The Outbreak

In the beginning, there was Dark Imperium. No. Wait... Rewind a bit.

In the beginning, there was Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader - a strategy tabletop game that featured impossibly cool models painted to beautiful standards set against a backdrop of emerald green baize. Polystyrene, flocked hillocks loomed over the battlefield, whilst ragtag bands of warriors - all daubed in varying primary colours - slugged it out over territory. Or so it seemed. 

I received the Rogue Trader book as a Christmas present from my well-meaning parents when I was eleven years old, but despite poring over it for hours upon hours, I never really got to grips with it at all, and I certainly never played a game of actual Warhammer 40,000. The points system was too granular, the options were too varied, and the models were too expensive. Sound familiar? Well, that was my experience back then, anyhow. But then came 2nd Edition, and with it came an easier way to play. Some folks complained it was too cartoon-y and simplified, but for the adolescent me it worked a charm. Plastic Orks allowed me to put together something resembling a warband. A metal dreadnought, a Battlewagon and a box of Boyz made into Goffs meant that I was finally able to play the game.

But then LIFE happened. I got older. I became more interested in girls; in going out; in music; in being a teenager. Tale as old as time, right? My school and University years passed in a blur, and then in my mid-twenties, I found that some of my friends (that's you, Himn and Pleeb) were playing that game we used to enjoy of a weekend. I picked up some models and joined in.

First came a handful of Blood Angels - mostly fashioned out of models from the Assault on Black Reach box set - and they were swiftly followed by some Imperial Guard (who were heavily supplemented by generous birthday gifts from my chums). But Space Wolves were what finally got me on the road to a proper army.

And the rest, as they say, is history. Space Wolves begat a Blood Angels renaissance, which begat a force of Chaos Space Marines when Dark Vengeance came out, which begat Daemons and so on, and so forth. My main projects though, came with the releases of the Horus Heresy boxed sets, Betrayal at Calth and The Burning of Prospero. These boxes offered ridiculous numbers of lovely MkIV and MkIII Space Marines, and with them I helped my Blood Angels to undergo yet another facelift (with the MkIV), and my Nurglite Chaos Space Marines to be given a true sense of coherency with the MkIII suits. 

I planned the Chaos army from top to bottom, and I was really pleased with my efforts. It even included some Forge World pieces! And so this was where I was at when 8th Edition rolled around. The new box set was announced, and news trickled through that there were fancy new Space Marines AND pretty new Death Guard models! Great! Er... Maybe?

The reality was, I had a Space Marine army. And a kinda Death Guard one (although I was running it as Iron Warriors, to be fair). I looked at the box and thought "Yeesh, £90 is a chunk of change, isn't it? Maybe I'll pass on it." And so I did.

But of course, the models kept calling to me. About a year passed, and I became more and more curious about both factions. But, of course, Dark Imperium was still £90, so I picked up a copy of Know No Fear - the budget starter set - for £40. And a small box of Poxwalkers. And then I eBayed some extra Plague Marines... and so on, and so forth. And before I knew it, I had a Death Guard army, after all.

When I started painting these guys I was worried that I would be vindicated by my initial decision to overlook them. I had thought the models to be great fun, but too detailed in terms of infantry. Each model had the same level of detail as a character model, and it seemed to me that upon that road lay madness...

And yet, and yet, and yet...

And yet, they are great fun to paint, it seems! Death Guard traditionally lend themselves to a slapdash approach with painting, but not these chaps. You can get away with it if you have a particular scheme in mind, but so much would be lost. A simple scheme, done cleanly, is the best way to go in my opinion (although others may disagree), and this blog is here to document my progress in the pursuit of that. Each blog post will outline the completion of another step on the path to completing my Death Guard army. I hope that I can look back on all of these steps fondly in the months and years to come.

Blessed be the Plaguefather!