Forge World Death Guard Plague Marine

To build up the number of Death Guard plague marine troops in my collection, I'm using the dedicated Forge World upgrade set. The Forge World set comes in at the usual standard that we have come to expect of the company: highly detailed and cast well apart from the odd bubble here and there. On Nurgle models, such air bubbles in the casting process is hardly noticeable in the slightest! On the contrary, it adds to the feel of the model.

The Forge World parts consist of the torso and shoulder pads. All of the other parts must be supplied by the hobbyist. The pictured Death Guard plague marine is the first one that I've assembled. It is also a minor conversion. Aside from the Forge World components, this model uses a bolter (with strap) from the Dark Angels veterans sprue; a loyalist marine shoulder pad (in order to make the number of Death Guard shoulder pads go further - there are two supplied per torso!); and legs, arms and back pack of a standard chaos space marine. To convert it slightly, the shoulder pad and bolter have been "decorated" with studs that are created from chopping up a small-diameter plastic cylinder in to bits. The non-Forge World shoulder pad with the studs added has therefore become reminiscent of a loyalist space marine veteran's shoulder pad. This was done since it is probable that the Death Guard are still using millenia old power armour - they are renowned for crafting exceptionally long lasting (albeit ugly looking) equipment.

The base of the miniature has a small number of cast-off and otherwise unused plastic bits from random sources (sprues that would otherwise be binned, etc.). The base will eventually be an urban rubble one. Perhaps with a tiny amount of weeds popping up from between the rubble.

A number, perhaps the majority, of my Death Guard collection are posed with their bolters held in one hand. This is done so as not to cover up the typically Nurglesque additions to the model (in addition to representing the "true grit" rule in the old codex). With the Forge World models, the desire to not cover up the decaying details on the torso is doubly hard to resist. Moreover, posing the miniature with the bolter held across a Forge World Death Guard torso often causes a poor fit - the blobs of decay and broken pipes cause the arms to be pushed further away from the torso. Therefore my future models will likely follow the bolter in one hand strategy, or bolt pistol plus chainsword. This model was one of the exceptions (bolter across the torso) to simply see how it looked. It'll get painted up another day once I've assembled a few more.