They’ve drunk all your milkshake – Two Nurgle daemon princes

I converted a Daemon Prince of Nurgle a long time ago and then made him again with newer parts more recently. He was a success on the tabletop (he has an unbelievable undefeated status versus dreadknights) but was ageing.

This is GW’s daemon Prince of Nurgle. I think all Nurgle followers should feel blessed there is a Nurgle Daemon Prince model, the other god’s don’t have one and it’s got a lot of character. The bloat, chains on that thick sword, the fly detailing on the arm, the fly pattern on the gut, the ‘chimneys’. It’s held up remarkably well considering it’s age.

My main issue with him was I wanted to use him for gaming and he didn’t have wings. Also the face is a little cartoony (not a massive problem and I kind of like it now, goes with the sword too).

I’d been reading ‘flight of the Eisenstein’ and a character in that turns into a fly Daemon. Combining that with all the fly ques on this guy already and I knew I wanted a fly Daemon Prince. Nowadays fly daemon princes are ten a penny (and I’ve made two) but back then it really wasn’t a thing (honest!).

So here he is…

It’s the Nurgle Daemon Prince mainly. The fly head is from the chaos spawn sprue, it was the only one available at the time. The angle of the arm is changed a bit. Hopefully conveying a bit more mobility (he’s a fly after all) and possibly a fencer’s stance.

The wings are made from a plastic take away container. It was slightly opaque. I scored it, painted the veins, drilled it and put a bit of brown wash in. There were two tiny wing growth shapes in the spawn sprue which were used to attach the wings to the model.

He was great in-game from 5th edition onwards.  So I also wanted another to terrorise my opponents for this reason.

I was considering a Mortarion style conversion (pre-Mortarion release). I also considered a non winged flying daemon Prince. I even got as far as making some propellers like the blight drone has. But then the plague drones came out. I got some of these and you get two set of heads for the flies. So I suddenly had a load of spare fly heads. So the idea resurfaced to make fly Daemon Prince mark II.

I couldn’t get over how creepy that head was as soon as I held it up to the Daemon Prince body. I must have just watched Daniel Day-Lewis in ‘There Will be Blood’ at the time because the ‘i’ve drunk all your milkshake’ line has forever been coupled with this model.

It’s a real shame I don’t have any WIP shots of this guy. It was a mess of plastic, green stuff, chain, metal spikes, drilled holes and water filter balls. General ‘nurgling’ up with some deliberate details I wanted too.

I’d done a bunch of Fly symbols on shoulder pads for my marines by this point so that wasn’t anything new, it’s green stuff in a simplistic shape. It’s drilled and got pustules added for extra detailing. The spikes bordering the shoulder pad are just straight wires put in for general chaos feel, some chain and blight grenades (stuffed heads) added. The daemon princes head has a thick cable added either side with a tentacle maker. I’d had success making centipedes before in a similar way by scraping the cable near to where it meets the surface for legs. The head of the centipede is an odd little ‘Alice in Wonderland’ esque smiling face sculpt. Nurgle followers are often happy, but as you get zero good feeling from the daemon himself this is a tiny nod to that.

The other shoulder pad has more spikes, chains and blight grenade again. But also a poor soul chained up and ‘feeding’ the daemon sword. This idea came from this classic piece of artwork…

The sword itself is from the daemon Prince sprue ‘nurgled up’ with the many chains from the blight kings sprue and chaos marauders.

He also has a belly with a Nurgling inside from the blight kings sprue. His wings are three sets of the smaller wings on the plague drone sprue which was a happy accident when I tried to eBay a complete set of plague drone wings.

Here’s one of my plague drones for reference. Also this is where the wings are heading from a painting point of view. It’s a lot more subtle multi coloured wings. The effect is supposed to be more ‘oil refracted light’ and less ‘wood elf butterfly’ which the daemon Prince currently resembles. I have an ever increasing ‘laterbase’ and haven’t finished painting the daemon Prince. I think I was struggling with the colours of the wings and the green flames on the base and just started a new project.

One day I will finish painting him and maybe make a third one!