Well, my new baby is one month old today, and I noted with some amazement that I was able to paint up 10 Poxwalkers over the last 30 days, even while I was juggling a hospital stay for the birth, visits from doting grandparents and plenty of late nights rocking a fussy newborn.

So I’m sharing a few photos of these nasty buggers and also congratulating myself on accomplishing a bit of hobby progress in January!

For my first batch of Poxwalkers, I went with the standard rotting green flesh color. For these guys, I wanted to try out a new flesh color, so I gave them a few washes of purple shade, plus sepia on the boils and sores, to create a suitably gnarly flesh color. Maybe these guys are the reanimated corpses of a starship crew that was killed after an explosive decompression in the void? And they floated in hard vacuum for a few weeks before Papa Nurgle saw fit to reanimate them for his legions? Yeah, that’s it. That might explain the purplish tone of their flesh.

I did some head and weapon swaps on these guys to differentiate them from the stock sculpts. Aside from the flesh, I went with a fairly quick and simple paint scheme for their clothing and weapons — after all, the goal here is to get these guys done to a passable tabletop standard.

Anyway, I’ve got another 10 guys to paint up in a similar paint scheme. Once they’re done, I’ll have two full-sized blocks of Poxwalkers ready for my new game of Warhammer 40k. In addition to being fairly effective on the battlefield, these guys look great in a big group, surging across the battlefield toward the enemy lines, blazing a trail for squads of heavy hitting Plague Marines. Stay tuned!

My ten or so readers may have noticed that Comrade’s Wargames has gone silent since my last, epic, end-of-the-year post about our Apoc-Luck game at the Girl Scout center.

In truth, that game was intended as a temporary swan song for me, as I welcomed a new baby boy in early January and will be consumed with fatherhood for at least a few months, before sleeping and eating schedules settle down a bit.

In the last few days before the baby arrived, I knocked out a handful of last-minute miniatures: Typhus, the Herald of Nurgle, three Death Guard Plague Marines, and the Foul Blightspawn — all intended as reinforcements for my burgeoning Death Guard army.

Here’s Typhus. I always liked the old metal version of him, particularly after the debut of the new, slightly silly plastic model last year. Once I decided the new model didn’t suit me, it wasn’t to find a poorly painted metal Typhus for $10 in an online buy/sell group that I could strip and repaint.

Up next are the three Plague Marines from the easy-to-build set. These models are designed to go together easily, without glue so beginners can get started in the hobby. They’re also nice sculpts to complement the other Plague Marines from the Dark Imperium starter set.

These guys got my typical Death Guard paint job — sloppy block colors followed by a magic dip of Minwax Polyshades Antique Walnut, which imparted a rich rusty shade to the armor and details. The end result is passable and shaved hours off my time working on these guys. Most of the painting groups I follow on Facebook would never dream of using the magic dip, but I’ve employed it for many years and gotten really satisfactory results. Your mileage may vary.

The last figure I finished was the Foul Blightspawn. I wasn’t initially planning to include this model in my Death Guard army, but I started hearing stories about how totally brutal he was on the battlefield, so I figured I’d give it a shot.

(Sidenote: This is a very rare example of me painting up a model based solely on how well it performs in the game of Warhammer 40,000. It doesn’t happen often — more commonly, you’ll find me painting up figures that I simply *wanted to paint*, only to find out later that the 40k hive mind has determined that they’re not worth the points, or ineffective versus the current meta, or whatever. Pish posh — paint what you like, I say!)

I literally finished basing this guy the night before my new baby was born! Talk about down to the wire!

As I mentioned at the outset, I’ll be taking a break from gaming for a couple months. I’ll still be puttering away at a few projects in the meantime, so this blog may see some updates, but no promises. Until we game again!