Captain Rull Mothantis, part 4: Painting

To paint Rull, I wanted to do something a little bit different to normal. I decided that I would have one half of the model in darkened conditions, and the other half in light. Effectively, this means that the (imaginary) light source will be coming from one side of the miniature, with the other side almost silhouetted. The above photo shows the finished product (apologies for the camera flash causing bright spots on the wings -- doing it without the flash looked a lot worse). The light source is coming in from the right hand side of the picture (as viewed face on).

To paint the miniature, I undercoated it black to help out with the dark side of the miniature and the darkened crevices that I knew would be present in the final painting. I then made a start on the lit side of the miniature, painting it pretty much in the same style that I've developed for other plague marines -- a rusted feeling with some greens and brown, edged in a lighter cream colour.

The tough part here was figuring out which parts would be lit, and which parts would remain in darkness given the source of light.

To do this, I ended up shining a light late at night on to the miniature and just looking at where the light fell, what parts of the miniature were visible and which were hidden away by self-shadowing.

If I were to think about which was the hardest part of this, it would be the wings. Given their curvature, I had to pay special attention to which folds of the wings would be lit and which would be darkened. Hence I applied a lot of selectively located washes to this part of the miniature.

The darkened side of the miniature was easier in some respects: I knew it had to be dark, so I didn't set about painting it in glorious technicolour. I did however, selectively highlight a number of areas just to better define the shape of the miniature (e.g. the armour on the legs, the wing tips, and I even gave the bolter a very gentle boltgun metal dry brush).

There's just enough colour in there to suggest reflected light coming in from the other side of the miniature. For instance, it is obvious that the wings and the tree stump are brown and which parts are metallic, but it is hard to gauge any real detail, or fine colours in there as would be the case in low light conditions.

Overall, I'm happy with the way this miniature came out -- it has been an experience for me painting in this manner as it is not a technique that I've used extensively or am particularly familiar with. But the experiment has worked for the main part.

In battles, I will use the miniature in regular games (i.e. not using the rules I came up with) to represent unique plague champions or a winged chaos lord with the mark of Nurgle. Alternatively, I might just use the miniature in a kill team warband from time to time, or even as part of a fast attack raptors squad.

Captain Rull Mothantis, part 3: Rules

For all intents and purposes, Rull is considered an HQ choice. He is best utilized in low (less than 1000 points) games, where a usual Chaos Space Marine choice might cost significantly more. Rull has the following profile and rules.

Captain Rull Mothantis (HQ slot)
Cost: 105 points

WS BS S T W I A Ld Sv
4 4 4 5 2 3 2 10 3+/6+

Unit Type: Jump Infantry
Number per army: 1 (unique).

Wargear:
Power Armour
Bolter
Bolt pistol
Power Fist
Frag grenades
Krak grenades
Blight grenades
Wings

Special Rules:
Mark of Nurgle (included in profile / Toughness is 4 for instant death rules)
Feel no Pain
Fearless
Independent Character
6+ Invulnerable save

Psychic Power:
Nurgle's Rot.
Special Condition: Rull MUST attempt to use Nurgle's Rot every turn, even if there are no enemies in range.

In terms of coming up with these rules, I simply price a plague champion and added on the power fist and the other accessories as standard. This was followed by adding on 15 points for the extra wound and rounding up. I used half-price wings as an incentive to select this character whereas the 6+ invulnerable save is about the only full give-away here. This is somewhat balanced by being forced to try to activate Nurgle's Rot every turn. He has no choice in this matter! If playing a narrative campaign, then I'd suggest that Rull cannot be "killed" by a perils of the Warp attack from being forced to use the Rot -- rather, the narrative should be that the Rot has incapacitated him for a time, until Nurgle re-animates him. It encourages the player to play him aggressively less he dies from the rot before the end of the game -- hence the very dynamic pose for the miniature (see part 2 of this mini-series).

The feel of these rules is about right for the points value. This is a low level character that represents someone who was once a possessed chaos space marine but is left with various "mutations" from the experience (power fist for an arm, wings, a 6+ save from once being daemon-kin and Nurgle's Rot that occasionally overcomes him).

Captain Rull Mothantis, part 2: Model

This is the miniature that I'm going to use to depict Rull on the battlefield with. I'll show how the painting went in the final part of this series of four.

The bits used in this conversion were as follows:

Base = Back2base-ix resin forest base.
Legs = Chaos Space Marine standard. Left leg has been chopped off and reposition with some milliput.
Torso = Death Guard resin from Forge World.
Shoulder Pads = Death Guard resin from Forge World.
Left Arm = Possessed Chaos Space Marine. (Representing a mutated power fist).
Right Arm = Chaos Space Marine standard.
Wings = Possessed Chaos Space Marine.
Bolter = Chaos Space Marine standard.
Blight Grenade (held in the power fist) = Warhammer Fantasy Zombie boxed set.

Altogether, this is a more dynamic plague marines than I usually encounter or set out to build. I think that the positioning of the bits looks like he has just come in for a landing on top of a tree stump and is about to charge forward, bolter blazing and blight grenade / death head at the ready.

Captain Rull Mothantis, part 1: Background

(Today: some fluff to start a series of four postings about a unique character...) After the Heresy, the Sons of Horus became the Black Legion. But they were suffering many woes. The Emperor's Children stole the clones of Horus from them. Their numbers were shattered. The other traitor legions held them in contempt. Abaddon, unifying the core of what was left of them, lead lightning raids to destroy the clones. As the years became decades, the chaos powers that the Black Legion paid service to shifted also ebbed and flowed. Caught up in the ebb and flow was one Captain Rull Mothantis.

In the midst of the wars to unify the other legions behind the Black Legion's banner, he gave himself up for daemonic possession. A Great Unclean One of Nurgle answered the call and mutated his body. He increased in bulk, grew mutated wings and his fingers lengthened to monstrous proportions: pushing through the gauntlet of his power fist.

Yet, in the fullness of time, one war lead to another war. Nurgle fell out of favour as Tzeentch ascended into prominence in the Black Legion. It was shortly thereafter that the Black Legion figured out how to remove safely recover the host as the unwanted daemons retreated (voluntarily or not) back to the Warp. This discovery is reported to have singularly saved the Black Legion from extinction.

Captain Rull Mothantis was one of the first group of Black Legion marines to be safely recovered from daemonic possession. Regaining full control of his body, he realized that the body was scarred for eternity. the Black Legion had not yet discovered how to turn a mutated body back to its original form. Even the Thousand Sons were reported to be suffering from excessive and rampant mutations without finding a cure. Although Rull knew the Iron Warriors simply chopped off the offending mutation and replaced it with bionic and cybernetic implants, this would never be enough.

Moreover, the Great Unclean One who had controlled the flesh had left residues behind, such was its power. His very flesh had been contaminated with various unpleasant Nurgle pestilences and his body was decaying. His fear fermented. Then he went in to action.

In desperation, he left the Black Legion on a stolen fighter and sought out a Death Guard warband. They accepted him as one of their own and he dedicated himself once again to Nurgle, but this time in control of his own body and no longer suffering from the ailments that the Great Unclean One had left for him (although still a carrier).

Rull is now one of Nurgle's finest Chaos Lord's and willingly serves both the Black Legion and Death Guard. Additionally, he has been sighted on the battlefield on numerous occasions with an ominous looking Great Unclean One. Scholars believe it is the self same daemon who had control of him all those decades earlier: but now they are strongly allied in different bodies.

(This background is unofficial; Please read the disclaimer).

WFB Chaos Warrior

A while ago, I thought about some chaos warriors and assembled them to see what they'd look like on a warhammer 40,000 circular base. This is the first of the chaos warriors painted, and I wanted in particular to show off the cape on the rear of the miniature.

The cape was basecoated in a cream colour and given several washes of good old devlan mud and chestnut colours. Highlighting was done with bleached bone to create lighter tones around the ripped segments of the cape and the folds. At the top of the cape, the fur (if indeed, it is fur?) was given almost a pure bleached bone highlight. Further highlighting was accomplished by mixing some skull which with the cream colour and applying it very lightly to the raised areas.

Finally, the lower portion of the cape - that bit that almost drags along the ground behind the chaos warrior was given another wash to suggest that it had been soiled by the ground and the warrior's own feet.
In contrast, the front of the warrior still needs a bit more work. The original idea was to have some Khornate paint scheme going here, but I've overdone the reds (especially their inking and washing) and I haven't yet highlighted it properly. Let's not even mention the horns on the helmet ... they need much more attention to get right.

Overall, this is one miniature that looks better from behind that from the front! But I've learnt a lot about how to shade and highlight capes from painting this miniature and may use that on a chaos terminator lord at a later date.

Winner of the March 2010 Army List Challenge

The voting has been a nail-biting affair for this month's army list challenge (and a lot more interesting than the Tasmanian and South Australian state elections that have been reported on TV here).

Much like Tasmania, it looked like we were heading for hung vote with SandWyrm and Cthoss on level pegging after a few days of voting. Then, sonsoftaurus came up from a low count to rival the other two. In the last few days, there were a small flurry of votes coming in for all of the competitors. But in the end, SandWyrm took the poll by a single vote (and with 33% of the total votes).

Congratulations to SandWrym -- another victory and glory for you! That makes it a clean sweep for the boys from the Back 40k for this year as well. Can they keep it up?

I hope you all enjoyed this month's challenge - there were some fantastic entries in there. There will be another Army List Challenge issued on the 1st of April.