Now that I'm through reviewing the codex from a Death Guard perspective, I'm going to start going into the process of developing your list. We will talk fluff and background and actual list building in the near future, but with this post I wanted to start my mental wheels turning when it comes to an icon for my warband. From a design standpoint, there are a few major choices with Death Guard (clean or dirty, brown or green (or dirty but vaguely pre-heresy), specific shade used etc. These are important for how your models look on the board, your personal painting aptitude, etc. I will be sharing some painting tutorials in the near future on that front.
If you look at the door on my Land Raider Proteus (best ebay find of last year, hands down), you will see I have begun painting a very basic Death Guard logo onto my door. This is mostly because I haven't been able to decide what to put in its place. Looking at the Death Guard iconography I could find online, I know that 3 is used (overused?) substantially, specifically 3 circles and a 3 point star. There are some clever riffs on the circles (adding icons within each or making the circles into drops of gore) or on the star (making it look like tentacles), or the fly icon that has a few variations.
Finding the right look for my warband (I've settled on The Blinded Eyes for their moniker) has been a 5 year journey at this point, and I still haven't settled on anything short of a relatively new paint scheme.
I have the FW front and doors on one of my Rhinos, which includes a skull based icon on the front, and then 3 skulls in the traditional circle and star pattern. I have a 2nd Rhino that I am still working on (I haven't started greenstuff work and I don't have custom resin for it) that I might go in a different direction on, possibly placing the fly logo on the doors in greenstuff or plasticard:
This would allow me to use different iconography for each squad, differentiating them. So, for the LR doors and any future models, I'm looking at the following:
Of all of these icons, my favourite are the following, both riffs on the original death guard logo:
Unfortunately they are probably overly-complicated for my current skill level. Considering this is something I will have to produce twice (although I could probably order Death Guard brass and make the D.G logo above) and something I'd like to paint rather than sculpt (as I would like to keep my model's original look, allowing me to strip and repaint it later).
I think my final choice for the Land Raider will be something of a combination between the following 2:
Using skulls in the circles and then the 2nd from the top style for the arrows, I can create something that looks sufficiently decayed without having to completely paint over the icon I have now. I sketched my idea out here:
And another sketch:
