Time for something new... Beastmen 40k Renegades

Time to pick up one of my old projects...almost time for two weeks of holidays so got Some time to figure out how to best tackle this ...

I decided to put my Nurgle Tau on hold for now , having finished a sizeable force to play games with and achieved my goals for getting the army ready and nominated at Throne of Skulls tournament in the UK last June.

So.... Time for a new Warhammer 40k project : my Abhuman renegade Imperial Guard. :)  based on old 40k lore and fluff , these guys were once part of the armies you could play and a very real part of The Imperium.

My army Will focus mainly on " Abhuman Beastmen " , probably a herd that split off from the Imperium when the Inquisition started to hunt them down and kill them. They now wander around the galaxy and live a life of mercenaries.

The Siege of Vrakks and Warmachines of te Lost and Damned from Forgeworld and old GW 40k lore Will be the base and inspiration for this new project...

Wip ... started working on a "Salamander" for my renegade Beastmen guard, these are Light scout vehicles with No model yet made....lot of room to make a few myself with the Chimera as base :) converting time !!!

 You
have to start somewhere... pretty happy with the basis so far. Time to add some "beastmen"- look to it...!

 

So stay tuned....more is soon to come...

Throne of Skulls....

Hi all,

 

June 2015... the time had come at last... the Throne of Skulls tournament at Warhammer World in the UK was about to begin, the date was  20/21 June 2015. This was the moment I had lived up to for the last few months and also spend a looooot of hours painting and converting my Nurgle Tau for.

 

The cool irony was that this Tournament was the same that I had started the army for in the First place. 2 years before I planned to have my Nurgle Tau ready to join the Tournament, however....fate and some nasty personal affairs threw my whole plans into disarray. I ended up going the UK after all but decided not to join with an army far from complete...

 

So this time I planned and hoped that fate had a more positive outcome... And it did! After many hours of converting and painting I had my Nurgle Tau and 2 Nurgle Imperial Knight Titans finished just in time for Throne of Skulls !!

 

And MY OW MY....what a weekend it was!!! I played 5 awesome games , against awesome and great people. I had so much fun....and I got nominated for " Best Army", unfortunately I did not win the award itself but being nominated amongst the best 7 out of 100 is a BIG honour !!! The painting level was so high that I was even more amazed and proud to be amongst these proud 7 amazing armies and the Artists who painted them. :)

 

These pictures show my army that got nominated , and the cabinet that was located at Warhammer World, Lenton in the UK.

 

It has now been little more then two weeks ago but the rush is still fresh ;) Stay tuned for more to follow soon...more Nurgle Tau? Perhaps.... or perhaps something new....You can never have enough hobby projects right ;) ?!?

Power and Decay...

Hi peeps,

As promised: a little blog post today with pictures of my second Nurgle Imperial Knight Titan. It was also part of the Nurgle Tau army that went with me to Throne of Skulls June 2015 at Warhammer World in the UK.

 

For this second knight I decided to with a more different approach and have a more squad, broad and warrior looking theme to it. In the end I think this one represents a more "Warrior class spider" than the other Nurgle Knight.The fact that he is armed with the mega big chain sword only adds to this appearance.

 

 

Instead of increasing his height (as I did with the other one) I made this one look more broad by adding 3 carapace looking mutations on his back but tried to keep the overall "spider" theme that links it with the rest of the army.

 

Of course I wanted this second knight not be too "Normal" compared to the other one, so I made a wicked looking stinger which replaced the banner hanging underneath . I like to think it also represents his Hammer-of-wrath rule that he has in the game itself, I can see the stinger slashing out before any actual blows are done.

 

Normally I post a list of the Games Workshop kits and materials used, please notice that it is almost the same as with the other knight with a few minor differences.

 

Imperial Knight kit (duh!)

Chaos Spawn kit.

Nurgling kit.

Some tyranid bits.

Plague Drone kit.

Demon Prince kit.

Cities of Death Scenery kits (for the base).

Chaos Space Marine vehicle sprues.

Plague Bearer kit bits.

 

LOOOOOTS of green stuff and texture paint.

A piece of chain for on the chainsword (taken from a broken old necklace)

The smoke on the exhaust pipe was the "Fire bit" taken from the Fire Belly (Ogres WHF)

 

 

The end result is something I am really happy with, especially all the little details that make him stand aside from his brother ;) The little gargoyle statues on his rear, the chain hanging on his sword, the smoke coming out of his reactor exhaust pipes..etc...

 

All with all I think Grand Father Nurgle is pleased with this tribute and...I have another great looking model to add to my Army.:)

 

 

Plague and Carnage....

Time to bring out the big guns! I really needed some close combat strength and some serious firepower at BS 4 to add to my tournament list for Throne of Skulls June 2015. At first I wanted to add more Stealthsuits and the special character Shadowsun and maybe one or 2 extra Riptides. After a look around however (and the release of the AWSOME new Imperial Knight kit) I quickly decided to go for 2 Knight Titans! This even left me with spare points for my freshly converted and painted Nurgle Tau Stealth Suits , double win situation for me! :)

 

Yes, the Knight has great rules in the game. But that is not the main reason I decided to Nurgle-fy 2 of these beauties . I mean; look at the model! It is so full of detail already and it is full plastic! Making my hands itch to convert it! It is also VERY big, and comes with an equally big base, so LOOOOOOTS of space to put mutations, some free hands, chaos thingies...extra scenery and of course: Nurglings :) 

 

And of course I wanted the Gauntlet/ Claw!!! You can pick up and throw around things and it looks insane!!

 

I wanted to go all out on this model and decided that I needed to make it stand out from the rest of the army... but at the same time keep it in line with the Nurgle Tau. So I kept most of the paint scheme and only added a little bit of aged gold and bronze to where it would enhance the model but not make it stand apart from the rest of the army. 

 

Another important part for me was making sure the model was converted in the same way as the rest, it was Nurgle after all and fluff wise the Knights would be under the command of my Nurgle Tau Commander: " The Arachnid" . And especially that last point of view gave me the inspiration for a lot of the army and these models too.

 

I wanted to have the "Spider-like" look to be there and tried to achieve this with adding lots of spidery, bony mutations and spikes and also adding height to the model. Of course the carapace on top and the tongue are also extra attempts to make it look like the Nurgle infused curse of the commander also flows through his entire army.

 

Also for this model I want to add a list of the Games Workshop kits and materials used to achieve the end result:

• Imperial Knight kit (duh!)
• Chaos Spawn kit.
• Nurgling kit.
• Some tyranid bits.
• Plague Drone kit.
• Demon Prince kit.
• Cities of Death Scenery kits (for the base).
• Chaos Space Marine vehicle sprues.
• Plague Bearer kit bits.
• Empty Lipton Ice can (for the 2 banners on top and on the shoulder)
• LOOOOOTS of green stuff and texture paint.

 

The black and white checker pattern base was a no-brainer as it linked the Nurgle Knight even more to the rest of the models. But I needed something extra...and by increasing the height of the rocket pod and having extra nurglings on there who are holding up and waving with banners (which are made out of an empty Liptonice can) I found this little extra something to look at.

 

All with all I think it really became the centre piece I was looking for and I looked forward to work on his brother... after all I wanted 2 of them ;) stay tuned for  this second Nurgle Knight...

Stealth and Filth...

Hi There,

 

I know...I know...it has been a while since there was anything posted by me here on my little Nurgle Tau blog. BUT the good news is: despite being very busy with work and social life stuff ;)  , I have also been busy with my Nurgle Tau. And I must say that Grand Father Nurgle would be proud at the tributes that I will bring to you in the coming days !

 

So I proudly present to you: My unit of 3 Nurgle Tau Stealth Suits.

 

 

The original plan was to make 6 of them and include the Tau special character Shadow Sun, however I changed up my mind and decided to go for something slightly different. The choice to do this was mainly based on the list I wanted to take to the Throne of Skulls tournament in June 2015 at Warhammer World in the UK. But...more about that later ;)

 

 

 As you can see I went all out with kitbashing and converting these little guys and I think the result is pretty cool if I say so myself. The orginal plan was to only give a "Snout" to the guy with the fusion blaster...but I liked the look so much I decided to give the other 2 a "Snout" as well.

 

I have already played a few games with them and on the table they look even better! The only downside is that due to all the bits and conversions they became 2 times as big as the orginal Tau Stealthsuits. So for rules as line of sight and cover saves they have become a more easy target, however... to see them lurking to the ruins, licking stuff and doing whatever they do is worth all that!

 

 

As normal I want to give you a little list of the Games Workshop boxes I used to convert these models:

• Tau Stealthsuits.
• Chaos Spawn kit.
• Chaos spacemarine vehicle sprues.
• Chaos Plague Drones.
• Cities of Death Scenery kits (for the base)
• Greenstuff.
• Texture paint.

So that is all for now, but more is soon to come! I have finished 2 Imperial Knights that I have painstakingly converted to nurgle...so that would be: Nurgle Knights ;)... stay tuned for pictures and blogs of those big boys ... 

Work in progress ... Nurgle Tau Stealth Suits....

yeah yeah....I know, it has been too long since I wrote something on my little Nurgle Tau Blogg here. But good news is: I am posting again and there is more coming... and of course you must see it all from a positive perspective ;) The longer they get to rot...the better looking they will become...hahahha

Anyway, what is cooking in the Nurgle Tau kitchen? I will tell you, a nice sized squad of Stealth Suits. 6 of them and they will get 2 shield drones to go with that. The end goal will also be converting the commander Shadow Sun model and including her into this squad.

 

As you can see on this work in progress pictures I decided that I will stick to the orginal "smaller size" base and not go with the new slighty bigger ones GamesWorkshop is allowing on your models now too. Why not??? I hear you thinking...

The reason is very simple actually : normally I would go for the bigger base any time, because it allows me to put more scenic basing on them ;)....but in this case the models turned out (after converting) to be already twice as big as the normal ones. Now...in the game this gives the enemy already twice more target to aim at and makes it already twice as difficult to hide them in cover...hahahaha.. Putting them on  bigger bases too would make this even more difficult.

People who know me or have been following this blog know that I am not the most competive player when it comes to designing killer death star lists...not that I cannot do so, but because I do not like to do so ;)  Anyways, for a under powered unit already, I did not want to make them a more easy target then they already are :)

But...back to the work in progress!! I decided to go for a weird looking mix of stealth suit and nurgle demon looking style. I can imagine these guys sneaking, scrounging and lurking in the ruins and debris. Scouting ahead of the main army to cause some havoc and make GrandFather Nurgle proud....and....because they just like to sniff and lick at random things ;) hahahah

I like the way the snout/slurf  (is slurf even an English word? Could be a Dutch thing ;) hahaha) turned out and it almost gives them a comical , funny and friendly look. And that is exactly what I wanted, so back to complete the building process for these guys!

 

Ow..for those interested: I used the Plague Drones of Nurgle and The ChaosSpawn kit for this conversion...also some bit from ChaosSpace Marine Vehicles and of course the Tau Stealth Team .

Stay tuned.... pictures will be posted as soon as the building is complete... 
 

Nastiness from a distance....

One of the more uncommon sights in most Tau armies; The Sniper Drone Team. How much fun it was to build, convert and paint these guys! I really like the "sniper" concept, in all games and even in reality... I think it is the sort of ideal warrior concept in a cool package, able to kill unseen from a far distance...

Anyways, I wanted to work these guys into the trend that is seen throughout my Nurgle Tau army and especially on the drones. I wanted the drones the drones to have a general look and I think I was able to do this by making sure all of them have at least one horn ;) Which makes them look like little stingrays or something like that :)

I also liked to think that because of all the filth, decease, corruption and mutation clinging to these guys it makes them difficult to locate. The flies and other nastiness confuses enemy sensors and detection devices and their look makes them blend into the surrounding .

The spotter was really nice to convert, making it look like it is lurking behind something that looks like a mutated sea shell like device. The spikes and corruption were easy to apply because the shape is organic and it almost seems natural the way it turned out to look like.

The kits I used:

• Tau Sniper team.
• Nurglings.
• City of Death scenery kits.
• Chaos Spacemarine vehicle bits
• Chaos Spawn Bits.

 

 

I am really thinking of building another team, the main reason is that I like the drone models and I also like to use them in the game itself. They are pretty cheap to field and having long range rapid fire snipers who are good at hiding and hit on rolls of 2's ?!...that is just too cool not to use :)

 

 

Stay tuned....coming up next:..... Riptide nr 2....

News travels fast... plagues even faster...

It was time for another model and the choice was easy: The Tau Piranha, fast skimmer. Funny enough this particular Tau model was the one where it all started with. I had the idea of making this entire Nurgle Tau army and the piranha was the first to pop up in my mind...

 

Like I wrote before in one of the earlier posts in this blog; I pick the models on what they look like first and then see how I can use them in a semi-competive list. At the time of starting this project the Piranha was not very popular and even now with the new Tau Codex, it is still not the most used unit choice out there. For me....that is even more reason to use it! ;) I like to play with the underdog's in every game and Warhammer 40k is no different for me.

 

Of course the Tau Codex is one of the strongest Codexes out there today now, so including units like the Hammerhead tank and this Piranha are even more important to me...they tend to make the list more friendly and less overpowered. And yes, I do care about that because I like to have a nice friendly game which is fun...blowing the other player from the table in turn one is not my style, I also like to have friends ;) hahaha

But back to the Piranha: as you can see it is full of Nurglings...which is cooooool ! You can never have enough of them and I can really see those little fellows having the time of their demon-life zooming across the battlefield and causing serious mischief ;) And another funny fact is: they DO that! I have had it a couple of times that they were completely ignored by my opponent because they were the least of his problems... the rest of army was a way bigger danger to him. And so it actually survived the entire game, even being able to score an objective here and there and shoot of the last hull point of a wave serpent :)

 

The kits that I used for this conversion are:

• Tau Piranha.
• Nurglings.
• Chaos space Marines vehicle bits.
• Chaos warriors, Chaos Demons and Tyranid bits.
• For the base I used the Cities of Death terrain kits.
• I also found a nice looking funky smelling moss at a Christmas fair which looked awesome on my bases so the Piranha was actually the first to receive that red/yellow looking stuff.

The plans are to give this little flying Nurgling circus at least 1 more brother to join him on the battlefield. The Piranha is just to cool to build, convert and use in a game to not have more then one ;) Stay tuned as it will probably pop up somewhere during the upcoming weeks....now that I think of it....maybe I will even do more then 2 ...hehehehe...

Coming up next.... Sniper Drone team.....  
 
 

Long Strike...with a twist .....

In my opinion one of the most classic iconic models of the Tau army is the Hammerhead Tank. The recognizable organic shape marks it as a true Tau design vehicle ...and it turned out that it was an awesome kit to work with to achieve my goal as well ! :) It also makes for a great centre piece for my army and was loads of fun to work on!

 

The organic shapes allowed for a lot of space to convert and put damage, corruption and mutations on the hammerhead itself. Its also gave me opportunity to put a lot of chaos symbols and spikes etc on the structure of the tank itself. The option to have the smart missile system was a no-brainer for me....not only because I like to use them during a game but mostly because I LOVE to paint the missile heads a sickly yellow. Imagine that they are a weird kind of jelly orbs that you know you should NOT touch, but it is so tempting to reach out and squeeze or poke them ;)...

 

Of course this model would not be the same if there were no nurglings to be found somewhere ;) There are several to be seen on the tank itself and also one on the base, sitting on the root that sticks out a little bit. And of course I cannot blame them, if you were a happy, bouncing around Nurgling ...would you not hitch a ride on an awesome tank like this??? Of course you would! :)

But, there are also two very special Nurglings, I like to call them "NurgleStrike" . I use the 2 nurglings sitting on top of each other in the cockpit as a proxy for the "Longstrike" upgrade. It is very easy to imagine those 2 pushing buttons and randomly shooting and blasting all in sight, and using the upgrade rules they actually prove to be very good at it too ;)

 

As I also used on my Riptide there is a big length of chain worked into this model, in the case of this hammerhead it can be seen along the length of the main gun. Since both the hammerhead and the riptide are big machines with the potential to house a demonic entity, I like to think that the chains are used to secure them while not deployed on the battlefield....just to be sure they do not randomly start to rampage among their own ranks, they chain them up inside a transport vessel for example....

The kits that I used on this hammerhead were:

• Tau Hammerhead.
• Nurglings.
• Chaos space marine tank bits
• Tyranid tentacles.
• Chaos Spawn bits.
• Piece of chain from a hardware store.

Stay tuned....next up: Tau Piranha....aka : "Nurgling Festival "

Playing with the big boys now....

Of course I had to add a riptide as well. As a matter of fact, I started this project just a few months before the current Codex; Tau came out a time ago. And when I first saw the Riptide model I was completely in love. It makes such a good centrepiece for an army and especially with my Nurgle Tau it gave me the chance to go all crazy with converting. To be honest: I bought 3 of them at once ;)

I tried to make good use of the size of the model in a couple of ways. First of all, because everything is HUGE on this model I was able to actually cut, saw and damage the model for real... which made the outcome of battle/corruption damage much more realistic.

 

It also gave me the chance to experiment with GW texture paint and how I could use that to create rust, filth and corruption effects on the Riptide. Because I had so much room to work with on the parts of the model I was able to do a lot...but still preserve the look that makes the Riptide model recognizable and so cool.

Last but not least it allowed me to add lots of bony spikes, mutations and of course: Nurglins!!!!

 

The big oval base was also a favourite part of doing this model. I wanted to give it special care and I hope I have created a little scene that gives you a little more to look at. A place to add more Nurglings, some nastiness dripping out of a barrel (whats in there???) and just a nice piece of Imperial architecture being corrupted and turned into a beautiful garden ;).

Being able to use a lot of the "tile plates" also gave me the opportunity to unify the Riptide with the rest of the army easily.

 

In the end it came down to one last task: naming the Riptide. I think a model deserves this if the end result is what you wanted it to be ;) I played a couple of games with him and the outcome was very one sided...whoever was inside this Riptide suit is no longer who he was and really lost it....hahahha... Every time I played this guy he managed to fail his nova checks and also his dangerous terrain checks when jumping in and out of cover...and wound himself ! So That earned him the name: "The Lost One".

 

Models and sets that I used for this model were:

• Chaos Spawn set.
• Tau Riptide.
• Tyranids claws and tentacles.
• Nurglings.
• City of death scenery boxes.
• Battlefield scenery bag (GW)
• Chaos Space marine, Chaos Demon and Chaos Warrior bits and pieces.

 

At the moment of writing this blog I am almost ready to start on the second Riptide. I will use that opportunity to create a little painting guide and basing tutorial which I will also put on here in a blog as soon as it is all finished.

Thanks for all the feedback so far people! It really motivates me to continue with this blog and build and paint more models for Grandfather N.....uhhhhh.....I mean: The Greater Good ;)

Stay tuned....more to follow soon.....

How it continued...

Of course the commander and his 2 suit strong bodyguard team was only the beginning. An army needs troops and I decided not to go for the "farsight enclave-supplement" just yet... I do not want to create another Farsight spin off, but a unique heavily converted army with cool fluff to back it up.

And therefore I decided to go for another approach and decided not to build a good list but just take the models that I really liked and wanted to convert. Of course I kept track of their type and made sure they fit into an organisation chart.

Anyways, I decided to go for 2 squads of fire warriors and I wanted to continue the trend that I started with the "Arachnid" commander; heavily converted using only GW product and bits. And of course the end result needed to look like I wanted, heavily corrupted and muted, but still recognizable as Tau models.

By adding the nurglings throughout the army I wanted to add another nice set of details, and hint further at the fact just how corrupted the army is. Nurglings like to play and I like to see it as a blessing from Grandfather Nurgle that there are so many of the little playful demons among the army of the "Arachnid". A silent fact that he is starting to "care" about his new playthings ;)

I really like the end result, and yes....I have some favourite models in there already! I like the guy with the one eye and the snout, the "leader" with the 3 horns and dubious symbol he is making with his middle finger and the guy who has a tentacle instead of a leg. I know that one of my gaming buddies also likes this guy and finds him a bit sad, but hey; in every story there must be at least one person who gets the bad outcome of the deal and I guess this guy finds it all a lousy deal in the end ;)

The squads are named: "The Decayed Ones" and "The Blight Bringers".

Because I was asked by some of you already how the army was build, converted and painted I will also try to add lists of bits, models and materials used to create the end result. I will try my utmost best to make sure that I do not forget anything! But as you might have already seen: I tend to go crazy with bits and conversions so if you see something that you do not recognize , just drop a reply and ask me if you want to know ! ;)

Bits and sets that I used for this:

• Fire Warriors boxed set 
• Plague bearers boxed
• Nurglings.
• Chaos Spawn boxed set
• Multiple other bits taken from Chaos Warriors, Chaos Demons and Chaos Space Marines and Tyranids sets and models.

The basing is done using multiple parts of GW Cities of Death terrain sets, which are awesome in the diversity that you can use them...and I just love the way you can also use them for basing your models. I also like the fact that they come with the option to either use the metal like plates or the "tile floor" plates that I decided to use.

By using the tiles I hoped to create some "ease and order" in otherwise very chaotic models with lots of colours and contrast already. The black/white tile theme is something that you will see throughout the entire army and I hope it will help to unify all the models into a cool army :)

I also got some questions from interested readers about what I used to create the bases and a few requests to put up a painting guide for the bases and the models. And you know what? I will try to make that happen the next few weeks... I have another riptide almost ready for painting and I will do my best to create a step by step guide (with pictures) to show the steps and techniques used. Of course I will do the same for the base .

 

 

Next up:....my first riptide.... stay tuned........

Where it all started....

 

 

..the basic idea behind it was a Tau recon force that was all but killed by a force of Death Guard....

They made the surviving Tau commander "named the Arachnid" (for his spider like tactics) a deal...join the side of father Nurgle and get your army "back" ....and maintain your "life" ...or join them in mindless servitude...

Well he had no real choice and agreed... and the result is a mutated Tau force led by "The Arachnid" who is still Tau...sort of... ;)  ...

I know they are hard for chaos to influence with no psykers and such but Free will....yeah....we all know what happened to the Primarchs  ;) ...

 

The pictures below are the first models that I converted and painted, it shows the Commander and his 2 comrades. Who could function as bodyguards...there is a 3rd one standing ready to be painted....also can be seen: his loyal shield drone ...

 

 

 

 

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