Workshop Wednesday — ‘Warhammer 40,000’ Nurgle And His Plague Marines

Welcome to the table,

It’s time to check back in with the heretical legions of the 41st millennium in today’s installment of Workshop Wednesday. When I was a kid I had a weird collection of influences. None left more of a mark on me than the elder nerds who taught me all sorts of pop culture and gaming mechanics and lore in the dimly lit rust and mold filled back room of a comic shop I spent the majority of my time in. While there was a multitude of Warhammer 40k players fielding all manner of forces, one of the coolest and most visual interesting legions was known as the Death Guard.

In a sea of armies with really rad looking space marines, the Plague Marines of the Death Guard appealed to me because they all seemed to be in possession of tentacles and teeth sprouting from random parts of their body. This made them a twisted hybrid of flesh, bone, armor, and plague-infused awful. To a kid, and quite frankly to an adult who likes eldritch horror, that’s very cool.

What made these monstrous marines even cooler was when my friend Charlie explained to me that, while they were infected with all manner of horrible flesh rotting and skin splitting diseases, these twisted humanoid warriors actually felt no pain. I was going through a ton of surgeries and had felt skin split and the rot of sickness sit in a wound that had to be scraped and treated multiple times. Mighty space warriors who would survive massive amounts of damage without having to deal with the chronic pain and discomfort of disease and disability seemed like the most epic thing on the planet to me.

Now, I know that the “grim dark future” and the Death Guard are very villain coded. They follow the Chaos God Nurgle and stood in opposition to the Imperium of Mankind, but much like the heretical cultist who sang the praises of the god of rot, Charlie’s stories about the Death Guard and Nurgle made them seem like the best marines in all the known galaxy.

Nurgle, or as I have come to call him “Grandfather Nurgle” is the Chaos God of death and decay. In addition to those existential dreads, he is also the god of rebirth and that combination of cosmological governance is what appealed to me most … aside from Charlie’s ability to weave a delightful yarn.

In Warhammer 40k, Nurgle is the creator of every infection and epidemic that has happened in the universe. Rather than being some kind of grim specter, like the kind I pictured haunted the hospital halls as I was going in for surgery or trying to recover from being cut open again and again, Nurgle was this entity who was full of life and laughter as countless spores, bacteria, and infectious viruses spawned in a brilliant rainbow of decay and disease.

The Great Unclean Ones were one of Charlie’s favorite miniatures to field at the table. These hulking daemons are some of Nurgle’s strongest followers. They serve as living manifestations of his plague magics as they toddle and ooze across the battlefield, cleaving through the armies of the Imperium with rusted weapons and streams of foul-smelling plague-laced secretions.

One of his Great Unclean Ones had a sword covered in skulls, something that would eventually draw me to my favorite video game weapon Chaos Eater, but that is a story for another time. The other wielded a twisted staff with a strange rune covered bell that hung from it. He had them painted in brilliant, vibrant green and putrid, pale purple, like some kind of waterlogged blister with rotting blood beneath the surface. I watched during weekend long battles as two of these hulking abominations decimated hundreds of Space Marines over and over again.

The Great Unclean Ones are not the only leadership over the Death Guard and the forces of Grandfather Nurgle. Mortarion, Lord of the Death Guard is one of the most compelling figures in Warhammer 40k lore. He was raised on a hostile planet, subjected to horrors that would have broken virtually anyone else who had to endure them. Still, once he aligned with Grandfather Nurgle, he became this powerful engine of destruction in open defiance of the Golden Throne and the Imperium of Mankind.

The lore of the Plague Marines and Grandfather Nurgle is wide and expansive. It has only grown and evolved since my days in that rust and rot filled back room surrounded by the elder nerds who schooled me on such things.

For those who want to take their first steps into the grim dark future of mankind and get their hands on some Plague Marines to see how they play on the table, my friends at Games Workshop have sent me one of their Kill Team Starter Sets and it is a fantastic introduction into the setting and game.

The set comes with Plague Marines of the Death Guard ready to be assembled and painted as well as a unit of Space Marine Angels of Death, the less delightful and hardly as lovable counterparts to the putrid followers of the god of rot.

You also get a ton of other tools and accessories, including dice, tokens, slot together terrain, and a handbook with scenarios to get you started. The whole box has been designed to be built and ready for play in as little as 30 minutes so it’s kind of an amazing offering as far as introductory box sets go.

Until next time, I think the Death Guard and their foul master are the coolest and the concept of a god who gives you a pain-free existence regardless of how many horrors your health is subjecting you to just seems to be the kindest thing in the grim dark future … or now … honestly.