A Fresh Outbreak: Poxwalkers

I'm still no great photographer, but I'm much better than I used to be! I figured it was about time to revisit some of my older pieces from the Choleric Order of the Yellow Bile and update them with some new pics.

First up, the Poxwalkers: original post.

There Were Rats, Dad...

"There were rats, dad."
"Rats?"
"Yeah. Big ones."

I think my very first GW purchase was the yellow "Monsters" deck from the original Citadel Combat Cards, and it was definitely the start of my love of Skaven. That deck included a picture of one of Jes Goodwin's classic Rat Ogres (I don't think both were depicted, but might be wrong). It's weird that, to this day, I have never actually acquired and painted one (or both) of those classic models... that's something I might have to remedy. When I got my first Warhammer army book a few years later, it was - inevitably - for the Skaven.

Of course, I wasn't able to afford a whole army, let alone have the patience to build and paint one - especially one like the Skaven that demanded huge numbers of troops! By the point where I had the time, attention, and disposable income to indulge my wargaming hobby (thank-you skirmish wargaming!), the then-current Skaven range didn't really appeal to me as much and I found other models more to my liking.

Fast-forward more years than I really care to remember and, with the Choleric Order of the Yellow Bile an appropriate home for them, I decided it was time to paint some rats!

The Plague Monks are one of the older kits still in the Skaven range, and definitely have the older, more bandy-legged design that newer sculpts have eradicated. Still, they are incredibly on-brand for my army, with hunched poses, bandages, ragged robes (that serve to hide their bandy legs), and boil-marked flesh. With the addition of wire spears and some Oathmark Human shields to tie them to my Templars and link them more into the force as a whole, they fit right in.

Painting was a doddle - they're relatively simple sculpts and took to my wash-heavy style nicely. I opted for a really pale flesh tone to offset the darker robes and applied a light red wash to their eyes to give them a rheumy, albino effect.

I have five more of these guys built and ready to go, and I'm toying with the idea of adding some more to the Cult in due course, perhaps a banner, an officer figure, and another three spears to fill out the unit to a full 15.

And, of course, now I also want to track down those old Jes Goodwin Rat Ogres...

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Disclaimer: All links to third-party sites are solely for the purposes of sourcing the products I have discussed, if anyone is so inclined. I have simply linked to the original manufacturer or the source I used (but feel free to shop around!) and make no money from people clicking through.

Slinkers and Stinkers

It has taken me altogether too long to get these four models finished off! They've sat on my desk for months in various stages of completion, and I'm kind of glad to have finally got them done.

They're Ur-Ghuls from the Blackstone Fortress box, and while I love the aesthetic and design, I really dislike the fact that there are only two poses that are incredibly similar. I would love a box with these creepy blighters in a wider range of poses, creeping and skulking their way across the tabletop.

The only alteration I made to the base model was filling in the deep holes above the mouth with some liquid green stuff, smoothing out the head a bit more. Painting was quick - I used a really diluted glaze to apply the purple tone over a light grey basecoat, then dry-brushed on a couple of lighter greys.

On that note, I've become a complete convert to using makeup brushes for dry-brushing and now have a set of about a dozen in various sizes for about half the price of a single hobby-specific one.

As to what these are going to be used for... well, they're perfect weird mutants for hunting my Stalkers, weird aliens for Stargrave, Nullmen for Frostgrave, and they may or may not make an appearance in future Rangers of Shadow Deep games...

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Disclaimer: All links to third-party sites are solely for the purposes of sourcing the products I have discussed, if anyone is so inclined. I have simply linked to the original manufacturer or the source I used (but feel free to shop around!) and make no money from people clicking through.

From The Vault: The Reikland Reivers

Ah, Mordheim. One of those games that always seems to offer a good time. Going back nearly ten years, we had an urge to play some Mordheim, and put together a selection of gangs. Joe had Dwarf Treasure Hunters, there was a Skaven mob (I think), and I had my Reiklanders.

All the figures are Vendel border reivers (hence the punny name). I remember nothing about the gang, and everything about their initial skirmish! We were playing a three-way game, and I managed to get my archers and crossbowmen into an elevated position on the balcony of an inn (Reiklanders were the 'shooty' warband, so that was sound tactics). My melee troops rushed out, grabbed a couple of treasure tokens, and drew back to safety with them. All the while, my ranged troops are pummeling the opposition with arrows and bolts (even the occasional pistol ball from my captain). This wouldn't have been so bad, except Joe's Dwarfs were SLOW and were focusing on the other warband, which was similarly focused, so he came under heavy fire for most of the game, while I sat back with most of the treasure and barely a scratch!

I'm particularly proud of this champion – the sleeves were worth the effort. My one niggle? The figures are open-handed, to be armed with a variety of weapons. This guy cried out for a halberd, but his scabbard is empty, meaning that he really should have been given just a sword. Oh well.

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Disclaimer: All links to third-party sites are solely for the purposes of sourcing the products I have discussed, if anyone is so inclined. I have simply linked to the original manufacturer or the source I used (but feel free to shop around!) and make no money from people clicking through.

In the Grim Darkness of the Far Future, There's a Pretty Mixed Bag...

So, the contents of the forthcoming Dark Imperium boxed set for the new Warhammer 40,000 8th Edition was just revealed.

I can't help but notice that the plague-infested mutant hordes that are making up the numbers in the Nurgle-worshipping Death Guard force are called Poxwalkers... the same name as my own shambling demonic hordes. In fairness, a bit of research just now revealed the existence of a Chaos artifact called the Poxwalker Hive that uses insects to create zombies (or something), so I guess Gee-Dub wins this round!

Going from the fluff, a zombie-type creature that's essentially a walking hive for demonic insects would be great... a 40K version of Mushizo from Ninja Scroll. Unfortunately these just look like they've taken the "Nurgle = bone spikes" motif from the Putrid Blightkings (elements I all but removed entirely from my own Plaguetouched), turned it up to 11, and crammed it into human-sized figures. In fact, the whole Death Guard figure range here seems to have gone that same way. Still, the actual Chaos Marines are more ornate anyway, and seem to weather the over-detailed storm better than the mutants (especially the guy with the tentacle-jester-hat and bionic arm, and the one bursting out of his gimp suit).

The flipside to that, in other, more positive, news, is that the new Space Marines have gone the other way! They seem more military and less ornate than many of their predecessors (it helps, not doubt, that the base set will be the 'vanilla' Ultramarines (or whatever other orthodox Chapter one wishes) rather than the more gimmicky Dark/Blood Angels, Space Wolves etc. I'm FINALLY getting the Marines I always wanted: bad asses that actually look like super-soldiers! This guy especially.

So, I guess... in the grim darkness of the far future, there's a pretty mixed bag...

Gribble

A quick post, this one, to catalogue the second batch of Wretches.

As with the first batch, these are Hobbit goblins from GW. Unlike the first ten, I painted these with a different base skin tone, slightly more green than brown, with the intent of mixing the two batches together for a bit more variety. The end result is... negligible!

Also unlike the first ten, I really didn't enjoy painting these at all – and lots of bitty little errors meant that I had to go back and fix more than one of them on more than one occasion. I'm glad they're done!

The Choleric Order of the Yellow Bile currently stands at:

• 10 Poxwalkers – pestilence-ridden demons
• 5 Plaguetouched – half-demonic berserkers
• Dirty Frank – blind ghoul king
• 20 Wretches – ghoulish troglodytes

Next up, a Wizard and his Apprentice in the form of two cult magisters, then the cult faithful.

Scuttle, Scuttle

So, hot on the heels of Dirty Frank come his minions in the form of the first ten (of twenty) Wretches. These guys are simply the Hobbit goblins with a brown-ish paint-job. No conversions, save to remove a whip from one of them and to remove the slotta tabs.

I'm not a huge fan of the models, to be honest – the aesthetic is spot-on for what I'm after, but the sculpts themselves, being single-piece, leave a little to be desired. There are certain vague elements, especially around the ears, hair, and shoulders where distinction is rather vague, to say the least. Still, they paint up quickly enough, and are meant to be pretty grimy and grotty, so they'll do.

The little guy (far right in the above pic, and left below) is tiny – had I not got a couple of additional models on the Goblin King sprue to round out the mob to a full twenty, I'd have cherry-picked my favourites, and run with just ten.

As of press time, the Choleric Order of the Yellow Bile comprises:

• 10 Poxwalkers – pestilence-ridden demons
• 5 Plaguetouched – half-demonic berserkers
• Dirty Frank – blind ghoul king
• 10 Wretches – ghoulish troglodytes

To come, 10 more Wretches, a couple of cult leaders, and the faithful cult members. After that, I think a little break... if only to restock on brown paints!

Dirty Frank

I always like to have a big model as a centrepiece in my warbands, if at all possible, and for the growing Choleric Order of the Yellow Bile, my recent Plaguetouched just weren't cutting it in the size stakes, so I went looking for a big, pestilential model...

The existing Nurgle options from GW aren't my cup of tea, not to mention being more than a little pricey! They were also a little too big and over-the-top – I needed a troll or ogre, rather than an immense demon. I discounted all the not-Nurgle options from various companies for similar reasons.

Having decided to include some Hobbit Goblintown goblins in the warband, I took another look at the Goblin King model. Turns out, what made me hate him in the movie (alongside oh-so-many other issues) was what made it work for me in this context – he's big, deformed, and liberally covered in pustules without being too excessive (I wanted something a little less plague-ridden to act as a halfway house between the demonic troops and the forthcoming human cultists).

First thing to go was the excessively pointy crown – I don't see this guy as a leader as much as a tank (more along the lines of the cave troll in the Moria sequence in Fellowship of the Ring, before they started throwing trolls at everything...). This has left him with a rather odd circlet, but... meh. I'll cobble together some rationale at some point or another...

The real work, such as it was, lay in clipping away the big old staff/mace the model was originally holding. This necessitated a minor resculpt on his hand, to add in a couple of knuckles that were previously covered.

Painting, as with all the recent Nurgle stuff, was swift and simple – flesh, green/purple wash, drybrush with more flesh, paint loincloth, pick out pustules and warts, wash the lot. He's come out much darker than I expected, not that I dislike it, but it's definitely not what I originally had in my head. It does set it apart from the usual paintjobs I see on the model, which lean much more towards the pale. Still, minor niggles aside, I think he fits in well with the gang so far:

The four-day Easter break was productive – I got this guy finished, and ten of his goblin minions (to be reskinned as ghoulish troglodytes) painted. More on those when the basing is done and dusted.

Plaguetouched

I was really pleased with how the Plaguebearers came out recently, and set my mind to painting some more stuff in the same vein.

Enter, stage left, one box of Putrid Blightkings. I've had my eye on these for a while, but never really had cause to pull the trigger on getting them (a very un-wargamer attitude, I know – I once came back from Salute having spent just £2.50...). Still, I was on a roll, and I found a box dirt cheap on Ebay...

I also picked up the plastic Lord of Plagues, with a view to adding him in as a 6th model for a Dragon Rampant unit. That plan didn't come to pass: having built all 6 models, I dropped one (fortunately, my least favourite), and stood on it... its sword ended up in my foot, its arm broke off, and I cursed and threw it in the bin. Oh well, it's by no means my worst modelling accident. Five it is – at least this will save me having to paint up two more Plaguebearers...

Construction was straightforward, with the only real alterations coming in the form of a simplification of their armour – helmets were sheared down to plain metal masks, removing the horns and plumes, and the shoulderpads were chosen for simplicity, some having spines removed and replaced with drilled-in rust holes. I also chopped down a weapon or two, limited most of them to a single weapon, and carved a Nugling out of a stomach cavity. I'm not a huge fan of the over-the-top look, and much prefer the pin-headed, brutal anonymity of these guys.

Painting-wise, I followed a similar approach to these guys as I did for the Plagubearers, starting with a brown basecoat, which is now my preferred approach – the clarity compared to black is great, and it's much more forgiving in the nooks and crannies. Fleshtone were mixed – I threw in some Army Painter Barbarian Flesh and Necrotic Flesh (the latter was used for the Plaguebearers) and added a touch of ochre for a couple of the models. Everything then got a really sloppy wash of green and purple to add a varied and unhealthy hue to different body parts. Finally, I gave a few areas a little wash of watered-down Barbarian Flesh to bring the complexion back up to 'human' in parts. I think it gives them a really quite disconcerting part-human, part-demon appearance.

Slap on some plate metal, and everything else was a doddle – dark yellow for the cult robes, which will be continued on the cannon fodder (it also picks up on the larger boils on the Plaguebearers, tying – I hope – these two units together), boils and pustules picked out in cream, white and bright yellow, open wounds in bright red, and the weird spherical blisters in a dark pink. Wash everything top to tail and job's a good'un.

With a couple of exceptions (e.g. a tentacle mistakenly painted as a ragged length of loincloth, a skintone a little too close to the yellow of the robes), I'm really happy with these models. They represent a noticeable (for me, anyway) evolution in my painting, and were painted with a confidence that I don't normally have when it comes to painting. There's a long way to go before painting takes the place of kitbashing in my affections, but...

The Plaguetouched, berserkers of the Choleric Order of the Yellow Bile.

Next up for the Choleric Order of the Yellow Bile (in no particular order): the faithful (Frostgrave Cultists) and the wretched (Hobbit Goblins).

Poxwalkers

I've had a box of GW's Plaguebearer demons for a while - I nabbed it when a FLGS was selling off all its GW stock (should have grabbed the Demon Prince too, dammit!) at a pittance. I've sat on them since, not really knowing what to do with them.

I still don't really know what to do with them, but the other weekend I just wanted to do some modelling and painting, and didn't have the inspiration to do anything more unique. Instead, I carved off the horns and filled in some of the more ridiculous bodies (one with a Nurgling cavorting in the stomach cavity and one with a gaping maw in the belly), and set to painting.

Were it not for the horns, the cyclopean eyes, and the random mutations, these might be the best zombie models around.

One 'gut-mouth' survived, the other became a vague mass of innards. Thank-you, Polystyrene Cement.

These were my first attempts using a brown basecoat. It felt a little odd as I'm so used to black, but I think I may switch over to it for future models. Paintjobs were simple - zombie-green flesh, purple wash on the swollen limbs, open wounds and exposed organs in dark red, large pustules picked out in dark yellow, smaller pimples in white (I had my doubts but it does make them really pop... no pun intended), and a few spots picked out in a bubblegum pink for contrast (again, had my doubts about that, but it worked well). Finish off with my usual brown wash all over. Basecoat to basing in about 5 hours.

Got to say, I never really liked the Plaguebearer models - the rictus grins, mono-horns, and capering Nurglings always seemed a bit silly. Having actually had them in-hand, I'm something of a convert. The 'silliness' is far less than I originally thought and, with the removal of the horns, I like the sinister profile they have. The filthy, plague-ridden hordes of Nurgle seem a good fit for my wash-heavy style of painting too. Might have to try some more. Blightkings, you say...?

The horde. I'm kinda tempted to throw in some Mantic zombies to make these guys really look like the bruisers they are.

Dioramarama

We (Frostgrave author Joseph McCullough and myself) were up in Nottingham recently, and decided to call in at Warhammer World and take a look around the exhibition hall/museum. When in Rome, and all that. This was actually our second visit in the last couple of months, but we were on a schedule for the first, and only managed to make it to the store (conveniently enough to pick up some Genestealer Cultists for me and some Lord of the Rings models for Joe) before having to head off.

This time, we did it right, and made sure we had time to see everything before rolling out. First off, a tour of the Warhammer World exhibition is well worth the price of admission (£7.50, as it happens). I'd been a few years back (well, perhaps more than a few...), courtesy of a friend then working there, but the scale of the current gallery of models and dioramas past, present and future is a far cry from what I remember.

The 'tour' takes you through several rooms, starting with the 'nostalgia hall', showing off classic models from the early days of Citadel/GW. I seem to recall this being more extensive; as it is, it's a little brief for my liking - I would have loved to see more of the old toys. Still, it did include these two beauties, which are just as good as I remember:

Warhammer Quest. A lovely, characterful diorama with some great touches, such as the Wizard's hat getting transfixed by an arrow and a Trollslayer about to fall through a trapdoor.

Lustria. A simple scene, lacking the complexity of some, but telling a superb story of a rescue mission and an interrupted sacrifice. I can't remember if this accompanied a specific release or not, but it's stuck with me!

From Nostalgia, the exhibition leads into Warhammer/Age of Sigmar, showing off Studio paint-jobs for what I believe is every model in the current range. Impressive, to be sure, but it was still the dioramas that caught the eye. The standouts for me were these three:

The first of two paired dioramas for Age of Sigmar, this one shows Wood Elves (or whatever they're called these days) sweeping from the forest to overrun an Orc warband.

The second of the paired dioramas, showing the devastation wrought by a victorious orc horde. Both are simple scenes, but do a great job of conveying their source material. I actually started to appreciate the Age of Sigmar 'realm' set-up with this visual depiction.

From the relatively subtle, the dioramas swing upwards to the colossal, such as this Nurgle army marching out from its fortress.

There were some that just didn't photograph well, unfortunately, such as a 360-degree Skaven vs Dwarves scene with the combat taking place through a honeycomb of caves and tunnels.

Feeling philosophical, I did comment that the dioramas seem to be a perfect metaphor for the evolution of the GW Hobby - from small and quirky to big, brash and just plain more. The huge dioramas include lots of lovely little touches, but you do have to hunt for them a bit, or just stumble onto them by looking at it just right...

From the Warhammer hall, it's through into the Imperium of Man, a hall given over to Space Marines, Imperial Guard and all those chaps. Perhaps I'm just not a fan of the Marines as much as I used to be, but this hall I went round pretty quickly. The highlight was the awe-inspiring Pilgrym terrain and gangs by such folk as Jeff Vader and the Iron Sleet guys. Having worked with Johan (Jeff Vader) on a couple of projects for Osprey, this was one of the main reasons for my visit, and I'm pleased to say that it's even better in real life than it looks in the photos I've seen online and in White Dwarf (and that's saying something!).

After the Imperium comes the 'Enemies of Mankind' hall, given over to everything that isn't a Marine or a Guardsman. I absolutely believe the anecdotes about GW selling one Marine for every other model if the balance shown in the exhibition is anything to go by!

A classic Crimson Fists vs. Orks scene? Yes, please.

The conclusion of the tour is really phenomenal. A colossal scene that fills a stairwell, with Khornate forces assaulting a Marine-held fortification. You enter it at the top, looking down from spires and towers on a battlescene that comes into focus as you circle down around it. It's a mammoth work, and needs to be seen to be believed.

Then, in the grand tradition of all good tours, it's out via the gift shop!

All told, I really enjoyed the trip, and with dozens of games tables and Bugman's Bar on the premises as well, it kinda made me wish I had a Warhammer army to play with. Then again, having seen the new Age of Sigmar Orcs up close, I am tempted...