First Plague Hulk Completed Saturday!

Hey, Folks!

Well, I did it! I got the first of my 2 Forge World Plague Hulks completed this past Saturday, and it didn't take all day to do it, either.  (In case you didn't know, I'll be using these beauties as Nurgle Soul Grinders in my 40K Daemons army.)

I ended up having to spend a little more time on the swords than I'd expected.  A friend (and Golden Daemon winner) suggested that I wash the sword blades, which I wanted to look like stone.  So when I did (with Agrax Earthshade) some mold lines that I'd missed became very apparent, and I had to deal with them.  That stripped off the paint down to the primer where I trimmed the mold lines, so I had to re-paint the areas I'd trimmed (Mechanicus Standard Grey), wait for that to dry, wash the entire sword (actually, I did both swords at the same time), wait for that to dry, and dry brush it (Dawnstone) to bring it to the point I'd had it before.  Then I showed them to Jimmy, the manager at my FLGS, (who is an excellent painter himself), and he suggested an extreme edge highlight of the next lighter color, Administratum Grey.  So I did that, matte varnished them, gloss varnished the pustules again, and yes, they ended up looking a lot better!  Thanks, guys!

So, all in all, from priming to final assembly, highlighting and touch-ups, I worked on this beast from Thursday, July 25, through Saturday, August 3rd (not working every day; had to take a few days off from hobby time here and there to spend time with the family).  So 10 elapsed days, of which I worked on him 7 of those days.  The entire process took me 40 hours to get him to this state:

There he is in all his Nurgly glory.  There's an amazing amount of detail on this model; sorry I don't have more close-up pictures of him; I'll try to get some next time I have decent light.

I decided to work on this model after I got the Plague Toads (to be used as Beasts of Nurgle) completed, and prior to the Plague Toads I'd been mostly painting infantry models, so working on this Plague Hulk was my "reward" for getting so much other stuff done, and before I go back to the assembly line drudgery of doing more (necessary) infantry models.

I have one more of these guys to do, but that one's going to be the last thing that I do to get all of my Daemons ready for October Valhalla.  I finished this guy up around 6:00 PM last Saturday, which left me with time to get started on my next task, which is to paint up 15 of the 30 more Plaguebearers that I need for Troops.  I got a good amount of work done on the Plaguebearers Saturday night, and then got a bunch more done last night, so they're going pretty quickly.  I'm hoping I'll get to get some hobby time in tonight (Tuesday) after work, as I've got a game scheduled this Wednesday.  I know, right?  An actual game?  Yup, time to brush up on my playing skills (and reward myself with a break from painting; although taking the time off to play a game does leave me a little anxious), and face a tough and fast Eldar force at 2,000 points to see what I need to do against the pointy-eared ones and their cracking new codex.  I'll be using my standard 2,000 point CSM list (Death Guard with Night Lords Heavy Support), which includes some Daemon allies.  But, it will be the first time I've played with this army completely painted, and the first time I've played with a completely painted army in about 4 or 5 years!  Looking forward to it!

So, point being, I probably won't get any hobby time in on Wednesday, and I'd like to get these 15 Plaguebearers completed before Saturday.  I should be able to work on them Thursday night; the question is, will I be able to tonight, as I'm estimating it will take two good evenings' work to get this first batch of 15 Plagubearers completed.  Will keep you posted on those.

In the meantime, please let me know what you think of the Plague Hulk, and leave a comment!