War Shrine To the One God... A Tribute to Nurgle

[Ickthorne]

As a long time gamer of Chaos and a dedicated follower of Nurgle I've always wanted to have a War Alter made for my army. It's been a loooong obsession for me. Ever since I read about them in the lost and the Damned.

Sounds cool right? I had made different designs over the years including one that I drew up back in the 90's using a War Mastodon heavily mutated and carrying the alter on a howdah (Thanks Forge World). Since the release of the GW Shrine I'm on my way to fulfilling that goal. Almost! That Shrine needs ALOT of work. I'm talkin major overhaul. For one thing, see image below

What happened to the end of the Shrine? It's like GW just got board of it or they decided they could save money if they lopped off the end of it. This will not do! I'll have to add at least a half and inch or 1 centimeter to the back end. I see GW decided to leave off some of the better parts as well. Where are the Boils, The Pus, The Decay, etc that screams out to Nurgle? OK sure I get a token little symbol I can place in the center of the Chaos wheel, so what am I bitching about. OK over all I'm happy with it as a base to work off of, I don't have to start completely from scratch, so +1 for me. Whew, I got that off my chest. So why don't I get started.


I'll start with the main body of the Shrine since that part will be seen the most from across the table.

I've gone and added a distended right eye for Nurgle, added a few tears in the eye lids, added some minor pittings in the metal to give it a more decaying or rusting look. I think I'm off to a good start.

 

[Ickthorne]

Now that I've made some of the alterations to the front I went ahead and moved on to the platform and stairs.

I added a mushroom patch and also replaced a piece of the gilding to represent it pulling away from the wooden platform. I know its hard to see in this photo but I also added some shelf fungus on the steps and a few boils, as well as broke a few of the spikes. Topped off the whole thing with some more pitting of the wood and metal parts.

 

[Bloodhowl]

Looks good so far!

 

[BloodFather of Kharnath]

Really like your enthusiasm. Not sure what you are pointing out as missing on the altar tho. As compared to what, exactly? I'm just not seeing how it looks incomplete

 

[Ickthorne]

Mr. BloodFather, I’m not saying that this model sucks or anything like that, it just seems to be missing something. I know this is my opinion, but I always envisioned there being banners and some candles as well as the above description from the Nurgle Army list from Lost and the Damned. The War Alter of Tzeentch also included bells, incense pots, gems, and other forms of pageantry dedicated to Tzeentch. The write up for both Khorne and Slaanesh are, sadly, very weak though. As for my main complaint about this model it’s that the end fell sort of flat. I don’t know it just feels flat. If I had to put my finger on it I would have to say that the main part of the alter has a sort of ship like feel to it. Somewhat like an old Spanish Galleon.


Had a little time over the weekend to work on one of the Alter carriers. After looking over the model and adding up all of his attributes I decided that he needed to have a little bit more added. Lets see, he has the multiple arms attribute as well as the Multiple heads (3) one. One of the heads has the Cyclops attribute and his right side of his body also has Scaly Skin, but looking at it he has some weak looking spine coming out of his leg and arm. I decided to give him the old long spines attribute.

So this is what I came up with.

Still have a lot to do on him. I need to seal all of the joints from the separate parts and add more boils. I may add a few more spines to his body. Also I’m going to be replacing the plastic chain with real chain.

 

[Ickthorne]

I realized last night that I had forgotten to post pics of the other carrier of the alter. I went with a more rotten, or Nurgle theme with this one. I added the same boils, but I added more tears to his flesh. Also gave him a massive whole in his belly with a large worm protruding. After looking it over more I'm going to add more boils to him. Sorry about the bad pics. I moved and as always something takes a hit and can no longer be found. For me it's my charger for my Nikkon camera. Noooooooo!!!!!! I now have to use my phone until I can get a replacement charger.

 

[Rothskin]

Will be fun!

 

[Ickthorne]

Rothskin, I really am enjoying this project, but my views have begun to change. I was originally going to make this for gaming purposes, but now I think it will only be for display. I'm starting to get to a point where I've done enough work to it that I don't want to be traveling around and having other people touching it, or knocking it over, dropping their minis on it, so in short for display only!

I did a little bit of work on the totem. I can't take the credit on this one as I saw it somewhere (I don't remember where it was so I can't give credit where it's due) on the interwebs.

For the most part it was minor work. Replace the head with the fly head from the plague bearer's set, added a few boils and removed one of the spike as it was interfering with the head.

 

[BloodFather of Kharnath]

ICK, coming back to this now, I see what you mean. Kind of looks like they just chopped off the end.

Your conversion skills are great, I must say. How do you do the boils? Looks like your using some purple substance to make them...the fly headed creature on the totem, and the guy with the gaping abdominal wound are nice details. It helps that Nurgle is the easiest to convert of all things GW.

I mi find the Army books disappointing for Warhammer. They don't add hardly anything new as each edition is released. You'd tjink by now that an Army book could have a lot of information, but instead they seem to just regurgitate the same stuff every release. The exception is ForgeWorld's Tamurkhan book. It's just too damn bad they've cancelled the other 3 books they were supposed to complete.

 

[Coyotebreaks]

looking really good so far, the green stuff work is very good.

nice one

 

[Ickthorne]

Sorry I'm getting back to this so late. Off celebrating the 4th with the Fam.

Thanks Coyote for the compliments. I've had too many years of working with minis and putty to not have learned something. :highfive:

BloodFather, I agree with you on the Chaos books. They've always left a bad taste in my mouth. For me I'm an old skool gamer. I always fall back to the original Chaos books from 3rd edition. Now that GW has gone and nerf'd Warhammer I'll be relying on old editions more and more. To answer you question on the boils I'm using Microbeads for the purplish colored ones and the clear-ish ones are silica beads that came in my pre-workout mix. You know those little packets that come with almost everything and say DO NOT EAT on them! Open the packet up and you have ready made boils! I use the ball tip bit with my Dremel tool, you can see them in the pic with the Tentacles, to set them. Otherwise they look like they're floating on top on the model.

I did take some time to mess with the center piece over the weekend. This is still somewhat of a concept but I like it so far.

This is the center piece with the backing added and some minor boil work added.

Tentacles and tools.

Final concept to be mounted on totem. I'm planning on adding some slime trails coming off the tentacles and also have it drooling off of the center piece, but that's all just finish work. Let me know if this works for you guys.

 

[Ickthorne]

A little bit more done on the Shrine. Mostly fluff. Most of my time has been working on the base. As I've stated in previous comments I was going for a gaming piece, but now it morphed into a full piece for display only, so my base has become more elaborate in its design. I still have a lot of work to do on that front, but I'm making gains. (I wish my gym time worked like this!)

This is a shot of the back side of the Shrine. Its also a better shot of the pieces used to make the boils.

 

[Ickthorne]

Here's some prelim shots of the base I've been working on. Still have more to add, but it's coming along nicely.

Here's also a shot with the model plus some extras. Sorry it's hard to see. I went ahead and labled some of the harder spots in the shot so you'll understand what's going on in those places.

 

[Ickthorne]

Here's a peek at a side project I've been doing when I'm not working on the Shrine.

Yes, it's another Nurgle figure. What can I say? I'm a little one sided with Chaos.