Comrade's Wargames

I recently acquired and painted up several of the Space Marine Heroes Series 3: Death Guard – for the second time this decade! More on that later.

These models were originally released a number of years ago, primarily for the Japanese market, and they were only recently released earlier this year in the USA. They’re packaged and sold as individual blind boxes that contain 1 random miniature from the 8 models in the series.

I bought a couple of these guys and then traded for a few of the others. I ended up with a duplicate of the standard bearer guy, which gave me an opportunity to convert up the surplus model. He’s the guy on the left in the photo below.

But here’s the interesting (and slightly silly) backstory: I’ve actually owned these models before, back in 2020. When they were released for the Japanese market, they were commonly sold as a sealed case containing one of each of the models in the line, including the Malignant Plaguecaster that appeared less frequently and was sort of a chase rare. I bought my sealed case in December 2020 and then promptly lost interest in my Death Guard army for a while.

Over the next two years, the Death Guard Heroes set went out of print and started to command a premium price on the secondary market. I did a sober analysis of my still-sealed box – did I really need more Plague Marines? Would I truly get around to building and painting these guys? I wisely decided to “sell into the hype” and made a tidy little profit on my box.

I figured that was the end of the story, yet here we are – I’ve re-purchased those same models (for a much more reasonable, non-premium price, I must admit). BUT! I’ve also finished painting them, so I win in the end.

Anyway, it’s a silly little story that just goes to show how much I enjoy regular, run-of-the-mill Plague Marines as the backbone for my Death Guard army.

As a bonus, here’s one more Plague Marine that I painted up around the same time. He’s converted from one of the Chaos Space Marine Chosen from the Dark Vengeance boxed set, with some extra bits from my Putrid Blightkings leftovers.