Nurglings

Background

The Nurglings are the incorrigible imps of Nurgle that are delight and curiosity personified, getting stuck into everything around them. This bunch of mischevious mites are the happy spawn of Father Shmalog, grown from within his corrupted swellings.

Modelling

The nurglings presented two key challenges for me:

1. In keeping with my design principles of Nurglings swarming I chose to model them with seven Nurglings per base. Additionally, in further keeping with Nurgle's sacred number, I also wanted to have seven bases in the unit. But my major constraint was deciding to never use the same component twice. So I needed a total of 49 different Nurgling models. Putting this in context, the current Games Workshop range has only eight different designs.
2. My second problem was in the practical aspect of modelling: how to fit seven Nurgling models onto a 40mm base. Not so difficult at first glance, but I also wanted to use scenic terrain features on the bases. Mind you, The Lost and the Damned (the 1990 Realm of Chaos book that first detailed Nurgle) stated that "Nurglings are mounted on a 40 x 40mm base in groups of up to nine models."

In sourcing the models, I had to go back through each of Games Workshop's releases of Daemon models. At the time I was buying the components, the oldest models were no longer available through mail order so I spent quite a bit of time tracking down every one of the earliest figures. I ended up exceeding my expectations, by finding even more than I needed (which has allowed me to use the few spare Nurglings as decoration on other models in the army).

As a result of my research, I have gathered together a definitive list of all Nurgling models that Games Workshop has produced.