The Prince of the Children

Well, it's been a while since I painted anything up. Been busy doing conversion work for most of Feb. and March, but I did just finish up the army general this weekend: Slaug the Disgorger, Daemon Prince of Nurgle. This was a very involved conversion, with parts from many different models. My idea for the model was based very loosely on The Violator from Todd MacFarlane's "Spawn" comic series. I wanted something big and hunched with a huge maw, skinny arms and legs, and oversize hands...the emaciated and disease-ridden aspect of Nurgle rather than the bloated, corpulent side again, as with the army BSB. The torso and tail are from the newer zombie dragon, the wings from the CD great taurus, the arms from the WE forest dragon, the legs were actually a pair of dragon arms from some long OOP dragon. The head is a severely chopped up Reaper model of a beholder (which I think they called something else), that I cut a lot off of, repositioned the jawline and sculpted a nose over the central eye. His eyes, claws and various other bitz are from tyranid sprues (a wonderful resource for many things nurglesque). His weapons are from the new GUO (sword), and the OK tyrant and chaos ogre champion (flail). The rope flail thethers and harnesses for the sword and loincloth is twisted wire from the cap of the delightfully thick Ommegang brew, which comes in a large, corked bottle. The rock he stands on is a chunck of pine bark. I had to sculpt up another rock on the rear of the base that has a chunck of metal as its core to add a little more weight to the back end of the model. Even so, it's a little top heavy, and I'll have to be careful running him in games. There was quite a bit of sculpting that went into getting this guy to look right, and I'm very pleased with the way it came out. The end result looks a little different than I'd originally pictured it, as far as the color scheme goes, but I like it. I generally run him with the Mark of Nurgle, Diabolic Splendor and Soul Hunger, and change up addition gifts such as the Blade of Ether, Cloud of Flies, Stream of Corruption (from whence he gets his title;), Spellbreaker and Plague Flail. When I go to the Midwest Rampage next month, the new Daemon book won't be out yet, so I will still be able to heap 100 points of gifts on him. I think I'll go with the CoF and PF in addition to the standard kit. I didn't use to think that the PF was such a great gift, but since playing with the Plagueriders in the DL list, I've come to really appreciate poison. 15 points to buy potential autowounds is a bargain, especially against enemy troop with T4 or higher. Not to mention, it counts as a magic weapon, and hits ethereal stuff. The BoE is nice, but takes up too many points for me to get all the other stuff I want. It's going to be annoying to not be able to give him the full compliment of 100 points of gifts soon, but I think the rest of the changes to the army will more than compensate for this slight;)