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.
Earlier this month we played out the latest installment in The Cauldron, our 40k narrative campaign. This session took place on Ardent Maxima, a hive city located on the other side of planet Gamma Euphorion Prime.
By contrast, Ardent Maxima is the epicenter of a vast textile operation. Stadium-sized looms spin gargantuan bolts of fabric for use in Imperial Guard uniforms or embroidered draperies or even sailcloth for maritime vessels. Seam-serfs, with help from stitcher-servitors, churn out untold millions of finished products each year. Most of the inhabitants of Ardent Maxima work to support these textile operations in one way or another, overseen by the benevolent enforcers of the Adeptus Sororitas.
Rebel activity from heretical cults recently hit a fever pitch in Ardent Maxima when the monument to St. Veridegora Deneia was blown up by insurrectionists. Even before the dust settled, the enemies of the Imperium were already making their moves to further despoil the site of the once-proud statuary. The Sisters of Battle summoned urgent assistance from a nearby expeditionary regiment of Imperial Guard, newly arrived from the Glouroth Sub-Sector.
This game pitted Daniel’s Genestealer Cult and Jim’s Orks against Rian’s Sisters of Battle alongside a combined Imperial Guard detachment commanded by me and John. It was a classic xeno-vs-Imperium matchup, amid the ruins of the blown up monument!
The forces of the Imperium mustered their soldiers and armor at the perimeter of the plaza where the statue to St. Deneia and stood until recently. Two walkers and a main battle tank anchored their line, along with the rarefied warriors of the Sisters of Battle.
You can see the blasted sandstone chunks of what had once been the statue to St. Veridegora Deneia in the background. Who would dare desecrate such a holy bastion?
Oh. These guys would.
And probably these guys, too.
With a guttural howl, the combined forces of the Orks and Genestealer Cults surged forward, eager to reach the Imperial lines and deliver vengeance upon the miserable curs of the Corpse-Emperor.
Thankfully, the Emperor protects and reloads.
The Imperial battle line let loose with a cracking volley of fire, ripping apart several of the xeno transport vehicles and spilling their inhabitants. Undeterred, the bad guys cinched up their belts and began the long slog to the three objectives scattered around the table.
In the photo above, you can see the first completed tile from Daniel’s Realm of Battle board. He acquired a full set (enough for a 6×4 table) from Mindtaker Miniatures earlier this summer. He brought his one completed tile to this game, and it fit in beautifully alongside the rest of our hive city terrain!
The big ol’ tank in that photo is from Pig Iron Productions. It is a gigantic chunk of solid resin that has been in my collection for many years. This tank featured heavily into some my early games with the Chicago Skirmish Wargames club, such as this one: Operation Scrub Down! Nice to get it back onto the table 12 years later.
But anyway, back to the game. Big things were happening. A xeno transport truck motored up the flank and deposited a squad of greenskins right on top of one of the objectives.
As you can imagine, this transgression would not stand, man, and the Sisters of Battle were in a position to do something about it. Rian’s newly painted Penitent Engine stomped right into the fray and began hewing swathes of orks in twain with its massive buzz saws.
The stained glass windows on this MDF terrain looks absolutely fantastic! It was a fitting backdrop for this utter devastation that was visited upon the orks.
With the destruction of the ork mob on the flank, the xenos’ advance was seriously threatened. All eyes turned to the rubble-strewn plaza where a Genestealer leader had brazenly planted a flag amid the ruins of St. Deneia’s monument. What a shocking, ghastly display of debauchery!
At the time, it seemed like the appropriate response was for John to drive an APC up and open fire on the squirrely cultist with its autocannon. I think St. Deneia would agree, don’t you?
While the plaza was getting chewed to pieces by high caliber rounds, a different sort of confrontation was taking place near the Technobridge in the center of the table. A small kill team led by Inquisitor Ash was closing in on an elite ork warband led by Jim’s mighty warboss! If they could dislodge the warboss and defeat the quad-wheeler camped out on the objective, they could secure a vital area of the battlefield.
At this point, the tide of the battle turned. Warp lighting arced across the battlefield as the forces of Chaos arrived, no doubt drawn by the carnage and slaughter of the ongoing battle!
In game terms, the xeno team had a third player (Lawrence) who had brought two mighty demons to the game, and both arrived via the ambush special rule (similar to Deep Strike in 40k). So the initial cakewalk that the Imperial Guard experience was just an illusion! The bloodthirsty demons swooped in and began carving up the rear lines. Check out these photos of their arrival.
Doom had come to the plaza of St. Deneia!
The arrival of the two gigantic (and beautifully painted) demons caused a cold sweat to break out on the collective brows of the defenders of the Imperium. How could they carry on in the face of such abject evil? Trusting in their faith in the Emperor, the heroes mustered their courage and stuck to the game plan.
The plaza had become a killing field, as Orks and cultists swarmed in for the final clash. On the perimeter, heavy weapon teams and the remaining walkers poured fire into the advancing mobs of bad guys – even as the demons rampaged in the backfield. Would it be enough?
Eventually the orks consolidated their hold on the central objective. It seemed clear that the game would be decided here. Based on the photo below, it sure looks like the Orks have this one in the bag.
However, zoom out a bit and you can see what was awaiting them as we entered the final turn of the game. Legions of steely-eyed Guardsmen, backed up by tanks and walkers, ready to pour on the fire and do their duty to the Emperor!
The two demons, for all their might, didn’t have enough offensive power to thwart the Imperial Guard’s game plan. The defenders of the Imperium succeeded in purging the filth from the plaza of St. Deneia, notching one important victory in the battle for Ardent Maxima.
This was a large and tremendously satisfying game of Grimdark Future. We had 3,000 points per side, divided up amongst the players on the two teams. This game marked the first outing for several newly painted miniatures, as well as a triumphant return for some, ah, legacy models from my collection.
Today’s Grimdark Future battle report (the next installment in The Cauldron, our ongoing grimdark/Inq28 themed narrative campaign) took place far from the glittering spires of Hive Sacrament on Gamma Euphorion Prime. While the miserable defenders of the Imperium struggled to stem the dark tide surging up from the depths of the underhive, our factions were making a move on the nearby industrial moon Drusichtor.
The moon hangs like an overripe plum in the leaden skies of Gamma Euphorion Prime, swollen with mineral resources and riven with scars from centuries of careless extraction activity. In my head, Drusichtor is kind of like LV-426 crossed with the Australian outback. Lots of crumbling industrial facilities, isolated mineheads, abandoned strip mines, weather-worn hab blocks, windswept cliff faces, etc. Ripe for narrative gaming in our homebrew setting. In this game, the factions were converging on the Xenarite Interchange, one of several heavily fortified industrial mining facilities that dot the tortured, windswept landscape of Drusichtor.
For this game, a splinter warband of Death Guard commandos from the Maggot Magnates faction was pushing to seize the security station. Opposing them was a ragtag band of miners who, by pure happenstance, were swooning under the influence of a nefarious genestealer cult. A band of ork raiders lurking in the hills flipped a coin and decided to ally with the genestealer cultists during this raid.
Three security stations located within the perimeter of the Xenarite Interchange offered access to the base’s robotic sentinels. The faction that could seize and activate the security stations would be able to direct the robotic sentinels to swarm and destroy the opposing faction. Gulp!
Our game got underway with a general advance by the Plague Marines of the Death Guard. They had two sizable hordes of shambling Poxwalkers, and these they prodded toward the objectives in the center of the board.
The genestealer cultists responded by directing the fearsome flame weapons on their vehicles to mow down the poxwalkers as they advanced. Yikes, I was not expecting so many flamethrowers!
On the opposite flank, a Chaos Rhino delivered a squad of Plague Marines to another objective, located in a toxic spill zone. Before the game, we had designated this area as “dangerous terrain” per the Grimdark Future rules, which caused units to risk casualties if they moved into or through the terrain. Thus, this objective was objectively more hazardous to secure!
You can see in the photo above that Jim had a squad of Ork boyz waiting just behind the disabled vehicle, ready to pounce on my Plague Marines once they waded into the toxic soup near the objective.
Daniel had also prepared an ambush – his mutant cultists popped out of a tunnel and charged my Plague Marines as they closed in on the objective, resulting in a brutal close combat.
And of course, eagle-eyed readers probably noticed the three Killa Kans stomping around in this general area. They were armed to the teeth, but thankfully they weren’t too tough, and we were able to pop them one after another (while simultaneously dealing with the genestealer cultists and marauding orks).
The MVP for popping Killa Kans turned out to be the Chaos Rhino! I had equipped it with the spiked ram upgrade, which gave it Impact (9), and this turned out to be devastating. In Grimdark Future, vehicles have no way to fight back in close combat, so they have an ability called Impact (X) that acts as a sort of tank shock, dealing X automatic hits when they rumble into a squad. After that, they’re often sitting ducks, but Impact can really even the odds when employed correctly.
Dealing 9 auto-hits proved to be just the tonic I needed to carve up the Killa Kans and grease the Orks.
Back on the left flank, the poxwalkers staggered forward even as they were coated with flaming promethium. A few made it into combat with the big cultist truck, but they were too diminished to do much damage.
We had better luck with a lone Chaos Terminator who arrived via deep strike (aka Ambush, in the parlance of Grimdark Future) and charged into combat with the cultists who had just spilled out of the transport truck. The Terminator carved them up with frightening ferocity!
The final clash of the game took place on the right flank, where a mob of advancing poxwalkers inadvertently uncovered the source of the xeno cult – actual genestealers!!
They were punished terribly for discovering this forbidden truth. The survivors continued the advance, supplemented by a grisly Myphitic Blight Hauler, aka murder tricycle.
By this point, Jim’s fearsome Ork Warboss was entering the fray. He hewed and cleaved with his mighty choppa, but ultimately he succumbed to the Death Guard onslaught, which paved the way for the Plague Marines to seize the objective and wrap up the game.
The outcome of our narrative scenario meant that the Death Guard were able to activate the base’s remote sentry robots, which bounded forth on four legs and proceeded to lay waste to the surviving cultists and orks. This was a great excuse for John to bust out some newly painted robo-puppers that served to close out this game with style.
And so the cultists and their erstwhile allies (the Orks) were driven back, and the Death Guard consolidated their position at the Xenarite Interchange and prepared to probe deeper into Drusichtor’s desolate industrial facilities. Who can say what strange discoveries await?
I should note that this game was just one of two games that were running concurrently in John’s garage game room. The other game is documented with aplomb over at Orcs Illustrated, the blog headquarters of fellow club member John. Here’s a sneak peek at the action in the Pilgrimage District.
We had a total of 10 players squeezed into the garage – a record, I believe, for our little game club. This game was also a bit of an “east meets west” event, as it featured a visit from Karl, my friend and co-founder of Chicago Skirmish Wargames (my old game club). So it was a real treat to set up a couple games with Karl and give him a chance to meet the guys in my group.
All in all, it was a glorious sight to behold. Fully painted miniatures, gorgeously crafted terrain and scenery, and an engrossing narrative campaign. Truly, this represents the zenith of what anyone seeks out when they gaze at the cover art of any ol’ box of miniatures.
I’ve had a lot of fun building terrain for our grimdark / Inq28 style sci-fi campaign (The Cauldron). I tackled somelargepieces for our modular underhive board, and now I’m back to showcase some smaller bits of scatter terrain to spice up the battelfield.
Up first are some industral pieces: two barricades (from Mantic’s Deadzone set, I think) and two gigantic oversized bolts that I liberated from my kids’ toy box and painted in crusty, rusty colors.
Up next we have some very simple alien growths, perfect for use as objective markers or to dress up a wall or panel. These are Tyranid cysts from some sort of 40k set. I affixed them to small pieces of plasticard painted in a simple rusty metallic paint scheme.
These pieces can be used on the ground as objective points, but to me they work even better when affixed to a wall or door with a bit of sticky tack.
They look like the sort of oozing, ichor-filled growths that would adorn a tunnel or hallway within an area that’s being overtaken by foul xenos. Yeah, that’s the stuff.
This last piece was something I’ve been wanting to kitbash for a long time – a servitor medicae station, one of countless thousands of such sites located throughout the working class levels of Hive Sacrament.
These little stations feature prominently in Darktide, the 40k first person shooter where you play as part of a ragtag Inquisitorial warband purging the taint of chaos from the cruel underhive.
This terrain build was pretty simple – a piece of pink foam fitted with a vaguely religious alcove piece kindly provided by John’s 3D printer. On top of that I affixed some industrial lamps, cables, and grating – all OSHA approved, of course. The servitor model was an old piece from the Inquisitor Karamazov kit that’s been bouncing around in my bits box for years.
Recently I banged out a few Necromunda-style sci-fi terrain pieces after getting inspired by some posts that came across my social media showing nifty examples of aquarium filter panels being used to create terrain tiles.
I’m a sucker for cheap, creative ways of replicating the various pricey terrain sets that have come along in the last few years. In this case, the sci-fi floor tiles from Games Workshop are undoubtedly cool, but the amount of money required to make an entire tabletop of these premium pieces would probably buy a small island in the Seychelles.
So when I saw that someone had created some decent lookalikes using those super cheap plastic aquarium filter panels, I knew I had to give it a shot.
These panels are roughly 6 inches square and came in a pack of 10 for $14.99 shipped to my door. That’s my kind of price!! They come with a pleasing crosshatched pattern, plus a few round circular areas that looked ideal for future detailing.
As you can see in the photo above, they also come mounted on plastic 1-inch pegs that lift them off the ground. Very cool! I ended up snipping off the legs because these panels are made of flexible, somewhat soft plastic, and I knew I’d have to work hard to make them lie flat.
To that end, I mounted the plastic panels atop several layers of heavy corrugated packing cardboard that I had lying around. First I hardened these pieces with several layers of black paint and Mod Podge, then I glued the plastic panels down using a goopy outdoor adhesive. I had to weight them down with books to make sure the panels remained flat – they are soft and somewhat flexible, and the edges threatened to curl up without some weight.
The tiles looked great out of the box, but I decided to take them to the next level by affixing some additional bits – grating, plasticard, corrugated cardboard, just a variety of textures to break up the surface a little bit and create some visual interest. You could skip this step entirely, because the base filter panels look superb as is.
I also added some skull glyph plates that had been languishing in my bits box for years. Because this is 40k after all!
As you can see, the whole thing got sprayed black, then silver using regular old rattle cans from the hardware store. I covered that with a heavy black wash that dulled everything down and set the stage for the grimdark phase, which featured heavy sponge application of browns, oranges, and yellows, plus some decals and propaganda posters to punch up the zaniness.
Oops, looks like the decals weren’t quite dry in these photos. They look great now, though!
The circular details on the filter panels look particularly fantastic. They could be hatches, manhole covers, or drains leading to a fluid reclamation system. Whatever they might be, they look tremendous!
I’m inordinately pleased with how these turned out. I’d say 75% of the painting work was accomplished with rattle cans of spray paint, and I never used a detail brush at all – just sponges for the final highlights.
The best part was that I only used 4 of the 10 tiles in the pack to make these two delightful terrain pieces. More to come for sure, and soon!
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