Tell me why? I don't like Mondays

This morning my first ever Forge World postal order arrived: two Death Guard Marine upgrade sets, twenty wonderfully disgusting sets of bodies and shoulder pads. Just holding them I felt inspired with ideas for conversions, characters and background, I couldn't wait to get started on them.

Except I can't start until Wednesday because, as with many hobby centres these days, Reading GW closes on Mondays and Tuesdays. Oh well, lesson learned: next time buy the plastic kit at the first opportunity after ordering the conversion set. In the mean time it gives me time to think about what to do with the conversion sets.

The first fourteen will go on making two units of seven Plague Marines. One more will go towards making a Plague Lord along with the vicious-looking power sword out of the new Raptors kit. The final five will go on Possessed which will also have the benefit of giving me two more batwinged backpacks. I already have three of these parts in my bits box so I can use them (and some other Possessed parts) to make some seriously mutated Warp Talons.

I've also gained a second set of Dark Vengeance Chaos Marines. I don't much rate the Chaos Lord as a Death Guard character (quite apart from the fact I'm already making one) but the Hulbrute fits well enough. I didn't get any Cultists in the exchange but I haven't painted the ones from my first set so they can go into the Death Guard army, if I add a couple of the small box sets available in stores I can even make the units fourteen-strong. Come to think of, if I get the plastic Aspiring Champion I can add him to the Chosen to make another seven man unit.

I'm bursting with ideas for this army. I want to make it a real production number, the sort of army you see in White Dwarf's Army Of The Month feature: Chaos Space Marines, Traitor Guard, Daemons, the lot. Conversions galore, as well, I've been making things straight out of the box for too long. My very first army was The Lost And The Damned and ever since I've felt the need to tweak things to add a little extra character.

Now I just have to wait until Wednesday to get started.

This week's hobby progress

Just to keep myself motivated (and so any readers I acquire don't get bored by an endless wall of text) I've decided to keep a weekly progress diary of my army projects. Motivation, that's the key.

Tomb Kings

Finished painting a test model for the Zandri Blackshields. The colour scheme for the figure is straight from How To Paint Citadel Miniatures. It was quick, simple and effective, just what I wanted for the project. The figure above isn't varnished. I intend to use gloss varnish on the shield and Lahmian Medium on the rest (apparently it works quite well as a matt varnish but doesn't bleach colour from the metallics).

Night Lords

Making decent progress with the Dark Vengeance Chaos Marines. I'm a fair way through painting the Chaos Lord. So far I've only used base paints and washes but it hasn't come out too badly. As to the rest of the models I've blocked out some of the basic colours on the Helbrute and Chosen ready to get to work on the details. I like how the cape is coming out, makes me want to paint more things dark red.

Death Guard

Not much progress on the slow build project. I bought, built and undercoated the Finecast Nurgle Daemon Prince though I'm dithering on how to paint it, whether to go with the pre- or post-Heresy colour scheme or to go in some other direction entirely.