Finished - Daemon Prince of Nurgle

Finally finished this Daemon Prince of Nurgle and I could not be happier. He came a long way from my last post about him. Let's take a closer look.

Modeling

As for conversions to the base mini there are just a few. A hook broke off the chains of his sword. I could have replaced it, but experience with small, fiddly bits like that falling off has taught me that gluing things like that back on usually just leads to them falling off again. Best to just Let It Go.

I also gave him an extra pauldron on his left shoulder from the plastic Daemon Prince kit. Because I liked the exposed muscle on his left arm, I cut out the center of the Chaos circle to let it show through. You can't see it from the pictures, but I think it turned out pretty well.


Last up is the most obvious conversion and that is the wings. I intentionally removed the awesome, bone, smoke stack-looking things on his back and wanted to put wings in there. Thanks to my bottomless bits box, I had several to choose from. I had seen people put, what I felt, were over-sized wings on their Deamon princes. While I am all into reason and authenticity in my fake, made up, fictional game, I also feel that there needs to be both an allowance for artistic interpretation and maybe a little whimsy. To that end, I used intentionally under-sized wings. To use wings that would support this fat guys bulk, they would be bigger than the huge wings that I linked to above. I figure that the Daemon Prince is using then not for lift but rather his flight is generated by magic. I also really liked the idea of the fat fly body being supported by these tiny, furiously flapping wings.

There is also an ulterior motive for my choice. One, that I would punch someone else in the ding ding for suggesting. I modeled them that small so that I could count him as a DP with or without wings. If I wanted count him without, I would say, "Clearly those wings are too small to fly. He can't fly." If I wanted to count him as a Flying Monstrous Creature, then I would say, He has got wings, so he can clearly fly."

That kind of ambiguity usually makes me crazy. I had a game with a Tau player that modeled his Crisis Suits with every weapon that came in the box. He said that he could count that as any weapon combination he wanted. At the time, I could not believe how disingenuous and lazy he was and vowed not to play with someone like that again. His argument was that he did not have the money to buy the bits and extra suits it would take model all the configurations he wanted. While I agree that 40k should not be a game of who has the deepest pockets, it is like this guy never heard of magnets (hence the lazy comment).

I do not plan on doing another one of these Nurgle Daemon Princes, so I want a little flexibility in how I field him. While I could have magnetized the wings and smoke stacks, I was too lazy. Kidding. Odd are that I will not field this guy without wings and I like the aesthetic.

On the word of my wife, I put the severed Thunderwolf's head on the base. I had to file it a bit to keep it from looking like I placed a bit on the base and make it look more like a severed wolf head sunk into the mud. I painted it as normal with a little blood in the eye. I tried to angle it so that it would be difficult to see inside the severed neck. Then I painted some Mechrite Red to simulate blood behind the neck to simulate blood, glorious blood.

Painting

Pretty much I painted this guy like I painted Typhus and the Plague Marines with a few exceptions.

The green armor areas were base coated with Knaloc Green over a black primer. I followed that by completely covering all the green areas with Snot Green. After the Agrax Earthshade wash, the green areas were touched up with Snot Green. That did not take too much effort as there were not many large flat areas of green. I used Goblin Green on the hard edges.

The metal areas were pretty straight forward as well. They were based in Ironbreaker and covered in Agrax. After that, there was a broken highlight of Mithryl Silver.

There is a similar color that covers both the green and metal areas and that is the color I call "simple rust." Simple rust is two tings: simple and rust. I don't know that there is an analog in the new paints, but Dark Flesh make for a great base for rust. After the base coats but before the wash, apply a watered down (1:1 to 2:1 water to paint) mixture to random areas of both green and metal. The reason to apply it to the areas before the wash is that the wash will darken the Dark Flesh areas and allow you to reapply Dark Flesh and get a two level effect. I then took it to the next level and applied an inconsistent Mechrite Red hard edge highlight to the rest areas.

The fleshy areas were based in Rakarth Flesh with some Averland Sunset in random places especially the boils. It, like everything else, was washed in Agrax Earthshade. After that, they were touched up with Rakarth Flesh only. I wanted to leave it plaid and washed out. Rakarth Flesh is a pale and pastel. That is what I wanted because I wanted to dray attention away from the fleshy areas. They were going to be very bright and I did not want them to overpower this otherwise very dark model.

The bone parts were painted in a similar manner to the flesh areas omitting the Averland Sunset and add in a hard edge highlight of Bleached Bone. A little goes a long way with this.

There are a couple of areas that do not fit a pattern. for instance, I tried to paint the fly scar on his fat belly in such a way that made it look like an infected wound. I don't know how successful I was but it is certainly red in places. I also used red around the bulbous eye with white in the center to give it an unnatural and infected look.


TMMCV
This mini retails for $37.25 but since it is metal I would add in 25% increase. eBay disagrees as these minis with some crappy paint go for $50-$75. Let's say $50 base to replace the model and bits. The paint job and minor conversions should be about $40. I think that this is about a $100 model and judging by what they go for on eBay, I would say that is a fair price. Worse painted ones go for (not just asking price but completed auctions) $120-$150.