If you haven't picked one up yet to find out for yourself, let me just say that the new plastic Hero (Wizard/Sorceress/Champion/whatever) kits that Games Workshop is putting out are absolutely outstanding. I've picked up a couple now, and I'm impressed not only with the level of detail offered, but the ease at which they can be converted into other things.
For example, the Nurgle Lord.
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| You noticed this one ain't human, right? |
More photos (and a lot of exposition about the good ol' days of Warhammer) after the jump ...
This conversion is so obvious that I think I've seen it in at least half a dozen other places.
But, that doesn't mean that it wasn't something fun to toy around with when I wanted a distraction from sculpting Centigor (because, it probably doesn't sound like it but, even at units of five, it's a somewhat daunting task ... nevermind, you'll understand when you see them).
The conversion from Nurgle Lord to Pestigor Lord was pretty simple:
Step 1) Get a Nurgle Lord kit.
Step 2) Put it together, leaving off the head.
Step 3) Add an appropriate Beastmen head (you can pick from the Gor or Bestigor sets) with some really big horns.
Step 3a) Re-position the horns to fit with the trio of spiky horn bits he's got sprouting from his shoulder armor.
Step 4) Sculpt on some fur where appropriate (be sure to leave the open wounds visible to make him appear mange-inflicted).
Step 5) Add paint.
Step 6) ...
Step 7) Profit!
(Okay, you can leave off steps six and seven.)
So, why a Pestigor Lord, you ask ... ?
Let me put on my ol' fogey hat for a minute. For those of you too young (either in actual years or hobby years) to remember, there was once a time in Warhammer that the Beasts of Chaos were recognized as, you know, an actual part of the Chaos triumvirate. There were Warriors. There were Daemons. And there were Beasts.
You could, at one point, even mix and match your favorite parts of each army into one unified, cohesive force.
And, to make it even more unified and cohesive, your units that weren't Daemons could take 'marks' representing the different gods of Chaos. So, aside from just having Bloodletters and Juggernauts running alongside your Chaos Warriors, your Warriors and your Beasts could be dedicated followers of Khorne as well.
So it all matched. It was theme-y. And, for many players -- among whom I'd count myself -- being able to theme your army in such a way was a good, good thing.
Now, I'll be honest: I've never been a fan of Nurgle.
Had I played Beasts of Chaos way back then, this is the Chaos god I'd be least likely to have ever aligned them with. (I'm more a Slaanesh guy, to be honest.)
I'm pretty well over the whole 'look, you can see my intestines, and that makes me Nurgle-y' thing -- and, frankly, I was over it about 20 minutes after I saw it the first time -- that Games Workshop (and every other miniatures manufacturer who wants to make something vaguely Nurgle-ish) has going on.
It's overdone to the point hat it just no longer has the shock value it may've had when they first did it. It's cliché.
And, that's not the worst of it. Let's talk, for just a second, about realism.
Look, I get that it's a 'fantasy' world and they're being mystically preserved by the dark god they worship. I understand that. I do.
But, whether you're being protected by some dark magicks or not, having you inner giblets exposed is completely impractical.
Not only can I not imagine any situation in which wading into battle while having your vital organs exposed would be a good idea, but even doing simple things like making coffee in the morning would be nearly impossible without tripping over your intestines which have, once again, slid out of that gaping hole in your gut and mucked up the kitchen floor.
But, I digress ...
The original question was: Why a Pestigor Lord?
The answer to that is this: I thought it would be fun to paint something I wouldn't normally ever approach while, at the same time, keeping it unique.
After all, while I've seen these conversions cropping up once in a while at the Beastmen sites, they're still far rarer than that ol' Nurgle Lord that everyone and their brother has painted, right?
As always, comments and (constructive) criticism appreciated!
3 comments:
Looks familiar ;) You've done a good job, obviously you're a better painter than me, and slightly tilting the head changes the whole look of the model. Good job :)
I love that paint job. The conversion is great too, here's another good example here.
Thanks for the kind words, gentlemen.
In working on this model, I became almost entirely convinced that I'm actually not a good painter -- or, at the minimum, certainly not an efficient one.
I just kept adding color (mostly Foundations and washes) until it looked passably like what I had in mind when I started. For example, I had to hit his fur more than a dozen times (base colors, washes, touch-ups, highlights, more washes, etc.) before I could get the color where I wanted it and, even now, I'm not 100% satisfied with it. I've got it in my head that someone both good and efficient could do the same job with half the work or less.
I guess I'm too much of a perfectionist for this hobby sometimes.
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