More Nurglings and 90s Necromunda

Longtime readers may recognize these models were started a while back. Real OGs will remember the D-Cup Debutants from the Delta Quadrant. I wonder if I can find that old gang sheet in my mom’s storage room, but Necromunda is on hold, my dreams of a horde of Nurglings is also on hold as Bill is all about a Warhammer 40,000 narrative campaign now.

None of these models feature in my starting 50 PL, but they could get drafted, the Escher could become a temporary Chaos Cultists and I’ve actually gotta have 50 Necromunda models that will become Chaos Cultists, I bought another box on an impulse last week.

This is not my best work and taking a high resolution photo reveals I did not do more highlights and washes on the tiny skulls. Sometimes my hodgepodge paint collection lets me down as I have old poorly mixed paint which I try to apply in a hurry late at night. But it is a poor craftsman who blames his tools. Those of us who’ve been painting since the 90s blame our eyes.

I actually did a pretty good job at the eyes of these models, though sometimes I’m too subtle for my own good. All the Nurglings have beady yellow eyes and I think I used a new yellow paint, that I bought at the Sentry Box. The Escher has tiny blue pupils and I discovered that I’m better off taking off my new stronger prescription glasses to paint fine details. Someone even suggested I get reading glasses just for painting, maybe later this year or next.

These models let me try out a bunch of new paints from Contrast paints to oddball ones that I got back in the day or bought recently. I have big plans to order some specialty paints and already have an order into Warcolours as I need some Nostalgia 88. But I also plan to get some fancy rust paints and various vomits, grimes, and bodily fluids.

I doubt I’ll go full grimdark, dunk your model in magic sauce then dab on rust, gore, and vomit, but I want to try some new techniques and products especially if they speed up painting. I will try to match the various greens and purples I’ve used in the past on the Diseased Sons and that is why Nostalgia 88 is a big help.

Next up on the painting table is of course more Nurglings, but mainly to test paints and to infest objectives. Bill likes to have Nurgling infested objectives to fight over, right up until he sees what I have planned. I ordered another something something from Curtis over at Ramshackle even though I don’t think I used the last batch of bits I ordered and I got all sorts of odds and sods I’ve stashed away over the year, there is no point in saving anything now. I think my best painting days may be behind me, but can’t I still convert cool shit?

Bill and I are playing tomorrow so I’m a little sad I painted models I can’t use, but they were in the way. I’m going against my better judgement and in addition to Nurglings will paint four cultists and a converted Chaos Space Marine Terminator with Death Guard Forgeworld bits. This will serve as a Blightlord with a Plague Belcher or Spewer. I can never get the names straight, the heavy flamer one, as Nurgle terminators can’t have heavy flamers in the current Death Guard Codex.

Rumours of a new Chaos Space Marine Codex are online and there are rumours of a World Eaters Codex too. I got Khorne Bezerkers that have been used in one game, but I think me using Black Legion or Night Lords rules are more likely than World Eaters, I have Forgeworld Night Lords stuff, at least I think I ordered it back when I had money.

My days of being poor may be over, but I don’t need more models, I need more time, energy and better eyes. There is no way I can paint four models per week or even three. Both my recent batch of cultists and this odd squad of Escher and Nurglings were not done in a week. They were converted, assembled, cleaned, and primed and started previously. This is why I will take this long weekend to clean and likely prime a couple more things as after work, maybe I can get in an hour or two of painting, but I can’t drag everything out and look for old obscure bits.

I wanted to get another blog post written as this month has actually been the most successful one on this blog in a long time, but as I was telling Bill and I also left some comments on Cadian Shock’s website but they don’t seem to have appeared. Short story I used to have the top ranking page in Google for Nurgle, now I don’t rank so well. But some people remember and if you know how to use Google you can find a lot of models I’ve painted.

Kids these days don’t know how to surf the Internet

#ThrowbackThursday along with #MiniatureMonday is when I’m trying to post to Instagram. A lot of hobby content is on social networks now not blogs, forums, and certainly not mailing lists. I need to time my postings and write sexier headlines and take better photos, but every time I post and hashtag spam I get more likes. Growing my followers is slower going but you can buy them if vanity metrics matter to you that much.

If you have thoughts on optimal painting technique, search engine optimization, and social media domination you can leave a comment below.

New Models, New Desk

I know this blog has few readers and subscribers, but perhaps that soon will change. I’ve been buying models again and I’ve gotten a new desk. I myself have not been gaming or painting, well we briefly did a little gaming before the covid restrictions were again increased.

As you may be able to guess by the image, I managed to track down a set of Deathguard Space Marine Heroes. I had my eye on them when they were only in Japan but was told they would come out in Canada again. I even was planning to go to Japan again, but then covid.

I’ve also lucked into another copy of my all time favourite plague marine. Considering all the new models that have been released over the years including the aforementioned Space Marine Heroes Series 3 maybe I need to reassess that. But when I saw a painted and complete version of the model in the used model shelf of the Sentry Box I didn’t hesitate to buy.

My New Desk

I’ve also been buying Necromunda models. I must have several gangs worth of models already, including several NIB OOP models, but the new models are also nice, the Forgeworld conversion kits and the regular GW conversion kits are also nice and I plan on using many of the them as chaos cultists. I plan to use them first in Kill Team but eventually I may use them in Warhammer 40,000 or even Necromunda.

Bill managed to get in a game of Necromunda without me. Bill even managed to remember to tell me his Instagram handle for his latest miniature painting exploits. I too plan to use Instagram more to share WIP model pictures. I still prefer Flickr to make galleries and I still intend to make greater use of this blog.

My personal blog I’ve made a few posts on, including more about my flat-pack furniture building exploits. Not very exciting but necessary to get a proper painting station, quite possibly the best painting station I’ve ever had. I used to paint at kitchen tables, on tiny desks, sitting on hard wooden chairs but I’ve gotten old and soft. I lost my will to paint for a while, but with the release of Kill Team and having bought about a dozen new models I plan to resume painting after Thanksgiving.

Miniature painting isn’t my top priority. I’ve been focussed on work for so long, I need to put more focus into balancing my life. I want to get back to exercising regularly as I’ve gotten fat. I want to read more real books and less tweets and crap online. I want to eventually take my guitar playing more seriously and I want to paint some of the great new and old models I’ve collected over the years.

I don’t have any grand ambitions. I will once again start with goblins. I have plenty of mostly painted goblins from Warhammer 4th Edition. I also have plenty of Orks and Gretchin from previous boxsets of 40K. I still want to paint more Nurlings even though as I pointed out to Bill they are apparently too elite for Kill Team. And of course I want to paint a variety of models to use in Kill Team and Necromunda both vintage ones and new exciting ones.

Bill and I were disappointed to have our gaming suddenly cut short right after we’d basically agreed we’d play Kill Team campaigns. Hopefully we get back to Warcry and even Necromunda as I do think the skirmish games are a much better fit for an apartment dweller during a pandemic. If you have games you’re looking forward to playing and models you’re looking forward to painting in the coming months you can leave a comment below.

Finished Some Nurglings

Sorry for the extended time between posts but I was earning badges on the Internet. I can’t really blame Covid-19 as I’ve done better than most during this trying time. I did some Microsoft certification exams, I worked, I played Sid Meier games, and even some Warcry but I’ve done very little painting. My next apartment will have a dedicated painting spot, not just share a desk with two laptops and a bunch of other computer equipment.

This is actually my second blog post of the evening and I basically had to finally take some days off because I was getting burnt out. Even if you avoid catching Covid-19 this has been a stressful year and I’ve gained weight despite many bike rides because gym access is limited. My diet has also been challenged. My previous blog post was about a disappointing hard drive purchase.

WordPress keeps changing. It is complaining my header image is too small. The size I chose was to fit in with the rest of my web empire which I just don’t have time and energy to maintain very well. I need to upgrade to PHP 7 and probably fix a lot of code, but even publishing two blog posts required taking a day off.

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There is nothing special about these Nurgling bases other than I ordered more square bases as GW no longer packages them with these models. When these plastic Nurglings first came out, they came with both square and round bases, now they just come with round bases.

The bases are just beach sand held down by thinned white wood glue and covered with cheap black paint. The first two browns were also Delta Creative brand and were selected from when I was trying to make an entire trench table. The final highlight dry brushed on was Dheneb Stone because it wasn’t dried out. It was a bit different than what I usually used, but so many of my paints dried out over the years in storage. I don’t even remember my old recipes but most are written down in this blog.

My continued plan is painting Escher Necromunda figures of which I may have the largest collection in Calgary, Nurglings, and a few more goblins because the only GW game I seem to play is Warcry. I eventually lost a game, but I think my goblins may have Bill’s number or at least the number of one of his gangs. He seems to have several.

My dream goblin Warcry gang would have more squighoppers, more netters, and of course archers because why would a goblin want to fight an ogre in H2H?

If you have thoughts on basing, Nurglings, the new version of 40K, Warcry, Necromunda or defective hard drives you can leave a comment below.

Painting Nurgle and Necromunda

Nurgle does not appear to be part of Necromunda yet, though his followers were recently added to Warcry. Those appear to be my three painting focuses in 2020. I’m slowly working on getting my Nurgle groove back, by painting Nurglings with contrast paints. I’m also painting old and new Night Goblins err Gloomspite Gitz to use in Warcry and after many many years my all metal Escher gang from the nineties will return to the table resplendent in their green and purple gang uniforms. If this sounds like your bag baby, then this could be the blog for you.

In the time of the Coronavirus I should perhaps be painting more, but I’m actually working from home, so I spend a lot of time at my desk, so the fact that I’m right back at my desk tonight to update this blog is a tribute to my commitment to #MiniatureMonday. I’ve actually put in a lot of time on basically four models, three green, purple, and brown stands of Nurglings and an OOP Escher ganger with a lasgun. All had Contrast Paints used on them, the Nurglings especially.

I’m still not a Contrast Paint master, I should probably thin them more often, and I should probably thin my washes more too. I wanted a dark purple but I think contrast paints work better in multiple thin coats rather than one coat right out of the pot and call it done. I always end up shading contrast paints, highlighting, using glazes etc. I think the contrast paints make a good glaze actually and I’ll have to experiment more with thinning them as my vintage Citadel glaze collection is incomplete and irreplaceable.

That last statement may not be true, some people like me still use paint they bought in the 90s others have discovered that companies other than Citadel including Coat d’Arms and Warcolors may have duplicated vintage Citadel paints. Other companies make paint too and you can blend any custom color. I do blend custom colors you can see this on the Escher ganger’s blue hair but doing a whole army, say 100 power armoured dudes in custom blends will take time. The appeal of Contrast was it supposedly saved time, but I’m on record as saying coloured primers in rattle cans or airbrushed basecoats with a wash is faster when your goal is a lot of models that look very similar.

This is a reason I’m pro-skirmish game. I’m a slow painter and I actually want all my models to look different. I don’t mind reusing purple, green and brown so the models look similar, and I had certain “go to” techniques and colors for painting skin, or power weapons, or plasma guns. Now a lot of those paints are solid, so matching the purples from the 90s or even the purples from the damn bolter pot era will take work. I’m actually tempted to not even try, but I want to make it so my seven squads of plague marines are all legal and if possible all unique.

That is a big project in the mean time I test out Contrast paints trying to determine if I’ll use them on my plague marines or stick to the tried and true techniques of the 90s and early 2000s. Nurglings don’t have to all look the same and neither do gangers. Even Nurgle models are unlikely to be in a dress parade any time soon, I do wish I’d painted the models the same color, it is easier to repaint squad markings than it is to repaint entire models.

If you’ve gotten this far and are disappointed, what can I say I’m tired. I only have one desk so I have to paint, then clean off my desk so I can work Monday morning. I should blog as I paint and some people think I should vlog. The main colors I used above are: Ork Flesh, Shyish Purple, and Gore-Grunta Fur. I had a lot of problems with base coating three stands of Nurgle. I’ll try again and next time I’ll likely thin the contrast paint with contrast medium and use a bigger brush.

Contrast Paints are a bit messy so you should paint the lightest color first they tell you, but I painted the Escher ganger’s hair blue after painting her skin and lets just say blue skin on Chaos Spacemarines is cool, on Escher gangers you don’t want any blue to bleed on to your carefully highlighted flesh.

I do like Contrast Paints as accents. I’m not sold on doing every model spray painted Wraithbone as a start. I think Night Goblins and probably my Plaguemarine will benefit from the black basecoat. You can get Wraithbone in a pot and it is probably the single pot of paint I’ve used the most in 2020. I am always touching up.

This batch of Nurglings I did a lot of details like guts and tongues early but eventually purple or green or brown paint got on them. If you really committed to speed, you have to be willing to dry brush. All the Nurglings have a token dry brush. You can make your highlights less harsh with a glaze. But if you use glazes straight out of the pot or too heavy you may fine they darken away most of your highlights. I will need to thin things more if I want to stay light and benefit the most from Contrast Paints.

As I alluded to above I was disappointed with the experience of base coating three Nurgling stands so doing 100 space marines or goblins in Contrast Paints seems like a recipe for frustration but the accent colors starting with Fresh Tearers Red which worked great for Nurgling guts, Magos Purple for Nurgling tongues, Aethermatic Blue is cool and served as a base for the Escher’s hair and Skeleton Horde is definitely a winner. In fact if someone dared me to do a loyalist army and I didn’t have so many models already I’d go Deathwing Terminators just like Owen did back at the dawn of third edition. An all or mostly terminator army is low model count and with Wraithbone spray cans, Skeleton Horde and drybrushing you should be able to crank out an army in short order, this is why skeletons or undead have always been an easy army to paint, they are drybrushable and you don’t have to be super neat painting the undead.

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It’s hard out there for a #warmonger Well not that hard but I miss my lamps and I think I should dig out a better brush and I’m still not sold on #contrastpaints Someone online swore by Guilliman flesh but I’m not. Maybe if you’re trying bulk paint barbarians but for this vintage #Escher #miniature it isn’t soft enough. I can paint flesh. I do like the bone and bloody red contrast colors. I used them on the Nurglings behind. But for fine details or even bulk painting I think there are better options. I think colored primer and a wonder wash yields better results much of the time. You also need a model with definite color blocks, this #Necromunda #model has a lot of fine details. If you’re going to join the #CultOfContrastPaints during #TheTimeOfCoronavirus you need to paint the lighter colors first and choose a scheme where the lighter colors are not in the recesses like this model’s skin tone. Well another #miniaturemonday on which I painted I hope to make more progress next weekend. I still work and I now waste time playing video games. I guess I’m a #HardcoreGamer now because I can use hashtags. #WarhammerCommunity #Wargaming #GamesWorkshop #MiniPainting #ModelPainting #GW #CoolMinis #EavyMetal #TableTopGaming #NoFilter

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This Escher’s hair is one coat of miracle blue #contrastpaint Miracle blue is sold as Aethermatic Blue, also known as #HardToSpellBlue You may recognize this blue from my squigs. This is literally #OneCoat That is right #TrueBelievers #OneCoatOfPaint #RightOutOfThePot This ignores the fact I primed then sprayed them #Wraithbone then touched up the Wraithbone many times with a brush. It also ignores the fact the purple, green and #fleshtone are not simply one coat of Contrast Paint and in fact I struggled and failed to get the green or flesh tones I wanted using a mishmash of new and #oldpaint The flesh started as Contrast skipped right over some #citadelpaints to my failing pot of #FoundryPaintSystem #Flesh5C then three #reapermasterseriespaints that probably sat way to long and I used the Contrast as a shade. I was going to go with red lips but this model has a tough to paint face. Not sure about eye color and I didn’t paint the eyebrows yet but @wframsey and I both thought go big, go blue with the hair. Not sure if I can resist giving it a #shade and a quick #highlight even a #drybrush should look good. Maybe I should consult @henrycavill These #vintage #escher #necromunda #models have a lot of detail. I’ll need a new green and purple recipe, plus a new leather, right now I’m using #EnglishUniformBrown another triad. Maybe I should have gone canvas. I miss my #og #snakebiteleather I worked on the Nurglings a bit but I want to get the Necromunda model done so I can start on the next one. Should they all have #BlueHair #WarhammerCommunity #Warhammer #Wargaming #Warmongers #GamesWorkshop #MiniatureMonday

A post shared by Andrew McKay (@muskiemckay) on Apr 13, 2020 at 6:20pm PDT

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Yesterday I spent more time painting #nurglings than this #escher model. @wframsey was not satisfied with one coat of #contrastpaint neither was I, I guess. I used a little more of #hardtospellblue to shade the hair then I used an old #BlueWash thinned. Although I thinned the wash I think either I prefer a #greenwash or a different blue wash over this color. My pot of OG #SwoopingHawkTurquoise is a brick, and I decided to go brighter after darkening my perfectly good pale blue, so at some point I bought #deepskyblue from #vallejo and I highlighted with that. I was trying to get a fade, I mixed in more white as I went but it was a bit sloppy. I need to work on my frosted tips and #blending I have an old hexagon pot of #citadelpaints Turquoise #glaze. This smoothed out my highlights but darkened the hair once again. Rather than rehighlight I just decided “good enough”. I don’t know if I used this paint on the squigs but I should have it worked well. I ended up painting tiny details on Nurglings but I did touch up the skin on this model. For Contrast Paints some say lightest color first others might advocate painting in the recesses. But next time I think I’ll do flesh after hair. I didn’t make major mistakes but you always have a little touching up to do after using washes especially. Blue is really noticeable on #paleskin The big debate is what color to paint the scrunchies or whatever she had in her hair, Bill says black leather which is the color her boots will be. Some of my #WargamesFoundaryPaints are drying out too, so I am thinking of ordering replacements, someone recommended #Scale75 the other day too. I gotta get to work but I was prepared to post this #miniaturemonday #WarhammerCommunity #Wargaming #Warmongers #GamesWorkshop #MiniPainting #ModelPainting #GW #CoolMinis #EavyMetal #TableTopGaming #NoFilter #necromunda

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I tried Guilliman Flesh one coat out of the pot and it was too harsh for the Escher ganger. I miss my Foundary Paint Triad #5 Flesh. It needs replacing I think. I may order it again along with Charcoal Black. I need a new green, I was disappointed with the greens on the Escher ganger so I may order Woodland Green and few other classics. The Escher gang was going to be in the same colors as my Skaven Bloodbowl gang. I actually ended up using a bunch of Reaper Master Series flesh paints I was gifted, they are underrated, they make a lot of cool colors. Bloodstain Red is awesome it was featured on my Khorne models. However, if you’re going to paint a lot of flesh, keep it simple stupid, Contrast and a straight out of the pot triad sounds like a win over custom blending with a wet pallet.

If you have been following me on Instagram or hashtag #MiniatureMonday you would have seen some progress photos. I’ embed them above, but I took extra photos though maybe I should have taken more, I don’t have a photo station set up at the moment, that is another thing I may buy online, so you’ll have to make do with iPhone snaps with less than perfect lighting. I’m still waiting on some cables and adapters to improve that situation.

I spent a lot of time painting boils and pustules on Sunday. Here is my not terribly efficient but actually effective technique. You paint ochre, a dark reddish brown will also work. Then in the centre you paint orange, you can skip right over red because you put a red glaze over top. This looks good but then I put an extreme dollop of yellow on top of each pustule. I used my very goopy Badmoon Yellow pot which unlike my Swooping Hawk Turquoise is still at least liquid.

I think I can do a better job on turquoise blue hair. For the squigs I highlight with a more grey pallet, but fir the hair I used Deep Sky Blue from Vallejo gradually lightened with a Vallejo pure white. Then because I did it a bit too rush I used my old Turquoise Glaze, the ones with red lids and labels. This was a great set which I wish I had the entire collection of, but back in the day you had to use mail-order or take a ferry to get stuff, and once you got to Gastown there was no guarantee they had what you wanted in stock, my old ork armies suffered from random miniatures being the only miniatures available. Now GW is a corporate juggernaught or they were pre-Coronavirus and you can order anything, but you can’t order bitz, that is a service they used to offer, I still have many metal bits form my Grand Tournament appearances.

Not sure when I’ll enter a tournament, just painting regularly and trying to update social media tires me out. I’ve started playing video games again and of course I spend too much time on social media, so I think I must wrap this up. If you have questions of suggestions you can leave them below, stay safe.

Painted Servant of Decay Test Figure

As promised late last night I did indeed finish this model. I took the pictures this afternoon and realized I should have put one more highlight on his little skull pendent. I fixed that but couldn’t be bothered to retake the pictures. 

The model is an old Necromunda Orlock I pulled out of a bag that had been in my mom’s storage room for over a decade. I thought they’d make good Mutant Rabble for my Imperial Armour 7 Servants of Decay Rebel Imperial Guard army list. That sentence has a lot of keywords, too bad this blog doesn’t get any search engine traffic…

The model was started alongside the WW1 Canadian Corps test figure as after painting my original Foundry Triad test figure I decided brown, more specifically English Uniform Brown might make a good primary colour for Rebel Imperial Guard. Brown is a solid Nurgle colour and I’d already ruled out all black. They have to blend in a bit with the Nefarious Fire, well not really but I wanted them too. So purple flames and chaos stars on a black background will still be present. I’m thinking of doing the tanks black and purple, but I figured the uniforms would still be basically Imperial Guard for the Militia and for the Rabble I thought they’d be kinda dirty earth tones too, but they’d grab some purple rags or what not to symbolize their allegiance.

That is why this Orlock made such a great test figure. I used Liche Purple and the first two colours, the A and B from the Foundry Royal Purple Triad (#19). It has no wash and I think I may have found my new dark and evil purple recipe. The skin is the other unifying feature of this army.  All the models will have sickly pale blue skin. I’m using a recipe I stumbled upon via trial and error painting Nurgle daemons and other chaos figures over the last two years or so. I use a Foundation Grey (Astronomicon Grey) base coat with the infamous AwesomePaintJob.com Cool Grey wash, with Space Wolf Grey highlights. You can highlight to white even and I probably will on the character models.

The AwesomePaintJob.com wash is finicky it tends to separate. It is more grey than blue. I previously used thin blue and green washes on my pale skin, but I gave this product a try and if you’re patient, and use the right amount which sometimes is one coat, sometimes is two or more, you get a really nice and relatively easy to paint sickly blue-grey skin tone. Unfortunately if you make a mistake getting the tone back is a little bit difficult, so I discovered when correcting one eye, the one on the left of the model if you want to see my touch ups.

Well that is more than enough text. Like the WW1 Canadian Corps figure I think I can do better job with the painting, maybe simplify it a bit more, but I have other miniatures I need to get done in the next month or so…