Patient Zero

A long time ago, I saw a fantastic idea on dakka by GuitaRasmus for what he called "The Strain". His own take on infected marines blew me away. I loved the eyeless "all mouth and claws" look they had going. I knew one day I would have to try my hand at such a great idea. I've always liked Nurgle and related units but never quite dug the super rotted, super rusty look. I wanted my Nurlge units to show signs of mutation from genetic manipulation and bio enhanced plagues. Chemical warfare was the game I saw Nurgle playing most, and I wanted my version of his armies to reflect that.

So now years later, I began my biggest conversion project ever.

While I loved the Ent arms Guita used for his Strain troopers, I wanted something that would allow me to include more armor. I also wanted them to look like they had absorbed some of the weapons they were holding at the time of infection. I stuck with the same Khorn Berserker legs and back torso parts, used Pink Horror heads shaved and turned upside down for the faces, and for the arms I used Possessed CSMs. I think it worked out very well and I have actually modeled and painted my first proof of concept mini.

I wanted my guys to look like corpses (or perhaps troopers that displeased someone important) that were taken and injected with some warp infused virus. The mutations that resulted wrought utter chaos on their forms.  Hands still clutching weapons or wearing power fists melded together, and empty hands became bone swords and crushing claws studded with teeth. Their chests ripped open as their heads melted into gaping maws of fangs and beaks. Utterly insane and driven only by the desire to kill, these bio-terrors are stored in stasis between battles and released where the fighting is thickest. Charging with reckless abandon, they swarm the enemies lines and rip them apart. They don't care about getting shot, they don't fix the gouges and scrapes on their armor. Maybe once after every few battles their caretakers hose them off to wash away the gore and grime...

Here is my Patient Zero of these twisted bio experiments, hope you like him!

I'm very happy with how this guy came out so I finished building the rest of the troops. They are currently painted with the armor green, purple undertone and grey flesh so I just need to do the brass trim, bones, blood, bases and grime/washes. I'm also quite pleased with the green stuff work I had to do on these guys to meld the heads into the torsos and arms. Each time I work with green stuff I feel a little better about it...

In other news, I fixed the color balance on the camera so no more pink tinged pics. Sorry for the earlier ones that look dark and red washed. I never claimed to be a trained photographer... 

And lastly, per a request from a friend, I have a picture that shows the scale of the minis I work on. They are 28mm tall.