Realm of Chaos: Nurgle Folk Horror Warband

Long time, no post. I'll admit as life got more busy I forgot about updating the blog. I did have a big lore post planned for my Lobsterpot28 warband but after writing it I submitted it to a zine for publishing. Keep a look out for that later this year.

Anyway, over the winter a few friends and I decided to make Realm of Chaos Warbands rolling out of the classic Realm of Chaos Books. I of course chose Nurgle and with some help rolled my first champion and warband. (In the future, I would like to kitbash a champion for each Chaos God). 

For the Champion, he was a level 5 human hero with cloven hooves, beastial face and enormous noise. With the 5 equipment points, he received a set of heavy army and a double handed sword.

Next I rolled 6 Beastmen with scaly skin. 1 Magus who can't cast any magic spells yet. And 3 cultists with iron hard skin and Beastial face. 

Some how I managed to roll Beastial face or Beastmen for all of my warband. With that I knew that their would not be any human faces in my warband but knew I needed the Beastmen to be different then the other characters. I didnt want to do the classic fat, bloated characters for my Nurgle warband. I wanted to use the Garden of Nurgle as a starting off point as well as different influences.

Right when I was discovering my painting style 

A few years ago, I kitbashed this spell caster for my Forbidden Psalm / Mordheim warband. She is the Wicker Woman.

Holy Cleric St. Agatha thought she was hearing guidance from her God during the end times. Continuously he asked her to collect more of the corrupted weird stone to protect the vulnerable from dark magic. the more weird stone she collected, the more her God spoke to her. Her sisters saw the corruption of her soul and sentenced her to be burned at the stake. St. Agatha was set ablaze, left as ash in the countryside upon a hill with a single tree. Her God heard her calls for salvation and blossed her with a new form of the Wicker Woman, she returned to the Fallen City, gaining followers and building a new world that embraced the chaos. 

This was always one of my favorite models I've made and I don't get the chance to use her that much. I always liked the branch wings and twig arms on the character. This Nurgle warband was a good excuse to continue exploring that idea which pointed me towards folk horror, folklore and legends as the inspiration for this warband. Inspirations include: Baba Yaga, The Green Knight Movie, The Ritual Movie, Midsommar, The Wild Hunt, Arthurian Legends, Knights in general, Dark Woods, and old manuscripts. 

A quick lore about the warband to help explain design choices is that this small village in the middle of the woods began to have issues with their crops growing, not matter what they did all the plant life would die. Knowing they did not have enough food for Winter, the town's one Knight went into the deep woods to see if he could discover what the issue is. After days of walking, he discovered an old dead tree of blackened wood. At the base of the tree was a path that traveled deep into the earth. He ventured deeep underground where no light could reach. As he felt a cold chill down his spine, a voice called out to him. He asked what the Knight wanted and He answered with wanting the town's crops to grow. The creature promised the crops would grow as long as they prayed to him. The Knight took this creature as an old forest spirit and promised a feast in his honor once he returned home. After returning to the village, the Knight demanded the mayor set about a feast for the salvation of their crops. A week later, the whole town celebrated and the next morning, plants sprouted. As summer passed and the crops grew more then ever, the villagers began to notice a change in themselves. The town guards grew thick mains of hair and cloven feet. The farmers faces grew long snouts and roots crawled out of their spines. The more they prayed to the Forest Sprit, the more they transformed into the forest itself.  

Later on I plan to do a more in depth story telling for this warband about the named characters and some of the other strange denizens that appear in town. 

Work in progress of the WarBand

Sir Morcant, The Fly King's Hand, The Spore Crowned Warden

To start off I worked on the Champion, since his design would dictate the rest of the warband. It actually started out as a kitbash for the original warband. One of the warriors had upgraded to a two handed weapon and heavy armor. The base model was a push fit Storm Cast Eternal model with the sigmar bits scrapped off. I chopped off the head of the weapon to add a more unique option inspired by the Witch King of Angmar. More branches were added to the back to increase the size of the champion compared to what I had originally. A few head options were played around with since Beastial Face was rolled. I didn't want an expected Beast head and happened to have this metal fly face which I was given as a gift for Christmas. With some flocking added to the shoulders and holes drilled into the armor, my Champion was completed. 

The Black Brair Herd

A few months before this project was started, I happened across a great deal on some GW models off of Facebook marketplace. I originally wanted the Metal Middle Earth Hero minis but he also had some boxes of monopose beastmen and Skaven. Since I liked both of those armies as well (Big Skaven fan over here), I picked those up as well for my Old Hammer shelf. As soon as I rolled beastmen, I knew exactly which models to use. A million of these Beastmen models exist so I didn't feel bad about chopping them up. Since each model was posed in the same way, I used different bits to change up the silhouette. Luckily the Nurgle bits worked great with all the Dryad pieces. Any parts I think needed extra texutre got sand and flock. 

Soran the Rotten, the town Mayor

The PoxBound Pilgrims

 The villages were more difficult for me to resolve. I didn't want them to be humans with beast fans as they were also being transformed by their prayers. Luckily I had a few extra Plague Monk bodies and parts that I could use for the villagers. The hunched backs were perfect for the roots along with the plague barrier arms. The scale difference between the Champion, beastmen and cultists really helped the villagers feel weaker in comparison. 

In progress Chaos Warrior

Of course, after finishing this warband I was having too much fun mixing all the bits together to create new characters. I was in a bit of a slump of what project to do next so I picked up an old getting Started Set of Chaos Warriors which gave me a great start to adding more units and expanding the characters.

In progress Villager

I wanted a coven of witches and warlocks to use as Chaos Sorcerers. A warband of Chaos Warriors to use as reanimated Knights of old. A Great Unclean one as the Forest Spirit. A band of demons of the forrest inspired by twisted fae creatures. Knights on horseback sent by the Fly King to help the village and of course the Fly King on chariot. I have finished a few of these models so far! But am definitely looking forward to fleshing out their ranks even more. My hope is to finish most of the general units to bring to Under the Dice fest. I can use them for a variety of games like Warhammer, Mordhiem, Dragon Rampant, Forbidden Psalm, or any fantasy game really. 

One of the Witches from the Coven. Kitbashed by my friend Anthony and it was perfect for this army.

Over the next few months, there will be more posts about this army as well as some projects I finished previously like my Chaos Giants for Age of Signmar. My goal is two posts of month! I think the next post will a painting tutorial for this army. 

Gathering of the Jersey Girls

At the end of January, the Jersey Girls ran their first event! We had been planning for months for this and invited everyone we knew from the Tri-State area to attend. To prepare, we wanted to create a few new boards. We were lucky that Mikey had created a bunch of boards for Garage Con in 2024 and had they safely stored away. He brought them all to the shop while we were building boards and realized we had plenty of boards to play on, but hey new boards are cool.

Mikey's sick vertical dungeon board

Mikey and Dellon focused on creating a castle board. There was endless brick cutting and brick laying paid off to create an awesome castle. There were many games of defending the castle on this board. I also appreciated the fact that the castle was not gray and had some nice greens and purples. Mike, owner of Sanctorium , painted up the board the week of the event! 

Castle Board

Anthony created a sick Graveyard board. Similarly full of color for a normally bleak place. Theres resin pools, plenty of flock, hand sculpted tree and even accessible tombs. This is a board I definitely want to play Necropolis on. 

The Graveyard

I had never made a full game board before. Only a few pieces of scatter terrain and some larger buildings but this was my chance to build one! The inspiration for my board was a Giant's graveyard that is being archaeologically excavated. To get between the bones and hill sides, lots of bridges were created. Each little platform had at least 2 ways to get to it. The larger forts were built for Garage Con but rather than having them mobile, I glued the pieces down and blended them into the board. Many coffee stir sticks were sacrificed to the creation. I'm very happy with how it turned out. Even got to play a game of Cauldron on it with my friend Sam. 

Now it was time for the event! I was unsure of how many people would show up. I was thinking like 12-15 people. The guys were confident more people would be there. And they were right! At the height of the event we had close to 30 people in the Game room playing games, hanging out or kitbashing.

As people rolled in, games of Cauldron started! Many people brought their own warbands from home. There were plenty of colorful miniatures and I regret not getting more pictures! Luckily lots of other people took photos. Thank you Frankie and Charlie! 

Charlie's warband of Froggy dudes

Frankie's colorful warriors

Jake's Cauldron Winning Troll
He kitbashed this model at the first hangout

Dellon's Cauldron Warband fighting a knight

We off course had many games going on! Cauldron, Middle Earth Strategy Battle Game, RAID, Ballad of Blades and Mordheim. Everyone was buzzing around from table to table. 

My first game back to MESBG after 15 years. My Goblins did not stand a chance against Mark's elves. Thanks for walking me through a game Mark! 

Mordheim in action!

So many games of Cauldron!

Preparing for the Ballad of Blades tournament

I started out my day kitbashing some miniatures with Sam and Jake while people strolled in. We had plenty of bits and glue to share. After people got settled, I jumped into a game of Middle Earth Strategy Battle game with Mark. Mark was a great teacher! He walked me through building my list and helping with rules. I managed to only take out 1 elf but I managed to kill more of my own goblins.. but hey I learned. After that I helped clarify some Cauldron rules while admiring people's miniatures. Quickly, I jumped into a game of Cauldron teaching Sam how to play. He kitbashed his warband that day and got them game ready! Like the rest of after his first game, he was hooked on playing Cauldron. It was nearly 5 and I hadn't eaten yet so a group of us went next store to grab some pizza. Next I played Cauldron on the castle board. My warband did not fair well against Jake's warband. Come on did you see the troll he made! Towards the end of the night, we prepared to plat Ballad of Blades. This is a game I've played a bunch of times, I was confident my warrior would fair well. I lost every single battle I had. But hey it took the most wounds so I kinda of won? Dellon and Jake faced off for the title of Champion. With the toadify spell and a bop on the head afterward, Dellon won the title. By this time it was nearly 10 and we packed it up for the night.

We learned alot running our first event. It went very well for the most part but learned signs and limiting the number of game systems we will be running will help for the next event. Don't worry we have another Gathering planed for the summer! Once we have the date locked it, we'll be posting! 

2026 Goals

Its been a while! I took some time off at the end of 2025 and for January while watching the US plumet into a post capitalist hell hole. 

There were a few reasons for a break but mostly so I could focus on finishing some projects before the first event hosted by the Jersey Girls. That included making my first board, which will be its own post once I get some nice photos taken. I'll also have a post about the event and how it went! 

But before all that, on January 1st I wrote down some goals in my hobby notebook. I tend to follow what ever my interest is at the time once a project is done. But sometimes I'm not sure what to work on or I have future games that I need to create something for. Having this all listed in my note book provides some rails while also providing flexibility.

Middle Earth Strategy Battle Game

As I have explained in a previous post. MESBG was one of my first war games and this year I want to keep painting more Middle Earth models. I've already painted a bunch of new models to include in my battles. So far I completed both Dwarf rangers and warriors and even more Moria Goblins. Next up I have to paint the Fellowship and other hero models. Some characters I even have different models in metal and plastic. This will be a good chance to try out some different color schemes that capture the essence of the character. 

Lobster Pot 28

Last year my friend Jake introduced me to Lobster Pot 28. After playing through a scenario, I knew I wanted to make my own warband. I plan for one of the next posts to go over the lore specifically but a brief breakdown for my idea was a group of descendants from the Knights Templar who brought relics to North America to combat the witches. But over time the relics began to corrupt and they started worshipping a new type of God. Kitbashing warbands is one of my favorite things to do, it allows for a theme to be explored on a small scale while spending time crafting a few unique characters. I literally just finished this warband last week before the Gathering of the Jersey Girls. While we didn't get the chance to play, I'll be ready! 

Chaos Giant Spearhead

I have literally never played Age of Sigmar and have zero idea of any of the rules. I hear spearhead is fun to play though! After being asked to play in a casual weekly game, I had to decide what faction to play. Originally I thought Goblins or Skaven, but after spending most of December batch painting I didn't want to have to paint 30 models. Thats when I remember I started a Giant spearhead a while back but never finished. This gave me the excuse to highly kitbash and sculpt three Giants inspired by the Chaos gods. So far I have 2 doneish and one in progress. My goal is to have these done in a few weeks and play my first game. My second goal is to confuse my opponents with models that look nothing like the miniatures on the box. 

Playtest Warband

After rolling on a custom table, I got my small warband list for a friends playtest. I have to make 1 witch, 3 centaurs and 6 skeletons. My idea is to use metal models as the base then kitbash the weapons and armor. I haven't really kitbashed many metal models but I got a great deal off Market Place for a bunch of models that I plan to use. My friend Ant was also selling old metal models where I was able to get some Centaurs and Skeletons. The goal is to get the warband all together by mid March for the first playtest.

Realm of Chaos Warband

I've wanted to make a custom Realm of Chaos warband by rolling each character up then kitbashing. We are finally going to do that this year! I got Nurgle and will be kitbashing a warband of gross little weirdos. After we make our warbands, we'll have a battle using Warhammer Fantasy 6th edition skirmish. I also want to make a small display with a monolith to display my miniatures on. That way when I bring the warband to a meet up, they'll look extra cool.

Those are all my plans so far! But we are only one month in and I'm sure more projects and ideas will pop up. 

2025: Year in Review

2025 is nearly over! It has been a year of many firsts for me.

Beep the Troll, leader of the Beeps of Jimbus warband for Cauldron

First year working full time in the board game and miniatures industry. First time meeting a huge amount of my online friends in person. First year of being a home owner. First time solo traveling and first time designing my own miniatures game. And so many new tattoos. I didn't think I would be experiencing so many new things as a 34 year old. There are so many things that happened, its honestly hard to remember everything.

The Art Goblins

I got to meet so many of my online friends this year and they became real life friends. Some traveled through NJ and we got to meet up for a game. Others I flew to Milwaukee to meet and others I got to meet up with on the east coast at CT. All of them were just as kind in real life as they are online. So many of them inspired me to keep creating in all aspects of my practice. Adepticon was one of the highlights! A bunch of my friends traveled from abroad and we got to kit bash in person. A bunch of them even had their own games to play! I played Fiver's Snak28, Clay's Threnodessy and Steven's Bloodwork. I spent hours kitbashing and chatting with everyone around the Grim Dark alley. I even kitbashed my first Missile Toad that led to the creation of the game. I also got to meet up with Gage a few times to play some Games of Forbidden Psalm. At Pax U, I played against Ben in Cauldron (my warband was way to overpowered). In between all the events, I played games with my local crew of Dellon, Mikey and Ant. I also attended Under the Dice Fest in CT. Alot of the people I met at Adpeticon were at this event too. I watched the Mordheim open while walking the floor to visit the vendors and check out the Rusted Demon entries. Also hung out at the HiveScum studio while Trent casted up some miniatures. Played some games of Cauldron, Ballad of Blades and introduced Missile Toads to new players. 

Forbidden Psalm with Mikey and Gage

The founding of the Jersey Girls has been one of the best things about this year. It originally started with 3, grew to 4 and now the group has 15 members all over New Jersey. It has been great to bring players from all over the state together to connect and play indie games. We also get to support our friend's shop Sanctorium Games where we have plenty of room to spread out and purchase all the miniatures, paints and supplies we need! 

Anthony hacked Cauldron to run an RPG. I of course played Beep 

The year in Numbers: 

Game Days: 25

Different Games Played: 17

Most Played Game: Cauldron

Miniatures Kitbashed: 110

Miniatures Painted: 290 (so many Skaven and LoTR Rohan army)

Conventions attended: 3 (Adepticon, Under the Dice Fest, and Pax Unplugged)

Events participated in: 4 (Ent Moot, Monster Bash, Festival Rumpus, Kijune Kitbash)

Missile Toad Game at the First Jersey Girl Hangout

Next year I hope to do more traveling, work collaboratively on projects with more friends and spend lots of time playing games. We already have out first event for the Jersey Girls next month! If your in the tri-State area, drop by and play some games. I also want to release the final zine of Missile Toads. There are a few changes to make to the game and layout before printing. Once that is done, I'll have the printed zines available through my web store. Other Goals for 2026 is painting all my Middle Earth miniatures, finishing my Age of Sigmar spear head of Chaos Giants and my Lobster Pot 28 warband. Work on more Tyranids for my fully kitbashed army, I'm sure this list will grow quickly!

As we go into the new year, I hope we can all show more kindness to other's and ourselves. This hobby is about uplifting each other. If you are alienating people because they might be a little awkward or weird, GTFO! We got all types of people in this hobby, it's what makes us one of the best communities out there. Intimidation, gaslighting and harassment has no place at my table. If you ever feel uncomfortable at an event, come chill with me. 

Have a happy and safe New Year! 

Dragon Rampant

After many months of talking about Dragon Rampant with the core crew, I finally got the chance to give it a go. Dellon had given us a brief over view of the game during the early Fall to explain how it was different from other rank and flank games we played. I was excited to play Dragon Rampant which led me to kitbashing an army of Goblins, Trolls and Orcs. I had the option to use my Skaven for this game but I really wanted a project that would connect my Cauldron warband with a larger force.

Using the Dragon Rampant Second Edition rule book, Dellon helped me put together my first army list for our game. What I really enjoyed about Dragon Rampant was how flexible assigning a stat block is to a unit. There isn't just a Troll state block to use, you can choose how you want to run them. They can be elite units, they can be brutes, they could just be a rank and file melee unit. Then after a stat block is selected, you can choose a key word to add special abilities to the units. Most of the time this increases the cost of the unit, but some reduce the unit by penalizing an ability. 

The Shellborn Knights

The first unit we stated out was the Snail Knights. Even though they are snails, they move quickly as a calvary unit. To reduce the cost of the unit, they received the Slowness ability to reduce the speed by 1 inch. Additionally,  they are Venomous (Which I forgot to use during the game). 

The BogTooth Bashers

Next the Trolls were added. These are the brutes of the army with high strength and courage. They had way more abilities than my other units. They had Ranger, Wildchange, Counter Charge on Foot, Fleet Footed and Cannibalistic. 

The Blackfen Quiver 

Since the game was going to be focussing on one army storming the castle of another, I need to add more range units. A hoard of goblins with bows was selected to help protect the walls of the castle. They simply had the Sharp Shooter ability which did come in handy during the game. 

The Bog Breath Wyrm

I bought this awesome metal Reaper cannon to add to this army. I really liked the dragon design and what goblins don''t love explosions. Having a cannon to defend a castle is a must. Turned out the Cannon was over powered for the point value we were playing for our armies, but hey it was fun to use. 

I plan to do a future blog post to go into the lore of the army that I wrote for each unit. Stay tuned for that in 2026!

The Game

To get started,  Dellon and I placed the models on our side of the board. I was defending the castle while Dellon was invading. Turned out we did not add too many line of sight blockers for Dellon's army to hide behind and my cannon blasted through a unit of warriors. After a few rounds, the game play loop was easy to learn. I did forget to use most of my special abilities, but it helped to learn the game loop and add the abilities in for the next game. 

My poor Shellborn Knights did not stand a chance against the giant. They were quickly smashed to bits after charging out of the castle to defend their territory. My Trolls also didn't last long against the archers across the table. I did not have good luck with my melee warriors as they were quickly destroyed by Dellon's army. My range units faired much better! The cannon knocked out a unit of warriors in a few turns as they marched towards the castle walls. Once units actually got into the range of my archers, they managed to take some warriors out too. In the end, Dellon's elite unit did make it through the gates of the castle. Quickly they slaughtered my archers and only the cannon remained. Luckily, the cannon blasted the away the last enemy and the castle remained in the hands of the Drowned Maw Marauders. 

After my first game, I definitely want to play more! Looking forward to my next game using more of my custom kit bashed units.