Pestilential Painting: Some Rancid Reinforcements

 Welcome back to the Vault once more.  I should warn you that today's post is a bit of a ramble; it's not the usual "Varchilde slowly paints another model affair", and there might be a moan or two.

Games Workshop has been dabbling over the last couple of years with products outside of their bread and butter model kits, paints and rulebooks. I'm thinking of the child-friendly novels, Funko Space Marines, and the Blind Pack "Heroes" ranges. Whilst a lot of these items don't particularly interest me, I think providing more "cool stuff" for hobbyists and fans who do like these product types is great.

One sort of merch I usually avoid are the "lucky dip" types. I don't understand the appeal of Loot Crates; yes you may end up with items worth more than you've spent on the purchase, but if it's a load of stuff I don't want then it's worth to me is zero. I'd rather buy the items I want with certainty than gamble.  

Recent posts have covered my initial forays into painting Death Guard, and I've fallen in love with the detail and individuality of the Plague Marine models. So when GW announced the UK release of the Death Guard "Space Marine Heroes" series my interest was suitably piqued.

Morslug

This is a range of 6 individual Plague Marine models, available in Blind Pack format. Which is a pain; I don't want to be buying multiple packs sorting through duplicates to get elusive missing models.  It seems that GW must have sensed my disappointment in the force, and have packaged the retail multi-packs with a guarantee of each model in every pack of 6. And made the retail packs available to regular consumers! This is great as gamers like me can get the whole set without dealing with the acquisition/swapping/twatting about associated with buying blind singles. Those who do enjoy that aspect can still indulge in individual pack purchases so everyone is happy!

Gangrus

 So decision to purchase made! However a lot of hobbyists had come to the same decision and more quickly than me; the pre-order on the GW site went unavailable pretty quickly and my go-to discount supplier couldn't even place an order. Uh oh, the spectre of the Indomitus box set fiasco seems to be rising again. 

Having thought the set would elude me, I decided to check out various well known online GW suppliers, and eventually found one stating it had the Plague Marines in stock. Hurrah! I was even happier when I received the models on release day.

Kholerus

I've had a fun session assembling the models, and I really like all the sculpts. There are sockets in the sculpted bases for Nurglings to be attached; I've left those off for the time being to allow access for painting the Plague Marines.

Gurg

Astute readers might have spotted the grey piece on Gangrus the Plague Champion's back pack. I damaged the vent trying to get a flush fit, and decided to replace it with a suitably Nurgley tentacle.

The Icon Bearer is one of my favourites; I particularly like the wormy Nurgling slithering around the standard pole.

Clotticus

The names of the models are particularly silly. I can't really see announcing their titles as instilling fear in their opponents (may be laughter); cue Taserface from Guardians of the Galaxy. That's a minor nit pick on an otherwise very characterful set. 

Scabboth

So that's a particularly long winded way of saying that I've added another set of lovely(!) models to my painting queue, but I very nearly missed out on them. This time I struck lucky and I hope other hobbyists who want these figures can acquire them as they are a great addition to a Death Guard collection. It'll be interesting to see if GW continue using this retail model in future; regardless I hope they can improve their initial stock guess-timation process to avoid future disappointment!