Mortarion's Musings

Hello Venturers and welcome back to the Vault! October is normally a busy time on the gaming/hobby calendar with both Octoberfest and SELWG to look forward to. With social distancing in effect this Autumn looks as if it will be a much quieter affair.

I've been thinking about what to share on the Vault going forwards. In the four years I've been blogging I've completed a new 40K army to a respectable point level (the mighty Carcharodons Astra), and added various units to other forces (including my Dark Eldar, Imperial Guard and Grey Knights). I've also completed various smaller painting projects including terrain and kill teams/warbands for skirmish games.

I've never completed a Chaos project; I've dabbled with the odd test model but never committed to a force of Heretics and Daemon Worshippers.  I'd like to change that, and have decided to paint up some Death Guard as my autumn/winter hobby project.

This cheerful chap is a Plague Marine; the backbone of the Death Guard force. I enjoyed painting up this test model although I'm not convinced this will be the final scheme; I'll do some more research and try another test or two.

The Death Guard tick the key initial requirements when I start a 40K list:

• Good selection of HQs 
• Strong core of Troop choices  

I love seeing a forces of infantry pitched against each other on the battle field, supported by tanks and other engines of war. I'm really not a fan of either bringing a sprinkling of super powerful models to a game, or running a gimmick list. 

From here a Death Guard list can move in a number of different directions which will be great from both gaming and hobby perspectives:

• Tanks
• Pox ridden fleshy Daemons of Nurgle
• Daemon infested War Engines
• A shambling zombie horde (Pox Walkers)
• Plenty of special characters/support characters

The models should be fun to paint as well. There's a lot of different textures on the Death Guard models

(rotting flesh, tentacles, bones as well as the filth ridden armour and weapons). 

This is likely to be a slow grow project; I know from my first attempt at the Space Sharks that it's easy to burn out on big projects so I'll dip into this a unit at a time and see how it grows. Neil from Table Standard has been working on some "Combat Patrol" projects, where there is a unit from each Battlefield Role present in the list; that would be a good starting point.

I'll share my progress as I work up some models and I hope you'll enjoy reading about my efforts.