpting	4 (44%)
Model Customization	7 (77%)
Terrain Making	4 (44%)
Other...	1 (11%)

The polls are in with 77% of us preferring to read about Model Customization posts. Green Stuff/Sculpting and Terrain Making are tied at second. I couldn't agree more. I find customized models to be the coolest thing about the hobby.

With that said I'm going to post more model customizing. I just did a lot of kit bashing and can't wait to finish this model. It's turning out really cool :)

Here's a few quick pics of the LoC so far. I decided to stop using GS for the flames and instead am going to try melting plastic instead. I like this method a lot more since it's much faster and you can remodel it instantly if you don't like the shape.

The hot glue adds some nice mass to the model, but it's hard to detail since it doesn't hold any shape. Normally I would just do that and call it good, but it wouldn't make for good reading.

Digging around my electrical tools I had an idea... The soldering Iron! If you haven't used one before they are quite simply a low voltage tool to melt soft metals to create a bonding material for electrical components. For us real men, they are great for burning shit too!

With that said if you decide to use a soldering iron be very careful not to burn yourself. They get extremely hot and can burn you severely. I strongly suggest only plugging it in when you will use it then immediately unplug it when you are done. Speaking from experience I've burned enough things (like carpets) I wish I hadn't haha.

I apologize for the bad pun...

The two prong pitch fork and the torch to the right of it are the same bit. Initially I wasn't trying to make a torch, but these things just happen sometimes, lol.

The box was a little short on swords so I had to improvise a little. The ones above were mostly "bones" from the kit.

After heating up the soldering iron I melted the models carefully. I applied the iron much like a paint brush.

This model has a little work done to the eyes and torso. I decided to, if possible, keep the jaw details and just carve the eye into a cyclops.

Here I was experimenting with adding bullet holes and "battle damage" to the model. The other ones I have claw marks and spilling guts.

Another Plague Bearer.

This sword was a Gene Stealer claw. I wish I had more of these as they were fun to detail.

Nurgle Standard Bearer. I'll probably add something to the standard to make it look more convincing.

Both models here have the same weapon, though the one on the right has had the iron put to it.

They're starting to look a little more Nurglish. The next step will be the hot glue gun to the horns to bulk them out a bit. I'm still debating on if the bodies should get hot glue since it doesn't mold very easily and doesn't hold detailed shapes.

Looking over my army I realized I am lacking in troop choices. I have plenty of Blood Letters (thanks to them being plastic now) but I only had 5 of the other types. At the price of $25-30 for 5 models (ouch) and the fact that you need to field lots and lots to be effective I decided to find a cheaper alternative (not to mention an excuse to tear something apart WOOT).

After digging through various catalogs I came to find the Vampire Count's Zombie Horde set; 20 models for $30. Best of all, they're all plastic! I went to my local game store and to my surprise they had one box left (though I'm sure he's lying as usual but meh...the tangled webs we weave). Anyway, I got to work right away with the new vigor of having something to kit bash! Plastic for the Plastic God!

Plague Bearers need to have two things

• Cyclops - they all (usually) have just one eye @__x
  
• headgear - No I'm not talking about the wrestling kind...more of a slimy horn sticking out of their heads.
  

With that in mind I got to work...

One thing I needed was more swords. I took the three scythes that came in the box and removed the blades. The left hands had a good hilt on the instrument hands, so I cut and pinned them in place.

So far so good. They have other weapons available like bones clubs, but I wanted to keep it WYSIWYG. The guy on the left has both a Plague sword and instrument of chaos now (notice the foot he's holding haha).

Next I drilled a small pilot hole in each of their mugs...

...and gave them a brass rod lobotomy. I was tempted to keep it this length, but it might make fielding a hassle.

Next step I wanted to try some cheap texturing. Sure, you can Green Stuff, but I wanted something faster and easier than that. It would defeat the purpose of making a cheap model if you have to invest more expensive materials.

I broke out the hot glue gun and gave the test model a glue bath.

It turned out pretty neat so far. The only question is if I'll be able to add detail to the glue areas or not.

The green models are the original Pewter models. Five of those are the same price as twenty of the ones I made. Not a bad deal!

I like 'em so far. I'll have more pics up pretty soon.