Throne of Skulls Throwback

This army started out as a single Plague Marine Champion, kit bashed one night from a friends bits box. The Champion in the centre of this unit is that very marine who became the bench mark of the whole army. The Rest of the unit and Rhino transport came soon after but I continued to raid my friends bits boxes to theme to army.

Over the years my units had a few upgrades here and there, enabling me to tailor them to different battlefield roles. The image above shows the same unit with an alternative champion who was added some years later. This guy is packing a combi-plasma. There is also a meltagun marine in place of the flamer from the previous image, making this load out far more effective against enemy armour.

The army was fleshed out with four more units of Plaguemarines. Two more in transports and a further two on foot. Each had their role to play and were armed appropriately.

Even the vehicles didn’t escape my habit of bits box raiding!

Around the time I stated this army Forge World had started producing incredible Chaos Dreadnoughts. It’s not too much of an exaggeration to say I built the rest of the army as an excuse to buy one!

When the model was originally purchased the only Nurgle themed weapon was the lascannon. I bought a spare lascannon arm and used it to convert a Plasmacannon as an alternative armament. A few years later FW released a Nurgle themed Heavy Bolter arm, so I picked that up as well! The beauty of this was that model had a nice chunky peg which meant the arms stayed on without the need for glue or magnets, making this an easy way to add weapon options for the Dreadnought.

Although my original vision for this army was to field basic units of Plaguemarine’s on foot or in transports, the lack of ranged firepower (at the time Plague Marine squads couldn’t field heavy weapons), was causing me problems on the battlefield. To address this imbalance I added a couple of tanks to provide some mobile firepower.

First came the Predator which provided range and versatility with its mixed armament. Some years later I added the Vindicator and although it didn’t really solve the range issue, who could argue with the raw hitting power!

The Terminator were added at a time when I needed a new commander for the army (I had used a Plaguemarine Lieutenant for some time but codex changes had rendered him inoperable). I bought a set of plastic terminators in order to kit bash a Terminator Chaos Commander –  then ended up adding enough terminators to field two small squads!

Although I had originally bought a unit of Chaos Terminators, I didn’t feel the style of them matched the rest of the army. Instead I built these from the imperial kit and another delve into the bits box. I coloured them in the original pale livery of the Death Guard as a nod to the legions heritage.

I was still on the hunt for an army commander when Forgeworld released rules for a new Plague Marine Character – Necrosius the Undying. There was no model available at the time so I made my own from a host of parts, most notably the FW Plaguemarine Champion Torso and Head.

The release of the MKIIB Landraider kit from Forgeworld presented me with another ‘must have’ moment. This unit immediately became the centre piece of the army. My preferred strategy was to pack it full of Plaguemarine’s rather than Terminators, giving me a very mobile force.

Once again Forgeworld presented me with a model I couldn’t refuse… As it happened I couldn’t refuse it twice!

As there were no official GW rules for these guys, they never made it to a tournament. I did use them in friendlies thanks to the FW rules.

The last model I added to the army was the Daemon Prince of Nurgle.

This model is heavily converted, primarily from the Daemon Prince and Nurgle Daemon Prince models. I’m not a fan of working with metal miniatures but this chap is 95% metal.

The weapons are taken from the Orge Kingdoms Ironguts set, as is the head. I used green stuff, guitar strings and some pieces from my bits box to turn the head into something more appropriate.

I preferred to run my Daemon with the flight upgrade but I didn’t think wings fitted with the look I had created. Instead I used two raptor jump packs (also metal), to create a kind of nurglefied jet pack.

The army was a best army nominee three years in a row but three times a bridesmaid, never a bride as they say!

The Daemon Prince did win the best monstrous creature category the year he joined the army though, making him a ‘Beast of Legend’.