Daemonic Nurgle Lord / Herald Conversion

The Chaos Nurgle Lord by Games Workshop is so full of character in every little feature it's a pleasure to build and paint it as is right off the sprue, but it's also such a richly detailed model just looking at it gives me all kinds of great conversion ideas for altered versions.

Recently an idea popped into my head for this model while I was working on my Plaguebearers of Nurgle and I just had to build and paint the character that was in my head.

I knew I wanted to use the fly head from the Plaguebearers set. GW made a really cool Chaos Warrior back in the Realm Of Chaos days that had a fly head which I painted years ago and I really wanted to do something similar with this cool new Nurgle model. This was my main inspiration around which the rest of the model is built.

Start by building the body of the Chaos Nurgle Lord.



Then, glue on the fly head from the Plaguebearers set.



Next, carefully shave the hand from the lower part of the axe haft with a modeling knife. Remove the lower right arm from the right hand at the wrist.



Now it's time to build the model. Glue the right arm and hand to the body. A variety of positions for the axe are now possible with the hand having been cut from the arm. I chose the pose shown below. Note that the haft of the axe used to pass through the gut, which now leaves an indented area with no detail showing. I sculpted an intestine to fill the space using Kneadatite ("Green Stuff"). The left hand has been replaced with the left hand from the Plaguebearers set that holds severed heads. These add the proper air of threat to the model and could also represent Plaguemarine "blight grenades" or the catalyst for some foul magic spell about to be cast.




I wanted a fusion of technology with flesh and mutation as was done on so many classic Realm Of Chaos models so I added some hoses to the back of the model that attach to the head. One hose ends in a canister suggesting some kind of filter or respirator. One hose has a mutated organic look to it. These bits come from a variety of GW kits. The size of the fly head and the attached hoses also suggest it might be or at one time have been a helmet that is now indistinguishable from the wearer due to mutation. Chaos often produces convoluted looking mutations and I wanted a bit of mystery in the nature of this finished conversion.



Here is the model fully painted. The main color scheme matches my Plaguebearers also shown recently on Spikey Bits. I love how the spike growing out of the head parallels the spikes bursting from the left pauldron (shoulder pad). I think the blackened tips add an air of venomous toxicity to their appearance. The scenic basing on the model was done with Apoxy Sculpt and some Woodland Scenics Realistic Water.

For details on "toxic swamp basing" check out my recent tutorial here on Spikey Bits.

This model was built mainly as a Nurgle Chaos Space Marine Lord or Sorcerer, but he can easily pull double-duty as a Herald Of Nurgle in a Chaos Daemons army. He is the stuff of nightmares!


Here's a view of the back of the model after painting. He looks similarly disgusting from the rear. The right shoulder of the model already had a small wound sculpted into it that took the hoses on the far right nicely. The organic looking hoses were painted in a bony looking off-white color, the respirator hose is painted black and the dual hoses on the right are green and red (the red one is difficult to see at this angle because it nests under the green one).