Fifth Chaos Spawn Completed Saturday!

I got the fifth and final Chaos Spawn for my Death Guard (and Night Lords) Chaos Space Marine army completed this past Saturday!

This guy is a bit special, in that he was hand-sculpted for me by my good friend, Josh Howery.  Spawn come two to a box, and at $41.50 or thereabouts per box, they're pretty expensive for being perceived as being a not-so-great unit.  However, I got my 2 boxes of Spawn at the January Mercenary Market at Empire Games in Mesa, AZ, for a total of $40, so I got 4 of my Spawn at half price.  Those were the guys I showed you in the previous post.  However, my usual CSM army list calls for running 5 Spawn along with my Nurgle Biker Lord (who is armed with The Black Mace and the Burning Brand of Skalathrax). 

(On a tactical note, a whole unit of T6 is pretty hard to bring down, and being beasts and a bike they all move 12" in the movement phase.  Only real problem is that the bike can't "run", so the Spawn are kinda stuck for the the first turn getting as far as they can with just their 12" movement, and hopefully I've deployed well and that gets them into cover.  In the meantime, they make great candidates for "Look Out, Sir!" rolls; as many Spawn as I can keep in base contact with the Biker Lord get to take a Look Out, Sir! from any fire that hits the Lord, and since they're all equally the same distance away from the Lord (that is, in base contact with him), and it's a shooting attack, I can spread the wounds around.  If they're in cover, then they get a cover save, but being T6 and with 3 Wounds apiece, they can usually soak up a lot of firepower on their way to delivering the Lord where I want him to go.  And if I'm lucky, there's something that's within the Burning Brand's Torrent range to lay down some templatey goodness from the Lord in the shooting phase, so that that isn't a total loss, but this isn't the primary goal of Turn 1.  Then, in a subsequent turn, possibly Turn 2, I can choose to shoot the Lord off from the Spawn in the movement phase, and then the Spawn can run if they need to, whilst the Lord turbo-boosts off in the direction he wants to be in.  Many times, however, I'm able to keep what remains of the Spawn with the Lord, as they can be awesome in combat, and can still provide some Look Out, Sir! protection, although on a remove-one-whole-model-at-a-time basis now that they're in close combat.  But, as usual, I digress...)

Point being, I needed a 5th Spawn, and I didn't feel like spending $41.50 + tax to buy 2 when I only needed one.  Enter Josh and his talent working with 3 dimensional media.  Somehow it came about that I supplied a pair of Terminator legs on a round 40mm base, and gave Josh access to two boxes of Chaos Spawn bitz, and gave him carte blanche to come up with whatever he wanted to come up with.  Josh then provided the two-part Apoxy Sculpt and paper clips for the Spawn's body frame, musculature and final details, using nothing but his imagination, sculpting skill and a sculpting tool (and two Saturday's time).

Josh knew that these were going to be Nurgle Spawn, so he made this one particularly Nurgly with lots of distended, intertwined guts falling out, front and back.

But the bit that sealed this 5th Spawn's fate was the Grey Knight Terminator's force sword arm, which I think came out of Josh's bitz box (can't remember, as I have a GK army a lots of GK bitz, but I don't recognize that arm, and the little itch at the back of my brain is trying to tell me that Josh supplied it).

Regardless of where the bit came from, it galvanized this guy's fluff as being a hapless Grey Knight Terminator that ended up on the wrong end of a fight with some of Father Nurgle's denizens, and was subsequently turned into a Nurgle Chaos Spawn to serve at the whim of the Dark Gods.

And now, my merry band of Nurgle Chaos Spawn is complete!

And, as you can see, I'm still having problems with getting decent picture quality and the right degree of sunlight for taking pictures.  To give you an example, here's a picture that I took yesterday just before sunset, hoping to get this post published then, but as you can see, I really didn't have the light I needed to get the point across and provide the same impact as I did with the photos you see above:

Yeah, you can't really tell what he is in the picture above, except that he's probably a Spawn.  Better you should have the shadow of my finger in the picture, like the previous group shot, than the lack of detail from the lack of light in pictures like the one just above.

Here's another group shot, at a slightly different angle and with somewhat less shadow in the picture:

Oh well, please bear with me as I do my best to provide you with some form of photographic record of my Works in Progress (WIP) and completed works as I make my way through my task list for what I still need to get assembled, converted and painted up in time for August Valhalla this year.

I am so glad that I got that last Spawn finished this past Saturday!  Now I can leave for my family vacation on Wednesday, and not be in the middle of some project or other and be thinking about that, wondering if I'll forget a step or an idea that I had while painting the test model.  No, I can just relax and enjoy the time off from work and, actually, the time off from painting and building.  I've been on a dead run since late March, with only a week off from painting here and there where I had to go out of town for work, and this 8 day vacation will give me a chance to relax and recharge my batteries. 

That doesn't mean I won't be posting entries here on this blog, however!  Yes, I will be bringing my laptop with me, as I'm sure there will be moments when I'm waiting for my womenfolk to finish getting ready for the day/night so we can head out/go to sleep, and there's a whole slew of WIP pictures from when I painted the Heldrakes that I want to put up in a Step-By-Step post for how I painted them.  Until then, I hope you enjoy these Spawn as much as I enjoyed building and painting them.

Next up when I return from vacation:  Tackling 12 Night Lord Havocs, the last of my CSM forces that I need to get painted for Valhalla! 

That breaks down into 4 Havocs with somewhat "untraditional" Autocannon, 3 Havocs with the traditional Chaos Havoc Autocannon, 3 Havocs with Missile Launchers, and 2 Havoc Aspiring Champions that all need to be painted.  With these models painted, and a few extras from my supply of previously-painted Night Lords, I'll be able to field three squads of Havocs: two squads with 4 Autocannon each (I already have an Autocannon Havoc painted up), and one squad with any combination of 3 Missile Launchers and/or 3 Lascannon (previously painted as well) that I feel like running.  I'm going to use one of my better Night Lords Aspiring Champions for the 3rd Havoc AC, if necessary, and can fill in the squads to be up to 10 men each with Night Lords with bolt guns, depending on the size and configuration of the games I'll be playing (especially games at 2,000 points and higher).

But for now, enjoy the Nurgly goodness of Spawn #5, and please don't hesitate to leave a comment below!