Building Better Nurgle Chaos Space Marines

This is all entirely subjective, of course, and should be read as such. It's really a matter of cash flow and personal taste that's got me thinking this way, and my initial pondering on how to build on the contents of Dark Vengeance. So here we go...

HQ

This one's easy as I already have it covered. A while ago I picked up this rotten lord from Scibor. I really love this mini and I think it makes for an excellent stand-in for Typhus. I also have the Nurgle Daemon Prince, so it's all happy days for HQ.

Troops

Here's where we get creative. I've been looking for ages for a cheaper alternative to the GW Plague Marines but with no luck. This week those creative chaps at Avatars of War have released their Corrupters of Apocalypse and I think I'm in potential conversion heaven. Grab some bolters, some of the great biohazard backpacks from MaxMini and... these could be ideal.

In addition I'll have a blob squad of 35 cultists from my Dark Vengeance boxes. And obviously a batch of 35 plague zombies - I don't pay any attention to these silly arguments floating around that the limit is 10 for these squads, because it's obviously an error in the codex and big zombie squads is clearly in the spirit of the game.

Elites

With two Helbrutes and a bunch of Chosen these slots are sewn-up for now.

Fast Attack

Like many people I don't like the new robot chicken that much. It's fine, but not very Nurgle. So I was intrigued when this monstrosity popped up on the GW blog the other day:

Pretty inventive, don't you think? I'm definitely planning on doing my own - even more Nurglesque - conversion of the Orcs and Goblin's massive spider. Should be a blast! 

Heavy Support

I'm not that keen on the dino-bots either. So my plans for a ForgeFiend begin with...

The Forge World Chaos Siege Giant. I'll 'Nurgle' this chap up with a back covered in boils and seeping wounds and bash together some ectoplasma cannons that will sit within the arm blades and be wired into his flesh in a very daemon engine sort of way. 

Don't hold your breath for any of this to happen as I am, as experience has proved, a slow lane hobbyist. But I'm really starting to get into these ideas...

Chaos Space Marines Codex PDF An Official Leak? (And A Couple Of Other Thoughts)

So there's a very high quality PDF of the new Chaos Space Marine codex out on the internet. It's clearly a scan of the book and it's been floating around for a few days. Obviously I'm not going to link to it here, but it's pretty easy to find if you can click a mouse... It's a big saving compared to the hefty £30 price tag! (Wink). Talking about this last night in my regular gaming group someone raised the possibility that GW had leaked the codex purposefully so that people spent some of the extra cash of models. An interesting thought.

Other thoughts about the codex? Well on a first glance it looks pretty good and pretty much as expected. I like the way the different powers are represented and the animosity there is between them. Overall it's a boon for players shaping their army around a particular god. Also, Cultists as a troops choice are very useful (for me anyway...) and it's very useful given the contents of Dark Vengeance that a squad can contain both autopistols and autoguns. That means my crossbow toting conversions can be autoguners gained from autopistol models. Handy.

40K Titan Conversion (1980s Style!)

Thanks to Orlygg for pointing me in the right direction in super quick time and also to Zhu Bajiee for filling in some additional details. Here is the 1980s converted Titan I was looking for yesterday. It's by Tony Cottrell and utilises parts from a Star Wars AT ST walker and a Red Scavenger Zoid. I think the line suggesting it's 'scratch built' is rather misleading considering the heavy use of toys - it's hardly scratch built as I would understand it these days, but hey ho. Actually that point has got me thinking about my own possible effort in the future. I have this idea for a Lords of Decay (Death Guard) Titan that's something like a daemon engine, as in, it's crewed by some foul creature like the Soul Grinder. Early days of course, especially considering I'm not even planning on getting properly started with Lords of Decay until late in the year. I am, however, starting a 'Titan bitz box' to collect useful bits and bobs...

They don't make them like they used to! Tony Cottrell's 'scratch built' Traitor Titan