Word Bearers Army - Now With Guard

Been a while since I posted to this blog, but frankly it'd also been a while since I did any hardcore 40k!  Yea, after the high note of Feast of Blades, I sorta mellowed out on 40k for a while, tried experimenting with some variants on a theme, but still throwing 3 maulerfiends and a Khorne lord on the table.  Not much seemed to be helping my enthusiasm, really.  But then I ended up with an Imperial Guard army!

Daemonic Tank Commander - Leman Russ Punisher Conversion

Well this blog started with a painting tutorial, what better way to revive it than with some painting/modelling stuff.  I recently acquired an Imperial Guard army to add to my Word Bearers force, and while I got a great deal on all the stuff I acquired, it was lacking a few key elements.  Namely, Leman Russ tanks.  So I picked up one Leman Russ and threw it together straight out of the box in a Punisher configuration, replacing the Imperial symbols with chaos brass etching, but I wanted to do something special for the tank commander.

Cue this guy:

Feast of Blades Open Surprises Me

So I took a list to the Feast of Blades open this past weekend that had a lot of things in it I considered sub-optimal, even silly.  I had three maulerfiends.  I had a chosen squad full of plasma guns in my Elite slot.  And I had a Skull Cannon, which nobody seems to like over the Soul Grinder and I don't understand why.  And I ended up placing third by some miracle.  I'll be the first to admit I had lucky dice rolls in my last game against a wave-serpent spam Eldar list, but at the same time my opponent made a tactical error in his first turn that I think cost him the game.  

Anyway, I also want to take this moment to show off some new additions to my army.  My new list demanded the addition of a fourth Rhino, and I decided to finally give those metal boxes some love in the modelling department.  I sprung for some FW doors for the Chosen's plasma-bus, and I decided to give one of my squads a commemorative hood ornament, honoring the reason my army exists in the first place, the Know No Fear HH book.

Word Bearers at WarGamesCon 2013

So the Word Bearers went out to WarGames Con a couple weeks ago, and I had a lot of fun.  I ended up 3-4, and was doing well at the end of the first day, placing among the top 5 tables of the Rogue Trader bracket, but then two near-tablings Day 2 dropped me down significantly.  I'll go over the games in another post, but for now, I wanted to just showcase the army, most notably because the lighting in the tournament hall is far better than my apartment's.

Full Army shot

Alternative Plaguebearer Painting pt 2 - Verdigris Swords & Detailing

What, an update close enough to when it was promised?  Heresy!  That said, on with part 2.  Part 1 of this tutorial can be found here.

Step 6 - Sores/Pimples

Now for the sores.  Like the gloss, this step is optional and can be a bit tedious if you're painting hordes of these guys, but if you want to go the extra mile, here's how.  First, paint each sore with Cadian Fleshtone.  Don't worry if some of the paint goes outside the lines, so to speak.  We'll be covering that up soon.

Alternative Plaguebearer Painting pt 1 - Flesh and Bones

So I couldn't think of a better initial post here than to do a painting tutorial.  I'm not an amazing painter by any means, but I was rather pleased with the result of this method, and I hope it helps out someone else.

When I started working on my plaguebearers, the one thing I knew I wanted was a non-green color scheme.  Green always seemed a very cartoonish color for me with Nurgle daemons, so I set out to make something a little different.  The final result looks something like this:

If this is of interest to you, read on!