More manky death goats

The Blood Bowl Pestigor looks like a fish.

This really saddens me. I think I know what they were going for, but it doesn't work for me.What does work for me are Pestigor, as readers may recall. Seeing as GW and I seemingly differ on what the galaxy's most unhealthy murder-goats should look like, I decided it was time to makesome new ones.

Both of these beautiful specimens are based around the bodies of Plaguebearers. They have the right bloated and sickly appearance whilst being more or less the right size and shape. First of all, I clipped the legs off and plained down the stumps.

Next, I cut the legs off of some spare Gors (my WFB Beastmen army has about 400 Gors, a fact I still can't actually explain and find faintly embarrassing, the point being that I can spare a few bodies). The legs had to be pinned onto the sides of the Plaguebearer bodies because the join will be both too difficult and too fragile otherwise. I then filled in the gaps with my usual PVA/tissue solution followed by green stuff.

The arms were easy to sort out. In one case I literally just lifted some Plaguebearer arms and repositioned the sword-arm. With the other one, I used a spare Gor arm. The burst pustule wossnames were just drilled in with a fine drill bit.

The heads are Gor heads, but they mainly looked like massive angry goats rather than creepy diseased creatures. So I filed off those big glowering eyebrows and replaced them with the eyepieces from the Marauder Horseman champion's horse. Getting these off the original component is NOT easy: you have to cut the eyepiece away with damaging it or taking too much of the horse's head. There's a nasty cut on my thumb to attest that it's a bit of a slog!

It's also worth noting that the Plaguebearer models have massive great necks. I needed to prune them back, pinned the head to the necks and then fill the gaps.

Once I'd painted them, there were some issues even with the filling, specifically around the leg joins. So I decided to hide the problem by bulking out the fur with black static grass. 

Sorry about the Gor arse. But it had to be done.

Anyway, that's another two added to the horde!

The Banegor rises

The largest, mos brutal and most cunning Pestigors inevitably rise to the top of their herds. Their power and authority is such that they regularly carry weapons forged by the Death Guard themselves. 

At the time of writing, it seems doubtful that GW have any plans to bring Pestigor back, but I rather like them. I've always had a soft spot for Beastmen. I got to thinking about the Plague Planet's feral populations, and I had the idea that the emaciated tribes are being bullied by tribes of monstrous Pestigor. The Death Guard actually treat them reasonably well, certainly more so than the human tribes, because the Pestigor are brawny brutes who make good shock troops! With this in mind, I set to work on this monstrous Banegor, a leader among the hordes.

The base is a Nurgle Chaos Lord, which they're currently selling under the name 'Lord of Plagues'. I swapped his head for an old Gor champion head. This did require sawing, pinning and poly cement. He looked a bit funny after that, so I built up a hefty throat out of green stuff. I swapped his axe for a spare Bubotic Axe from the Blightlord Terminators kit.

That's when the fun began.

He needed to look a bit more... Gor-ish. I cut a wide divot out of the front of each boot to form a cloven hoof, and then used green stuff to sculpt some fur. I can't give much avise about this - it's just a case of sticking to the task an persevering.

What am I going to use him for? Well... we'll see.

The Pestigor are back!

I have a peculiar admission to make: when the Death Guard Codex came out, I was perversely pleased that it didn't have Pestigors in it despite the fact that I wanted them. My reason for thinking that they might be in there was the presence of Tzaangor in the Thousand Sons army. In the end, of course, GW decided to have Poxwalkers as their fruity troop choice, which was fine. It was also fine because I'd already made this one and didn't want my work surpassed!

Making him was surprisingly easy when I got my head around the idea that I shouldn't base it on a Beastman. You can add all sorts of manky bits to a Gor, but you're really just creating work for yourself. Instead, I based him on one of the Plaguebearers who rides the Rot Flies in the Plague Drone kit. I never mount those Plaguebearers because I think that the Rot Flies look vastly more threatening without them. I removed the legs, and at the same time removed the legs from a Gor. It's worth mentioning that the legs of the Gor will not be going under the body but on either side of the gut. I pinned the legs in place to stop them flopping about and then filled the gaps with liquid green stuff. I left this to set before adding the rest.

The left arm was easy: that was just the arm from the same kit as the body. The right arm was easily made from a Gor arm with a sword from the Plague Drones kit. And the head is just a Gor champion head with an extra horn added!

Now I just need to make six more...