Mutated Plague Champion

This plague champion sports an overgrown left arm and some naked brains. He has been in my collection for some time now, and I wanted to document his construction and purpose.

Model.
The model is primarily a metal plague marine miniature from the plague marine boxed set -- he is the champions body. The left arm is from the chaos mutations sprue that all plastic chaos space marine boxes used to come supplied with. They're still available from direct order though.

The shoulder pad with the skull transfer on it is simply a terminator should pad that has been a little defaced with a hobby knife to make it look older. I chose this shoulder pad since it covers up the protrusion of the mutated arm quite readily. The arm itself was pinned in to the metal body of the plague marine prior to the shoulder pad being applied. The melta bomb was more of an after thought along the lines of "I've got 5 spare points to spend on constructing this army list".

The left arm features a combi-plasma gun from a loyalist marine (a librarian terminator if my memory serves me correctly). A standard marine arm was used to hold the plasma gun, but I did spend some time removing the imperial eagle logo from the side of the bolter and generally defacing it a bit. I did leave the purity (impurity?) seal on the outside of the plasma gun as I'd already spent way to long removing the imperial eagle from the other side.

Painting.
The painting scheme follows my usual approach to plague marines - going for a greenish but rusted appearance. However, I knew I wanted the mutated arm to stand out a little. So I used a purple basecoat followed by a deep purple inking to create the effect. This was followed up by some careful drybrushing to lighter shades of purple. The final detail on the arm was to pick out some random lumps and bumps and paint them yellow with black dots on top. Not quite certain what disease that is supposed to represent, but I'm sure Nurgle would be proud.

The nails on the mutated arm were painted in a combination of wet blending browns and creams together to suggest the appearance of a marine who doesn't really go in for many manicures. Nobody would want to be scratched by those talons!

In Game.
The configuration of this miniature is by no means cheap in the points department. He is kitted out with a combi-plasma and a melta bomb which adds up to some 53 points straight away. I sometimes remove the melta bomb to free up a few points, but otherwise, he stays as he is. His primary role is in support of two other plague marine plasma gunners in a small squad. This makes for 3 plasma gun shots (preferably rapid firing) early on in a game. My typical use for such a squad is to sit them in a crater (or other terrain feature) near to an objective, for the entirety of a game. They then shoot at anything that passes by in range. I think the best result I've had with them is destroying an entire posse of loyalist marine bikers that swerved to close to them. But, I usually play him simply for the looks. In more serious games, I'd be tempted to ditch him for a power fist armed plague champion.