Putrid Blightkings: Converting additional Death Guard terminators

"In the embrace of the great Nurgle, I am no longer afraid, for with His pestilential favour I have become that which I once most feared: Death."

In an earlier post, we at Between the Bolter and Me described converting a Death Guard terminator by combining parts from the Putrid Blightking box and a set of Catapharactii pattern terminators. While we still have not finished that first Death Guard terminator, we could not contain ourselves and began to forge on ahead by converting two additional squad members, again using the Putrid Blightkings as a foundation. We are excited with the progress on all three and thought people would be interested in seeing them and learning a little about the creative process that went into making them.


Similar to the first conversion, we started by modifying the legs of the Blightkings, replacing them with the leg armor of the Cataphractii Pattern terminators from Forge World. With a nice sharp clippers, like the Tamiya Sharp Pointed Side cutter, it is really easy to remove the portions of the Cataphractii armor needed for the conversions. Lower quality clippers or simply using an x-acto knife could work for this application, however it would make the task substantially more difficult. The Tamiya clippers cut each piece with a nice straight edge, without tearing the plastic or leaving parts unusable. We cut off pieces of the terminators’ thigh armor and hollowed it out such that it could layer on top of any remnants of the Blightkings’ legs, strengthening the terminator feel. After attaching the armor to the legs, a little greenstuff work was done to fill in any gaps and add small details like the webbing between armor joints. For one of them, we opted to leave his bloated overgrown leg untouched, thinking it fitting for such an ancient follower of Nurgle.

Although one of the Blightking's legs was replaced, we could not bring ourselves to remove the corpulent, rotting leg.

With the legs finished, we shifted our attention to working on their body armor. This has been the most challenging aspect of the conversions, requiring substantial cutting. The process was made a little easier due to the fact that two of the Blightkings’ were wearing breastplates (rather than a bloated belly with a gaping maw…), which in one case could just be carefully whittled down to accept the armored front of a Catapharactii terminator. To prepare the terminator breastplates, we sawed Catapharactii terminator bodies in half, and then carefully carved the excess resin out so that they could fit onto the Blightking bodies. We also cut away the cords snaking from under the breastplate and added them to the models, further strengthening the terminator feel. For their back armor, we have started a process similar to the breastplates, and carved out the rear armor of the Catapharactii terminator armor. We socketed the armor onto one of the Blightking’s backs and started greenstuff work to fill in the gaps in their armor. More work, however, is needed to finish the armor surrounding the model’s head, to create the characteristic hunched look of a traditional terminator.

Although large portions of the Catapharactii terminator armor could be used on the Death Guard, substantial green stuff work was required to fill in gaps between the resin.

The head of a model is often key to the entire composition, and like our first Death Guard terminator, we decided to use heads taken from the Blightkings (and the related Glottkin). One was simply the hooded face (which harkens back to a classic Jes Goodwin mounted Nurgle lord) with its antlers removed. The tattered hood and all encompassing chainmail really adds a sense of macabre mystery to the model, perfect for an ancient vessel of pestilence. The other is the multi-horned helmet of Otto Glott (from the excellent Glottkin model). The moment I saw the helmet, I knew it would be perfect for a Death Guard terminator, the oppressive crown of thorns haloing a sightless steel mask, capturing the blind creeping death of plague.

After creating the next two terminators, we realized that the initial Death Guard terminator was best suited for the Reaper autocannon.

His combi-bolter, and even his power fist, look small in comparison to the Death Guard's massive battle-plate, just as it should be!

The wargear for each terminator is still in the works. After spending so much time on the second two terminators, we decided that the first would work the best wielding the autocannon that we showed in the last post. The Glottkin terminator will likely have a combi-bolter and power fist, two weapons very fitting to the blunt nature of Nurgle. With the third terminator, we decided to attempt an idea we had been throwing around for some time: creating an ancient Deathshroud terminator, one of Mortarion’s chosen sons. We knew two elements were key in representing these silent bodyguards: 1) their characteristic scythes and 2) their wrist-mounted alchem launchers. While still work-in-progress, the scythe has been primarily created using pieces from the Blightkings. The half of the scythe was shortened and we added an additional handle perpendicular to the half (from Otto Glott’s scythe). Finally we added some cabling at the top to make it look like it was being infused with malign energies. His wrist-mounted flamethrower is still in its early stages, but I am building it from a Deathwing apothecary arm.

The Deathshroud terminator's weapon was built from the Blightking scythe with a few extra modifications, mainly the addition of a power generator to energize the weapon.

While still far from complete, the terminator's wrist mounted flamethrower is being built up from an apothecary arm. 

Although still a long way from completion, with his veiled face and massive scythe, this Deathshroud terminator looks quite grim and imposing.

While there is still a lot of work that needs to be done with all three of the current Death Guard terminators (let alone an entire squad of five), it has been an incredibly rewarding project thus far. Although the Blightking models have served as a base for the conversions, they really have been just that, the base. They have been pushing us to try new things, particularly with green stuff work. We are really striving to not let laxity and apprehension hold back our creative vision for the models. By sharing the models in this very work-in-progress state, we hope that we can get your input, so that we can make these guys some of the best Nurgle terminators around!

- Adam and Eric Wier