Warhammer Underworlds - The Wurmspat

Given my interest in Warhammer Underworlds and Nurgle I suppose it was inevitable that I would pick up the Nurgle warband for Warhammer Underworlds. In fact, buying a copy of Beastgrave was pretty much just an excuse to pick up the Wurmspat warband. Or was it the other way around, getting the Wurmspat was just an excuse to get into Warhammer Underworlds? We may never know. 

Whatever the reason, these three gribblies were easy to assemble and being bulky miniatures I wasn’t quite so worried about snapping them as I was with Grashrak’s Despoilers. As with other warbands, I didn’t glue them to the bases for ease of painting. With that done, I primed them with Army Painter Uniform Grey. 

Fecula Flyblown and her Retchling

For the most part, the Wurmspat were painted in the same way that I painted the Blightkings. Well, the main colours were at any rate. I did the same chipping techniques on their armour and base coated the majority of the details in the same colours. E.g. Rakarth Flesh for the skin. One difference though was that I needed to paint the pre-sculpted bases. For this I painted the soil with Dryad Bark and the rocks with Mechanicus Standard Grey. The giant slug on Sepsimus’ base I base coated with Two Thin Coats Griffon Claw and Screamer Pink for its tongue, the centipede I painted with Vallejo Khaki and the… foulness piles I painted with Warpstone Glow to emphasise their toxic nature. The dead animal on Ghulgoch’s base I painted with Two Thin Coats Griffon Claw for the tattered remains of its skin and Army Painter Skeleton Bone for any of its exposed skeleton. The Retchling on Fecula’s base I painted a couple of thin coats of Death Guard Green, I then blended some Cadian Fleshtone around its face so that the creature wasn’t quite so one-note. Fecula’s dress and Ghulgoch’s trousers I painted with Vallejo Model Colour English Uniform, the greenish hue of this brown colour helping to tie it in with the rest of the colour scheme. 

Sepsimus Plaguesworn

As a bit of a change of pace, and for some practice, I decided to use oil and enamel washes for this gribbly trio. Perhaps I have been watching too much Marco Frisoni. In order to protect the paints I had already applied I gave all the models a coat of matt varnish. For their skin I mixed some Deep Red with some Burnt Umber, which turned out to be more magenta than I would have liked but the purple would contrast nicely with the greens and yellows on the models. In any case I thinned it down to a wash consistency and applied it to all the flesh areas. I gave it a few minutes to dry before using a q-tip barely damp with white spirit to remove and blend the wash to my liking. I then repeated this process with a mix of black and burnt umber for the cloth and leather, and with sap green and burnt umber for the base. For the armour, I gave it a quick coat of Ammo Streaking Grime before again removing and blending it with a q-tip once dry. With the washes done, I left them to fully cure. Probably would have only taken a couple of days but it ended up being a couple of weeks while I worked on some other projects. 

Ghulgoch the Butcher

I was about to call these done until I remembered that I had made a commitment to layer and highlight my miniatures from now on. So with that in mind, I broke out the base colours again and made a start on the layering. I started with the skin, as the oils had tinted it to an almost healthy pink, and I couldn’t have my Nurgle worshippers looking quite so healthy. It just wouldn’t be right. So I used some Rakarth Flesh to layer back to a nice sickly grey. To help them stand out, I carefully edge highlighted the skin sores with Pallid Wych Flesh. I then picked out all the boils and pustules with Averland Sunset. The Retchling I layered with Death Guard Green, although I did leave a lot of the oil wash showing through as it made a nice contrast. For a few highlights I mixed the Death Guard Green with some Pallid Wych Flesh, which I then applied to the edges and around any open sores like I had done for the Wurmspat’s skin. To highlight the fleshy tentacle that Fecula has, I mixed some Screamer Pink with Pallid Wych Flesh and applied it to the edges.  

Better picture of the “scratch” highlights that I used on the clothes.

For the leather straps and boots I first layered with Mourfang Brown then added scratches with Skrag Brown. I followed a similar method for the clothing; for example on Fecula’s dress I layered with Vallejo English Uniform then added scratches with a mix of English Uniform and Khaki. For the yellow items, I did the same with Vallejo Yellow Ochre and a mix of Yellow Ochre and Pallid Wych Flesh. As you can probably tell by now, I don’t have a lot of highlight colours. But on the plus side, it is forcing me to mix the colours I need rather than rely on premade colours. The wooden details and any cloth wraps I both highlighted with Vallejo Khaki. As I didn’t remove much, if any, of the wash from the wooden details, the contrast between the dark recesses and bright edges ended up looking nicely like some dried out deadwood. The bone details I first layered with Army Painter Skeleton Bone then highlighted the edges and ridges with a mix of Skeleton Bone and Vallejo Pale Sand.  As a final detail on the models I highlighted the bell on Fecular’s staff with some Vallejo Hammered Copper. I decided to skip the layering step as between the matt varnish and the oil wash had really dulled down the metal finish, and I wanted to keep it that way. For the same reason I didn’t put any highlights on their armour. 

For the bases, I started by drybrushing the rocks with Dawnstone and the ground with Tyrant Skull. The creepy crawlies on Sepsimus’ base I layered with Khaki for the centipede and Griffon Claw for the slug creature. The latter I also painted the boils on its skin with Averland Sunset. Unfortunately, I think I layered a bit too hard and the slug ended up looking rather flat. So to bring it back to life I gave it a wash of Reikland Fleshshade. For the various pools of goop on the bases, I dabbed on a layer of Nurgle’s Rot. Speaking of goop, the nastiness under Sepsimus’ prolapsed rectum I highlighted with a mix of Warpstone Glow and Yellow Ochre. I then picked out the small boils in the pile with pure Yellow Ochre. Last but not least, I painted the rims of the bases black and stuck down a couple of tufts. 

Rectum? Damn near killed ‘em.

I’m actually really pleased with how these have turned out. Adding the scratches on the leather and the clothes just looks like an absolute chef’s kiss. And the best thing is that I find it easier to do that regular highlights as it doesn’t matter too much if they’re too chunky or don’t quite blend in properly. Definitely something that I’m going to have to use more in the future. I’m so glad that I took the time to do the detail work rather than calling them done after the washes. 

There’s definitely areas that I need to improve on, as mentioned some of them highlights do look a bit too chunky and not as crisp as I would like. To be honest, I should have used a wet palette as that would have made it easier to thin the paint to the consistency that I needed. Although with the hot weather we’ve been having here, I’d constantly be topping it up with water. But there’s other areas I need to improve as well, made a few mistakes with a slip of the brush. Usually you have a few seconds to wipe away the paint but it’s just been so hot here that the paint dries as soon as it touches the model. In fact I gave up trying to paint Fecula’s eye, just hoping that no one notices. 

Despite them being Warhammer miniatures, I am absolutely counting these towards my board game miniatures tally. Warhammer Underworlds is played on a board after all. And it puts us a single model away from having completed two hundred models this year. I knew I should have done Grashrak’s Despoilers first…

Boardgame miniatures left to paint: 567

Boardgame miniatures painted this year: 199