At long bloody last, I finished the friggin' Plague Marines.

These guys were an absolute slog to finish. I'm not sure if I lost motivation, or if I just don't have the interest in Nurgle that I used to, or maybe there was just a lot more to do than I initially anticipated, or maybe something else, or even all of the above.

I picked these guys as an army right after high school. I spent about a year back in Santa Cruz, living out of an RV with my parents, and what little money I had I spent on a small army in order to hang out with the other nerds on the coast.

I chose the Plague Marines for a few different reasons. Firstly, at the time, Chaos was one of the loosest, most variable armies in the game. There was basically no limit to how you could customize them. That appealed to me a lot. Secondly, I liked how some of them looked like they had little beer bellies. My girlfriend thought it was hilarious. Thirdly, they're really hard to kill and an insecure part of me appreciates that. Fourthly, the miniature I used for my commander's base was like the coolest fucking badass on the board and I was enamoured.

Now, being very poor and living out of a cramped RV, I didn't have a great opportunity to really do everything I wanted with them. My first modding with them was a simple head swap on the commander. I grew pretty disillusioned with them, and by the time I moved to Arizona I was more interested in regular old space marines again.

Since I'm going through all the armies I've bought and wanted to put together at some point, the Plague Marines were next, chronologically. I really hadn't thought about them much in the past decade or so, but they're a solid army and are much more balanced than the Deathwing are.

Cob's Plague Marines

These guys are made with the 3rd Edition revised Codex of Chaos Space Marines in mind, considered by most hypernerds to be the greatest product that Games Workshop ever made for its armies, and is generally a tad overpowered. 1500 points, using Army Painter paints.

These guys are a balanced armored infantry, with a little mobility in the transport tanks and some hard hitting artillery with some elite infantry for a little added oomph.

Chaos Space Marines in-universe are basically jackass super soldiers who worship daemons, and these guys are worshippers of Nurgle, the god of plagues and all around nice guy. His followers are diseased and horrid mutants, most of them growing into their armor as a second skin.

I used a desert yellow as a base, but the dark tone I used to shade them gave them a grimy look that I really appreciate, like they're covered in mud.

I really like the look of the older Plague Marines who were modeled on World War I German soldiers with their pickelhaubs and gas masks. The newer guys are much more mutated. I say newer, but all of these guys are the metal dudes from the early 2000s at the latest.

These elite infantry guys consist of a squad of terminators and a squad of obliterators. The obliterators are supposed to be ancient chaos marines who have grown so mutated in their armor they can manifest any weapon by simpling willing it from their bodies.

Chaos terminators have this annoying feature of having a big row of spikes on their backs. I only kept that for the squad leader, and used putty to fill in the gaps for the other two. The minimum squad size is actually 4 guys, but the night before I was to work on them, Snyper stole the arm off one of them, and I didn't have the time or patience to order another one. I'll add him in someday.

For the obliterators, all I did was give them helmets (you know I'm a stickler for that), and tried to give them some dynamic poses. I am especially proud of the squad leader here, hulking forth.

So this is where I got stuck. These big artillery guys were the most challenging projects I've ever done in the hobby.

As I mentioned earlier, Chaos has a great advantage in modeling in that you can basically do anything you want to them. The warping energies of the Eye of Terror produce an infinite expression of monstrousness.

For the dreadnought, I had this idea twenty years ago for a serpent-like monster, but earlier versions of it kept getting mistaken for Slaanesh. I decided to lean into the tentacles by adding more in order to make it look really fucked up. I had to use a lot of putty to fill in gaps, and I had to thrash down a metric fuckton of pewter in order to shape this thing into something suitable for my purposes. It took a long time until I felt it looked right.

The defiler on the other hand is something I only recently came up with. I really hate the look of a generic out-of-the-box defiler, I think it looks plain and kinda stupid. But I didn't exactly have a great idea for a substitute, so about six months ago I just looked through my boxes of parts and started throwing something together. I'm fairly happy with the result. Look up what a regular Chaos Defiler looks like, you'll see a world of difference. I like the tarantula-esque appearance of this one. I feel like the paint job could be better, but considering how much of a mental block I formed working on this one, I say fuck it, good enough.

My commanders consist of a Chaos Lord and a Chaos Sorcerer. I've done quite a bit of modding to both.

The sorcerer came from some thrashed pieces I found in a bits box in a store about twenty years ago. I was really fond of the cloaked head with the chainmail veil. I knew it would make a good sorcerer someday. The scythe comes from the original metal Typhus miniature, who formed the basis for my chaos lord. I modified it down into being held with one hand and switched arms so he'd be holding it with his left hand. The scroll comes from an old sister of battle mini, and I thought made him look suitably wizardly. This thing is also heavily frankensteined, and doesn't really have a single original modded mini as a base.

This chaos lord has been through so many variations. Originally being Typhus, a special character, I've given him many different heads and arms. I actually didn't mod it as much as you might expect. I gave it new arms because I love the idea of him being just a clawed monstrosity barely able to maintain sanity, prefering to tear his enemies to shreds with his hands. The head is actually two heads cut in half, the top half from a newer plague marine head, and the bottom half from a 90s chaos sorcerer. I also thrashed up the top of the head to add a cyber eye (you know I love cyber eyes) and then drilled a couple tiny holes to make an unsettling countenance.

His base is different from the others because it was the first custom base I ever made, being a few pieces of styrofoam covered in superglue, which melted and hardened it and then was covered in sand.

Yeah, that was a lot more difficult that I thought it'd be. Even with my newfound sense of motivation, this put it to the test and still took me a year of various dilly-dallying before I could finish it.

I guess I'm in no hurry though. It's not like anyone's clamouring for a game of 3rd edition 40K. But still, I'll be game if anyone else is.

Still, I am proud of how it turned out. Another big project finished.