Plague Marines

Okay I have some time so I'm going to put up posts about my contribution to the Black Crusade Charity army. I have been a big fan of the charity armies ever since I saw the Storm Wardens one two years ago so when I found the announcement that a new army was being done I jumped at the opportunity to contribute. I quickly contacted Falk and offered up two 8-man squads of 'Zombiefied'  Plague Marines. I also offered to create a new Abaddon for the army but that role had already been taken. Falk was happy to accept my Plague Marines though. Through Falk I was introduced to Dave who has agreed to paint my ugly little fuglies.

So first up:

 This was one of the first models I built for the unit. I wanted to give the unit a peice-mail look and feel to it, like the armor is constantly rotting away and being replaced by whatever the individual member can find to replace it. So I went with a mix of loyalist armor parts and Chaos parts making a very conscious effort to avoid using the same styles of armor detailing on the same model.

I'll be honest; I've never much liked the Games Workshop version of the plague marines. The whole bloated stomach... it just doesn't scream "Plague Marines" to me. So instead I went for more of a "rotted armor" sort of look to the marines, showing that Nurgle's toxins and acids slowly eat away at the armor. To accomplish this I went at the model rather liberally with my pin vice, drilling dozens of small holes and then going back and selectively drilling a hand full of medium sized holes in the model. I then spread a layer of plastic glue across the holes and moved the glue around with an old brush. The glue partially melted the plastic around the holes while the brush pushed the pliable plastic around creating the rotted look on the model.

In this particular case I wanted to make the model mostly marine and just show his army rotting away in some parts indicating he had recently replaced over parts of his armor. So I was a bit more selective about the rotting process.

One part I do particularly like on the model is the Plague knife I gave him:

I took a chain sword left arm, removed the sword and attached a zombie knife blade to the bottom of the hand. I then attached the heft of a chaos sword to the top of the hand. I think the Plague knife is something that just isn't seen in game much and it's a real shame. The Plague Knife is as much a part of Plague Marine lore as anything else.