Warhammer Underworlds - The Wurmspat

The Sorcerer Fecula Flyblown was far from Beastgrave, hunched over a stained cauldron, when she read a sign in the cloying vapour rising from it. She saw a shard-curse of endless sterility in which nothing stayed dead long enough to rot, and the effects of entropy were perpetually undone. Horrified, Fecula added foul ingredients to her pestilent brew, hoping to attract Nurgle’s aid to halt the spread of this un-plague. Drawn by the rancid odour, a monstrous wyrmaggot burst from the ground and swallowed the Sorcerer and her two favoured bodyguards whole. This creature burrowed onwards until it could stomach Fecula’s noisome stew no more; it burst into Beastgrave, where it disgorged the group in a tide of steaming vomit. Together, The Wurmspat are resolved to cure the curse at the mountain’s heart by spreading the filth so beloved of their deity.

 

I don't like a massive amount of the Maggotkin of Nurgle range if I'm honest - there's nothing 'wrong' with it, it's just not really to my taste, but when The Wurmspat were revealed I actually quite liked the look of them. There were some elements of the sculpts I wanted to change, but overall the aesthetics were a nice mix of corruption and mutation that I felt I could play with.

The warband definitely falls into the 'elite' category, being comprised of three models, the sorcerer of Nurgle, Fecula Flyblown and her bodyguard Ghulgoch the Butcher armed with a pair of monstrous axes and the plaguesworn Sepsimus, who wields a wicked blighted spear.  

While building the miniatures, I removed the horns emerging from Sepsimus and Ghulgoch's shoulder plates, as well as Sepsimus' rather disturbing 'tail'. For me it didn't really add anything to the miniature at all so after a quick planning session, I trimmed it away and then sculpted in some fabric over the gap it left using greenstuff. 

Sepsimus' freshly sculpted new clothes...

 ...cured, cleaned up and primed.

With these wee changes made, the models were ready for painting and I decided to start with their bases. 

After priming them grey, I drybrushed them with progressively lighter Grey's, starting with Dawnstone, followed by Administratum Grey and then Ulthuan Grey. The larger rocks were then hit with a drybrush of white focused on their upper edges where they catch the light. I used some thinned Biel Tan Green and Athonian Camoshade in some of the cracks and crevices of the rocks to create the impression of organic growth like algae or lichens to add a little visual interest.

Once this was done, I started in on the details like the decayed skeleton, maggots and other beasties which I kept fairly muted in tone. One particularly fun bit was using Nurgle's Rot over some putrid greens to create some suitably icky looking pools and piles of goo.

The final stage for the bases was to carefully apply a couple of layers of Vallejo European Dust wash over the lower areas of the bases that had been drybrushed at the start to create an earthen tone that wasn't too dark but still contrasted nicely with the pale grey rocks. 

In the photo above you can also see a lethal hex I painted up as well. This was partly a mini-project for the fun of it, but it was also cool to be able to add my own 'unique' lethal hex to games. The rocks were done in the same way as the ones on the Wurmspat bases, though the final highlights were applied with a regular brush rather than a drybrush as the hexagonal blocks have harder, regular edges.

The bubbling pool was carefully painted with a basecoat of Averland Sunset which was shaded with Cassendora Yellow. The bubbles and ripples were then carefully layered with Averland Sunset and then highlighted with Yriel Yellow followed by Ushabti Bone. To create the glow effect around the edges of the pool, I first glazed all the areas that would catch the light from the bubbling lava/amber with Lamenters Yellow before using thinned Cassendora Yellow increasingly more selectively down towards the lowest areas of the rocks to create a stronger glow closer to the pool.

The Wurmspat themselves were quite closely based on the box art, with their pale armour painted Death Guard Green though in a departure from my usual "block in basecoats and then shade everything Agrax" approach, this was recess shaded using Vallejo washes and then edge highlighted with Nurgling Green. 

Saying this, in order distinguish it from the armour plates, Fecula's robe was shaded with with Agrax Earth with the raised areas then being stippled and highlighted to create the impression of a coarse material which seemed fitting for a devotee of Nurgle. What's interesting looking back at this project now is that I think this is one of the first times I'd deliberately tried to create texture on areas of fabric on a miniature and for a first attempt, I think it still stands up quite well. 

Fecula Flyblown

Ghulgoch The Butcher

Sepsimus, Plaguesworn

The Wurmspat mark one of the first occasions I used the 'paint what you're feeling like' approach I now use regularly to try and avoid forcing work on a project, which I think arose because they're festooned with trinkets and details and I could flit between them if I painted them neatly and carefully, getting the satisfaction of finishing everything to a standard I was happy with.

Being released at the tail end of 2019, the warband didn't get a lot of time on the table before the pandemic hit, and unfortunately they seem to have fared rather poorly in keeping up with the capabilities of the more recently released entries in the Underworlds catalogue, but they're still one of my favourites in terms of how well the miniatures collectively represent their faction but also how fun they were to paint up.