The Plagueburst Biomortar

This was an oddity. I accidentally predicted the Plagueburst Crawler years before it happened. I made this piece about two years ago, basically because I had some leftover bits and pieces from other conversions.

There's a distinctly First World War feel to the Death Guard, with the gas masks, the Prussian helms and even their general footslogging attitude to warfare. Therefore it made sense even before there was Plagueburst Crawler that the Death Guard might have a lumbering, monstrous artillery piece.

My idea for the Biomortar is that it's a daemon engine similar to a Defiler, albeit more limited and slow, with aspects of the Hellcannon from Warhammer Fantasy. Basically, it's a big, dangerous, unhinged monster that spits warp-death and is dangerous to know. You'll notice the ghoulish figure off to the side with the shovel and the wheelbarrow full of offal. My idea is that he's a kind of ritual butcher who hacks plague victims up and feeds them to the Biomortar to fuel it. The capering mutant at the front is there to provoke it into shooting, which is a dangerous game to play!

The construction was really easy. With the Maggoth kit, you get extra arms and legs, and the components are really helpfully proportioned. With only a little trimming I was able to get the arms to fit into the Defiler's gun-housings, and with a bit of green stuff, the leg fitted onto the back. If you look carefully you can see a humanoid arm groping out from the monster's interior, which is just a Plaguebearer arm. The mutant at the front is a Gnoblar spotter from the Ogre Bulls kit with his head switched with that of a Cadian. The butcher has the torso and arms of a 2003 Ungor, a Dark Eldar Reaver's head, the lower half of a High Elf archer and a zombie's weapon. The wheelbarrow, if memory serves, comes from the Dwarf Cannon kit. The various spiders were added to give it an 'infested' look. They're all spares from the Warhammer Fantasy Arachnarok.

And it really is that simple!