Ah... it takes me back to the days when Apocalypse was first introduced and the first plastic Baneblade appeared. I was enthralled by their picture of the Plaguereaper. The vats... the living cannon with the open maw and drooling slime... I thought it was just fantastically done.
Thus, when the plastic model came out and I scooped one up, I knew what I wanted to do. The only problem was I had no idea how to do it. Sadly, as I tried various ideas I simply could not do the slime vats. There was no satisfactory way to do it without it looking bad. To this day it is one of my biggest disappointments as a modeller. I just couldn't find the way. I wonder, if the model just came out now... I've learned so much more since those days- I wonder if I could do it now? (And for the record, no, I am not getting another Baneblade).
So, if I couldn't do the vats, I HAD to find a way to do the pus cannon and maw. I think I did well here, if I do say so myself. How did I do it? First, I wrapped heavy brown tape around the barrel of the gun. I wrapped unevenly, so some parts were thicker or more uneven than other. Then, I put green stuff over the tape and then sculpted ridges, depressions, and the like. I also put Chaos Spawn "hooks" or arms or whatever you want to call them for the gaping mouth.
In my oldest converted Nurgle Plaguemarines, I used guitar wire and putty to make re-breathers. I wanted to carry on that theme with the Plaguereaper. I used guitar wire on the cannon, again trying to copy the Apoc one. I didn't go that crazy, but just enough to tie it into my army.
I also decided to add some kind of banner. At the time, I wanted the icon of Nurgle to be visible over the cannon, so I made the banner pole very high. Now, I think it is in face way too high. I should have made that pole a little bit shorter. However, I have no intention of redoing it, so its going to stay that way.
I also decided to do something with the back- which had Imperial iconography that I felt had to go (I don't care about the tank treads). So, again, using putty work and some spawn tentacles, I made a rather ugly looking daemonic-thing back there. The eye I did in my nurgle daemon eye colors- red and white with a black pupil (all of my Plaguebearers have it, if you look closely). I think of it as a daemon that is ripping through and mutating the hull all at the same time- the tank is powered by the daemonic entity within.
I cannot recall how I painted it since the paint colors have changes since then. I imagine I started out with Dark Angels green, then I stippled on Cammo Green quite liberally, with a few stipples of Rotting Flesh or something like that. The rust was my patented scorched brown with orange and metal stipples, with a brown wash to tone down the orange.
So, that's the end of this post folks. Hope you enjoyed the look at my Plaguereaper. I must confess in the last game it was destroyed by an enemy Baneblade, so it is thirsty for revenge...
Until next time, when I will show you some pics of models that the Imperium would rightly describe as an abomination!
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