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J I M    B A I L E Y ' S    N U R G L E    L E G I O N

In the featured army section here we strive to bring you some of the best armies out there and I am happy to share Old Fluxy's Cavalcade with you all. There is such a mix of fun old school models, conversions, models from different lines, great painting, eye catching banners, awesome display base, and more justifying this army to be here. Let's hear from the creator, Jim Bailey, about his creations.

I am old school Nurgle. I remember the first blurb I read describing the minions of Papa Pox. It was back in the 1980s some time when I came across this little narrative describing the demonic cavalcade of nurgle as it descended on some poor unsuspecting town. The reveling demons circle thrice about the town droning out their chants and with each turn their excitement increases until on the final pass they are leaping and dancing maniacally and singing: "The eyes, the flies, before the burgomeister dies". Very cool stuff. It is all reprinted in the Book of Nurgle. I did my first nurgle army back in the eighties and have done 3 since. When the Storm of Chaos book was released, I jumped for joy. AT LAST! The cavalcade could be born. It took me awhile to get around to it but here it is.

Army design:

I am a really tactical player and prefer to dance around the battlefield and engage my opponent on my terms. My most successful tournament armies have traditionally been combat wood elves, beasts of chaos, and marauder horse heavy mortals so I knew I was doing this thing almost purely as a modeling and painting exercise. I developed Tzeentch and slaanesh concepts that would have carried me as far in the tournament standings as my wood elves did but I am, alas, a son of Nurgle and could not desert my chosen power. I'm doing Khorne now but don't tell papa. So, knowing this, I threw caution to the wind and put in two of everything available in the list whether I deemed it effective or not. My only really tactical gesture was taking the demon prince instead of big ugly so I could get around a bit. The list is:

Old Fluxy (demon true name Fluxius Wobblerut)- demon prince, blade of ether, diabolic splendor, soul hunger
Lil' Stinky- herald BSB with war banner and spell breaker
2 units of 16 plaguebearers, standard, musician
2 units of 3 nurglings
2 units of 3 plagueriders
2 chariots

The image of Nurgle that I have always held in my mind is not one of consummate evil but rather a force of nature and that at the demonic level at least, joyful and celebratory rather than malicious. I wanted to convey this in my choice of models. I usually create my armies from scratch (my woodies should be in white dwarf in the next couple of months) but Byshe had already done that better than I could ever hope to so I went back to the early GW models that I loved so well and did the legion mostly out-of-the-box. I set out to create a big grinning, goofy, happy carnival of decay. I chose a bright cartoony palette and techniques to further emphasize this. Even the rust is really cartoony.

Old fluxy is a GUO with a bone giant head, green stuff neck and popping eyeballs, and carrion wings. I found the wingspan to mass ratio particularly humorous on the big fella. Lil' Stinky is a particularly creepy but goofball concoction of plaguebearer bitz, a black orc, the pestigor standard and some green stuff. The plaguebearers are a mix of all four editions of plaguebearer models produced by GW. I chose the grinniest models with the most maniacal expressions. I switched out the weapons on everybody in favor of big rusty cleavers and flails. The old nurgling models shooting the finger, eating their own guts, and pickin' their noses with big grins could not be passed up. The beasts of nurgle are all Rackham Cthonian Larvae. I had to create mouths on half of them with a drill and green stuff. They aren't quite the slimy, nurgle's rot bearing puppy dogs of yore but I thought they were pretty cool. The chariots are created out of beastman chariot and pump wagon parts. The idea for the bases and the display were outright stolen from QRAB who's really fun legion is in the gallery here.




Note the standard on one of the plaguebearer units with the hole where the flies' maw should be. That is a standard from my 1989 nurgle army. I had stored all my warhammer stuff in a back shed during the party years and when I dragged it back out I discovered that little bugs had eaten part of the flag. How appropriate. I cut it off and stuck it in the new cavalcade."

Anyway, the army was a blast to create. It was about two months worth of work because of the low model count. I took it to the 2006 Lonewolf GT in Dallas just for grins. I had played like two games with it so I expected to get mauled on the tabletop. I ended up 3, 1, and 1 and took 4 th overall, best army, and 2nd player's choice. Not bad for a beer and pretzels army done on the fly. The most fun thing is shouting "TRIPLE EYEBALLS! MARK OF NURGLE", Yeah baby, come to papa, when I roll 3 ones.


Thanks so much for sharing with us Jim! This is such a fun Nurlge Legion. I can tell you all right now that Pappa Nurgle is pleased.