Closing in on completion with the new Plague Marines

I know it’s been a while, again! But I’m back with an update. Real life and some other distractions have continued to make working on my Plague Marines a challenge, but I’ve kept the ball moving forward on them. I haven’t posted any in-progress shots of these guys, unfortunately. They did make an appearance in a previous post, though. Working on these new Plague Marines has been fun, but also a bit challenging. The models are loaded with detail, so it takes me a lot longer to paint each one, even when I’m using short cuts. The current Chaos Space Marine line troops just don’t have as much “decoration,” so to speak, so painting them is much easier. The total color palette isn’t that varied on those models. Or rather, it doesn’t have to be. With the new Plague Marines I have to make more conscious decisions on what colors to use, because the decorations aren’t just extra trim and spikes. Now there are tentacles, trophies, blight grenades, exposed mutated skin, mutated armor, and all the like. You can’t just paint all that stuff green and think it’ll look interesting on the tabletop.

Plague Marines squad, working on highlights

So as you can see above, I’ve gone through the base coats and through most of the highlights. The fellas on the left are actually done with everything. The last thing I did on them was the green armor highlights. The rest of the squad on the right has yet to have those green armor highlights.

The Plague Marines I’ve finished have some different features. The one aiming with his bolt gun has more of those tentacles and also has the smokey censer on top of his backpack. The other has more weapon kit. One thing that is a must on these models is that you have to mount the base on something to hold while you are painting. There are just too many details sticking out and you end up rubbing against those parts and rub paint off. It can be frustrating as you then have to go back and redo some painting. An old, empty paint pot and some blue tack do just fine as a handle.

Plague Marines with highlights, so far

I think the sculptors did a really good job in designing the Plague Marines. One of the things I like are all the old armor Mark pieces. Since Plague Marines, and Death Guard, have been around a while, it makes sense that their armor has older components. And the sculptors did a good job of bringing that out. I wasn’t sure I’d be a fan of the tentacles at first, but they’ve grown on me. I have done a little bit of my own interpretation on them. Rather than just have tentacles, I thought, what is something I could do to them to make them more redolent of decay and death. I hit on the idea of painting some of the tentacles to look more like worms or worm tails. It’s added more work, but I thought that would help really help bring the theme of these models out.

Plague Marines without highlights

I left the green armor plates for last because I’ve found those highlights are where I make the most mistakes and need to take my time. Also, those highlights tend to be the larges number on each model. Since it takes so long and I have to do my painting in chunks, I’m not sure how much longer it’ll take me to get this squad’s highlights finished. I’m hoping to be able to finish them up this coming week. Then next week I’ll work on the bases. I do need to figure out some better lighting for these pictures, though. I love my new workspace, but the lighting is not good for pictures it seems.

As I’ve been working on these new models I’ve come to the decision more and more to switch to the plastic Plague Marines for my Death Guard army. I’ll retire the metal ones to the shelf rather than sell them. I have too many fond memories of games with them. But I really like these new plastic Plague Marines the more I work with them. Games Workshop’s design studio really did such a great job on these, I can’t wait to see what they do with the next Chaos Space Marine models they update.


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