It's at moments like this when I find myself very confusing by my own feelings towards Games Workshop. On the one hand, some of the lore they've been writing seems to me to be bad to the point of self-satire (bigly marines, holes through the universe, Age of Sigmar etc). On the other hand, there's no doubt that some of the models they're producing are off the chart brilliant, and certainty aren't afraid of shying away from some bold and unsettling concepts.
The Gellerpox Infected could have been designed for me. I love the horrific, body-horror side of Nurgle and the grimly industrialised, Blachnian visions of the 4ok universe. These encompass such ideas perfectly.
There are so many brilliant aspects to these models. The horrible jumbled amalgam of man and machine, the ramshacckle stitching an the implied loss of self expressed through the multiple faces are all spot-on. These models are
grotesque. This is Chaos at its demented finest, horrific enough and nonsensical enough to send all right-minded onlookers running for an Aquila to hide behind. The vestiges of the original crew's clothing just adds to the jarring sense of the obscene living nightmarre of the Ruinous Powers.
For these models, I wanted to put extra emphasis on the infections, crusted blood and bruising. Nobody here is having a good time, even if they've convinced themselves that they are. The models are very helpful in this regard: they're covered in cuts, wounds and crude sutures, as well as ripped an creased fabric, which is easy to mess up with a few good paint smears.
I'm not sure what if anything I'll use them as in games. The Rogue Trader supplement they come in has the vaguely puzzling tyranny of insisting that all of the Nurgle lads from that set must be taken together. My friends are easy going though, as I imagine I could get away with deploying them as a single unit as long as everyone understood. Or I could use them as Ogryns. Either way, it's always good to see the Lost and the Damned in any form!
