Thanks Malika!
the escorts are quite different, but as I envisaged them, so all turned out ok I suppose
The tau turned out better than I hoped. I'd never do another one mind, its just so far from my usual colours/style of painting that I'm used to but is good to stretch yourself occasionally so as not to get stuck in the comfort zone of painting. I think this can lead to complacency and slap-dashidness otherwise...
talking of which, LOL:
final parts of the nurgle fleet (for the foreseeable future anyhow)
the 'filth incarnate' A slaughter class cruiser.
for this conversion I decided to redesign the bridge (thanks to an old chaos battleship bridge) to be much more forward to suggest at the speed of the vessel. she is the fastest cruiser in the chaos fleet after-all! the nurgleisation has been kept to a minimum to again further emphasize the speed factor. stripped down and slick.
I used imperial turrets and aerials for a slimline look too.
however I could not resist a bit of scumming-up, namely the greenstuff guts hanging out of the port side midships and the spines thrusting their way out of the stern-side hull. (I shaved these off of the chaos vehicle spikey sprue spike-plate) also I did a lot of drilling to do the old maggot/woodworm-eaten look I did before, especially on the courtyard just rear of the bridge (keeping most of the holes in the triple circle nurgle symbol where possible) and a little greenstuff 'pustule' triplet (a nurgle design staple if ever there was one) on the starboard 'socket' just behind the prow.
the next up is a second murder class. having at least a pair of these gunboats is an essential in a chaos fleet if you expect to achieve any sort of victory. the slaughter is the cheetah of your fleet, that's a given but these are your workhorses without a doubt. stick a carrier like despoiler or a styx in the back with an escort of idolaters, and sling in a few iconoclasts and infidels and you've got yourself a good working fleet.
still, I digress. here is the 'most unclean'
this conversion was actually something I've wanted to do for a LONG time. as you can see it features another pair of horns like the previous murder class, this time taken from the tyranid warrior shoulderpad (the same component used on the styx's nose) I 'broke' one for a more lopsided look that nurgle is famous for. also, It cant have escaped your notice, the enormous great unclean one riding the ship from behind the bridge! (the bridge is from a chaos escort) this is actually a lone nurgling from the boxed set. I just loved the idea of a greater daemon riding the vessel out of the warp and this image harks back to the very early days of 40k (a similar image is in and old rulebook I believe, there's a challenge for you: go though your old rulebooks and see if you can find it!)
I used the small bridge to not over-shadow the daemon. as crazy as this seems I feel it works as a parody of the winged angels and eagle tributes to their corpse-god that the imperial lackeys like to smother their ships in.
I just love the way he is spewing up nasty nurgle-filth to spread all over the very hull of the ship itself...
I tried something new too, agrellan-earth to create a crusty splitting texure to the hull. it did get a bit lost in the basecoat but soon reappeared after the wash/shade coat, and to good effect if I do say so myself...
the success of this, plus the particularly overt appearance of having a greater daemon sitting on the hull made me leave the chaosisation to a minimum. this time, apart from the horns, I simply added a chaos star with added nurgle symbol to the starboard stern. simple but effective imho...
here are the two together.
sorry for the less than perfect pics, the light is horrible today...
more imperial stuff next!
