Making Death Guard Great Again: Plague Marine WIP

Creeping Death.

After the release of all the Death Guard models this year, we were quite critical of them, disliking their distorted anatomy, with their huge thigh gaps, and their general lack of abdomens. Rather than simply complain about these issues, with the suggestion from bigbossredskullz, we decided to invite anyone interested to take part in a challenge to convert some new Death Guard models to address them. Much to our excitement, we have already gotten some amazing entries, which we are going to share on the blog on December 18th. That leaves a little over two weeks for anyone new to join the challenge. As inspiration, we wanted to share the current progress of our Death Guard plague marine!

Although I intended to simply convert a model from the Dark Imperium Death Guard, I ended up expanding to include Primaris marines, for his legs.

His bolter and plague knife were both created using old 2nd edition plastic weapons.

It had always been my intent to create this model almost entirely off of one of the new Death Guard plastic models. I went so far as to order some of the plague marine models from the Dark Imperium boxed set, but after getting them in my hands and experimenting with them, I realized they were so bloated with detail that it would be easier to achieve what I envisioned by using some Primaris Space Marine components along with sculpting. I started by taking a pair of Primaris legs, which I modified to look like MKIII Iron Armor with green stuff. The body was largely created with Dark Imperium Plague Marine pieces that I spliced together. To create it, I separated the belly plate from the gorget and used green stuff to space them out, creating a more reasonable looking torso. With the increased size of the Plague Marine, due to my modifications, normal arms looked too small. To rectify this, I ended up using terminator arms, adding an armored plate from a MKIII wrist. I wanted to have the model licking his plague knife, and found that the Forge World Abaddon head worked well for this. I used a small piece of wire and green stuff to make the final tongue.

I created a sheath for his plague knife by trimming down one from a MKIV tactical squad.

Despite being being substantially larger than the Dark Imperium Death Guard models, the weapons I used for my creation are much smaller, emphasizing the character over his weapons.

When thinking about weapons for the Death Guard, I decided to stick with classic ones, a bolter and a plague knife. To fit with this imagery, I used an old Second edition bolter and knife to create the weapons. They did not require too much extra converting, however, I did add a stock and rear sights to the bolter. I also added a sheath for his plague knife on his thigh, created from one that came with MKIV Space Marines.

As you can see, the new Death Guard stands about a head taller than a Primaris Space marine and Dark Imperium Death Guard.

The Death Guard that I created towers over the stock Death Guard models, as well as the plastic Scions.

I hope you like the Death Guard that I created as much as I do! When starting the project I was unsure how it would turn out, but as I started working on him, everything really started falling into place. Although he is a little larger than other Chaos Space Marines, I think he is far more imposing as a result, something very fitting a Veteran of the Long War. If you have any questions or comments let me know. Also, if you would like to try your hand at converting a Death Guard model for the challenge, there is still time left! Email any pictures to us (betweenthebolterandme@gmail.com) before the 18th of December so that we can feature everyone’s creations on Between the Bolter and Me!

- Adam Wier