Pestilential Painting: The Foetid Virion Part One

 Welcome back to the Vectorium once more! Today's post will be fairly brief as I have to confess the lure of lighter evenings and sunny days has kept me outside and away from playing games (bar the weekly D&D) and the painting desk.

I have taken the opportunity to prime the next set of Death Guard models; a set of Elite Characters which can be fielded collectively on the tabletop as the Foetid Virion. (This suitably nurgley-gothicy term simply means a Death Guard force can field up to 3 such characters in a single elite choice provided each is unique).

First up is the Tallyman.

Pestiliential Painting: The Third Outbreak

 Welcome back to the Vectorium! Another couple of fruitful painting sessions has resulted in the completion of my third squad of Plague Marines. OK, the basing remains outstanding but long term readers will know I tend to batch my bases up over a few units any way!

This is a great milestone as it means I've now completed a Battalion. That means less in 9th edition compared to previous versions, but psychologically it's an achievement; I've got 2 HQ choices, 3 Troop choices plus sundry other units so know I can spin off in all sorts of directions. 

This is my fighty squad, led by a Plague Champion rocking a Power Fist.

Bard Stones

 Welcome back to the Vault! I've been spending some hobby time painting base colours onto another Death Guard unit and I'm pretty sure you don't want to see *more* pictures of half finished 40k models, so today's post is something different.

My friend Chris has been posting some articles about various properties associated with different gemstones. I've been on a bit of a D&D campaign planning kick recently and the articles got me thinking about incorporating some of this information into D&D.

Gemstones have long established associations with magic in table top RPGs:

• As expensive components (e.g. diamonds and pearls) for powerful spells in D&D
• To power and store magic (Power Crystals and True Stone) in Runequest

These gemstones are rare and/or expensive (no doubt because of such uses!) and I'd like to explore something more "every day" that makes use of more accessible stones and crystals. By making the material more common place it helps build flavour into a campaign setting, but also gives those boring "semi-precious stones" worth X gold which turn up in loot piles much more interest. So let's get cracking!

Wildfire Spirit

 Welcome back to the Vault once again! This week's hobby time has been split between playing the regular D&D game and some painting. I've started work on the next squad of Plague Marines, but was also inspired by the D&D session to paint a fantasy mini that's been in the shame pile for some time.

I've been playing Immerel the half elven Druid in our Dark Sun-esque adventures. He originally started as a Desert Druid but circumstances of the campaign have seen him recently re-spec to the Circle of Wildfire.  This Circle allows the Druid to summon a Phoenix-like spirit which provides the summoner with a variety of amazing abilities.  

Although we are playing online and not using miniatures, I have a Phoenix familiar model from Wiz Kids which I decided to paint up to mark the occasion of Immerel's rebirth.

Dungeons and Dragons Campaign Inspiration

 Welcome back to the Vault once more! Hobby time has been pretty limited this week; I've played in the weekly 5th edition D&D game and the players have been plotting an upcoming battle (which I must blog about some time), but I really haven't felt any motivation to pick up a paint brush.

Having been a player in a regular game for almost a year has got my creative juices for D&D flowing again, and I've been toying with a few ideas for a new campaign/adventure setting. Nothing serious beyond some initial notes (a kind of mood board) at this point, but I'm thinking about committing some effort to it.

So a Dark Ages Arthurian-esque Albion campaign with plenty of opportunity to explore related mythology and influences:

• Last vestiges of the preceding Roman-esque civilisation.
• Invading Viking inspired Raiders/Settlers
• Seelie and Unseelie Fey 
• Undead from the Shadow Realm

Not a lot of originality so far, but plenty of fun and something different to the usual D&D medieval backdrop. 

Why mention this now? Having written these initial notes some time ago my recent media consumption has brought the project to the fore again. First up is the (quite frankly amazing) Valheim PC game:

Because who doesn't want to adventure in the shadow of Yggdrasil the World Tree?

Pestilential Painting: Lord of Contagion

 Welcome back to the Vectorium! Having procrastinated away from painting over the last few weeks, the bug to pick up a brush hit hard this weekend and I've got the Lord of Contagion to a state I'm pretty happy with (bar a point or two).

Pestilential Painting: Lord of Contagion Work In Progress 1

 Welcome back to the Vectorium! This week I've managed to play in the regular Friday night D&D game (I keep meaning to write a post regarding the ongoing antics of Immerel the Druid and his companions), preparing some new minis received from a Kickstarter (there's another post!), and starting to lay the base colours onto the next Death Guard model.

I've chosen to work on the Lord of Contagion, the absolutely brutal looking HQ from the Dark Imperium set.