Tyler is both a fantastic painter and a prolific one. Over the years he’s amassed a fairly large Nurgle army that can be used in both Warhammer 40,000 and Warhammer Age of Sigmar, as it mostly comprises Daemons. He’s been in a Nurgle mood lately – read some of his thoughts about the appeal of the least appealing of the Chaos Gods.
Tyler: I’ve been a fan of Nurgle for quite a while, and this is, in fact, my third full Nurgle army. If we want to count half starts and abandoned armies, that number goes even higher. I first felt the embrace of Nurgle about two decades ago. I always loved the look of the sculpts, but what actually got me to start an army was a co-worker of mine when I worked at the local Games Workshop in highschool. He played Death Guard and almost always beat my Space Marines force. Eventually I decided if I can’t beat ‘em, might as well join ‘em – and my first Death Guard army was born. This was around the time of the Eye of Terror campaign, and new Plague Marine sculpts and Typhus had just come out. On the Warhammer Fantasy side, I also had a small Nurgle Warriors of Chaos army for the Lustria campaign, and a fledgling all-Daemon army from the Storm of Chaos campaign before that. When the first Codex: Chaos Daemons came out for Warhammer 40,000, I went all in on an all-Nurgle Daemon army, and I actually still have most of that army too.
After that, Nurgle went on the backburner for quite a few years. When Warhammer Age of Sigmar came out I was once again tempted by them, but I wanted to wait until they got their own book. Enter Battletome: Maggotkin of Nurgle – when this book came out, along with all of the amazing new sculpts, I was hooked once again. I already loved the plastic Plaguebearer models, and had actually painted up a unit that nabbed me a Silver trophy at the 2013 Golden Demon USA. I was originally just going to paint up the new Great Unclean One, but after painting him I knew I had to do an army of them. It was so enjoyable to paint – surprisingly quick, too. This was about three months before that year’s AdeptiCon, and I spontaneously decided that I was going to paint up 1,000 points of Nurgle Daemons to take to the Vanguard Tournament.
For my colour scheme, I took a look through the Maggotkin book and decided that I liked the look of the Befouling Host, which is kind of a beige colour. While Nurgle is traditionally green, my previous army of Nurgle Daemons was actually an off white, so it’s probably been fifteen years or so since I’ve painted a Plaguebearer green. I did one test model before painting the Great Unclean One, and then took the leap. You can find my step by step tutorial for how I paint all of my Daemons here. I can’t remember how exactly I chose what colours I did, but it all worked in the end. I remember I wanted some green tones in the skin, but still mostly beige, so I kind of just experimented. The colours for their weapons actually came from a Paint Splatter in White Dwarf.
For my 1,000-point force I went with a fairly basic unit selection – the Great Unclean One, two units of ten Plaguebeaers, a unit of three Plague Drones, a unit of three Nurglings, and a Poxbringer. This gave me a good spread of units to paint. I somehow managed to finish all of this in time for the event and then immediately painted up the wonderful Sloppity Bilepiper when I returned home from it, fresh with a bunch of hobby enthusiasm for Nurgle. This was followed by the Nighthaunt release, so my Nurgle stuff got shelved for a while.
This past summer, while in between projects I decided to start painting Nurgle again. I had actually already built and primed everything I would need for my 2,000-point Tallyband army back when I did the first 1,000 points, so it made it a bit easier to jump in and get going. I then signed up for a tournament in December and decided that this was going to be the army I would take. This gave me a hard deadline and a bit more motivation to get it done. This also included painting up Horticulus Slimux, which I both looked forward to and was a bit afraid of. He’s such a lovely model, but I was afraid that the amount of detail on him would take a really long time.
In the end I really enjoyed working on him. I finished up the last Plague Drone about a week or so before the event. Now at a solid 2,000 points with the addition of thirty more Plaguebearers, three more Plague Drones, Horticulus, and a Spoilpox Scrivener, I could add stuff at a more leisurely pace.
After coming back from that event, I decided that I needed a mortal Sorcerer for the Blades of Putrefaction spell. Since I was going to add a Sorcerer it might as well be Festus. At first I was just going to paint the model as he came, but after holding him next to my Blightkings I thought he could use a bit of a size boost. The conversion is just parts cut off of the Festus model and some Blightking bits with a very (un)healthy dose of putty and sculpting. I also got the small smoke cloud coming from his vial from a Genestealer Cults model. I’m really happy with how he came out.
The new Slaves to Darkness models came out around this time, and I still needed to pick an army to take to the teams event at AdeptiCon this year. After converting some up, I once again decided to commit to a 1,000-point Nurgle force in just a couple of months, this time focusing on the mortal side of things.
While AdeptiCon was sadly cancelled this year, it still motivated me to finish my first five Blightkings and a converted Emerald Lifeswarm spell with a Nurgle twist using parts from the Gellerpox Infected.
My state is currently under stay-at-home orders, which has given me a bit more time to paint. I’ve since completed ten more Plaguebearers, the Wurmspat, a Beast of Nurgle, and I’m currently painting up three Plague Toads from Forge World.
For the Wurmspat, I have the option of running them as the Wurmspat in AoS, or since I converted the one model to have an axe instead of a spear, I can also run them as a Rotbringer Sorcerer, a Lord of Plagues, and a spare Blightking.
All together I have 2,900 points of painted Nurgle models, not including any warscroll battalions. This is a bit behind my 3,500+ points of painted Nighthaunts, but I’m working on closing the gap. The cool thing about a mostly Daemon army is that I can run it in Warhammer 40,000 too. According to Combat Roster, I have 86 Power Level of Nurgle Daemons – a pretty respectable amount. I have plenty of plans for my Nurgle force in the future, too. Inspired by my Festus conversion, I’ve also converted a new version of Epidemius. I have ten more Plaguebearers, three more Plague Drones, six more Nurglings, five more Blightkings and a Maggoth Lord to paint. I’ve always really liked the Order of the Fly, which features in several of Josh Reynolds stories, like Plague Garden, so I’m planning on converting the rest of my Slaves to Darkness stuff to be them. Needless to say, I have lots of plans for Nurgle in the future.
Now that’s dedication. Some collections are carefully planned from the beginning, and some just seem to thrive and grow like the myriad wonders of Nurgle’s Garden. You can find the exact paints and techniques Tyler’s used for a number of these models in his regular column, From the Mind of Mengel. Did this article get your creative bile flowing? Sign up for our email newsletter to find out the exact moment you can order some fresh Nurgle goodies for yourself!