Malisteen's Army Log: 5/16 Drakenhof Templar

[Sception]

After having sold off 1000 points of painted vamp counts earlier this year, I am finally motivated by the return of nagash to begin work on rebuilding my undead forces. I will be aiming to come up with a paint scheme that is both easier and more menacing than my previous, traditional red & black von carstein theme.

While I don't feel my initial outing was painted poorly (LINK), the color scheme itself wasn't working for me. Too bright. Too warm. The models looked like they were marching to battle in the noonday sun. I want to try something more reserved, a bit more somber, something that feels more arcane. A 'necromancer' or 'necrarch' type color scheme rather than a 'von carstein' color scheme, even if the chief vampire in my list will still be manfred.

I do have an initial idea, for skeletal models at least. I'm going to try for an ethereal effect with the bones, with black for the cloth bits and maybe some sort of darker bronzy metal color? I'm not sure. I'll need to experiment, test models should start showing up in later posts.

In the mean time, I'm starting with an inventory on my surviving collection.

Characters

- Mannfred on nightmare
- Vampire hero on nightmare

- Kemmler conversion
- Krell

- Vlad
- Konrad

- casty Vampire lord on foot
- Ghoul King

- fighty vampire lord on dragon (half converted)

- a couple vampire heros on foot

- mounted wight king
- a couple wight kings on foot, including a bsb

- a couple old necromancers

- 4 wraiths, converted from empire wizards
- 1 old metal wraith.

- 1 old metal banshee

Yes, I have way too many characters, given how small the rest of my army is. Keep in mind, I did just sell 1000 points, most of which was core troops.

My previous army was Von Carstein theme, but now I'll be going for a Nagash/Necromancer bent, so I've got way more vampires than I need. Also, the bsb is half painted in my old scheme, and uses plastic parts, so ill need to paint over him. If that obscures too much detail, he'll be unusable. And the necromancers and one of the wraiths are kind of old. I don't much like them anymore, and will probably be replacing the necromancers. Unless I run a unit of wraiths, I think 4 should be enough of them. I do like the new wraith better than my conversions, but that only works if I'm running a single wraith, it looks too different to use it and my current models in the same army, and if I'm using more than one I'd rather stick with the wizardy wraiths and avoid the chorus line effect of having more than one of the static pose GW models.

Other than maybe replacing the necromancers & bsb, I don't think I need any new characters right away. I mean, apart from Nagash, of course. That may change based on Nagash's campaign list.


Core

- 50 zombies
- 10 bases of unit filler
- 10 res tokens of zombies digging up from the ground
- 1 unopened box of zombies (unpictured)
- close to 100 count total

(sorry for blurry image)
- 28 hw & shield skeletons
- 10 unassembled skeletons
- 1 unopened box of skeletons
- approximately 40 skeletons total, after taking out test models

- 21 ghouls


I am shy on core. If I want to run Nagash, I'll need 1000 points, plus raising fodder. That said, I don't want to go overboard before the campaign book comes out, as Nagash's list may have different core units available.

Also, the zombies are gw models, which poses a bit of a question. I'm not that big a fan of the gw zombs, but I already have a bunch of them, and I don't like the mantic ones much more, plus they aren't much cheaper, so do I make the jump, or stick with what ive got?

And some of the skeletons and zombies are primed black, while my current painting plan, for the skeletons at least, starts with a white undercoat, so that may-or-may-not be a problem.

anyway, a vc battalion would probably be a decent purchase. Two would get me up to two units of 30 ghouls, two units of 40 skeletons, 2 corpse carts (I'd love them, if only they could march; as it is, that should probably read 'two necromancers' instead), and more dogs than I could shake a stick at, but it will have to wait until after Nagash and his campaign book. My funds are limited, so depending on the cost of nagash & his book, I may not be able to any battleforces until january. Which is fine, since it's not like I haven't got plenty to paint in the meantime.

The other thing I would have liked to grab is the crypt scavengers box, but that no longer seems to be available.

Special

- 10 black knights
- 3 model back rank filler, left over from older converted unit

- 19 great weapon grave guard
- 8 hw & shield grave guard
- 2 torsos w/0 weapons



- ~ 8 fell bats
- ~ 2 spirit host bases

The great weapon grave guard are, like the bsb, half painted in the old scheme, and may prove unusable if painting over it obscures too much detail. on top of that, I'm back to being on the fence on whether I prefer great weapon or HW&S? Is there a new consensus since last time I was on the boards? I have spare heads as well, so if I have to paint over the existing half-done paint job, it might be better to remove the heads and weapon arms anyway, so that at least those parts of the model won't have an extra layer of paint overshadowing the detail.

EDIT: I have recalled that I intended to assemble 40 gg total, all with GW, HW, and shield, half holding their Gweps w/ the shields on their backs and swords at their sides, and half holding HW & shield, with the great weapons on their backs, with the theory that I'd put in front the ones with the equipment I was using. I like this plan, and believe I will be sticking to it, though I will need to pick up one more box once I get around to them.

Otherwise, my special, like my core, is a little light. I've got no monstrous infantry, my black knight block isn't quite up to 'bus' size, I have no hexwraiths (I had originally planned to make my cav modular, so they could be fielded either way? I don't remember changing my mind on that, yet now I find my black knights are glued in place, so???).

Even the spirit hosts, Lotr ghosty swarmy things, I may not have. I do not remember getting rid of them, but have not found them yet.

I'm not sure what if anything to add here yet, but this section more than any I expect to change based on the Nagash campaign book, so I'm not making any plans yet (apart from thinking about what to do with the grave guard).

Rare:

- Mortis Engine

- Terrorgheist

Both very impressive models, both very cool units. I especially love the mortis engine, thematically and aesthetically, but there is a problem.

I found the chariot base to be just too small for it, so I glued mine to a large monster base and built up a bit of a scenic graveyard thing. It's nice, it looks nice, but the base is huge and unwieldy, making it much harder to use in game. If I put it behind my lines, then I'm unable to move my units apart enough to charge it up in between once the armies meet, while if I put it in the middle of my line, it pushes the units to either side way away from each other, which is a serious pain for march and invocation bubbles.

Aesthetically, I like it much more with the big base, but in terms of game play it's far, far worse than with the chariot base, so I'm torn on whether to keep it as is or tear up.

The terrorgheist has a square hole cut in its base. The idea was to put a bit of sheet metal under there, and then the ghoul king would magnetize to it to show he was with the gheist, or could be removed and have like a gravestone or something there. Never did get the piece of metal properly in place. now I can't find it, so I don't know if I'll still try and do that or if I'll just put masking tape or something over the hole, and forget about it.

EDIT: missing the crossed knives bit from one of the mortis engine banshees! ugh!


I'll edit in photos of the above in their current state later today.

In the mean time, if anybody happens to have advice on stripping paint from spindly fragile plastic models without breaking or ruining them, let me know, it might prove necessary on my wights, and I'd rather not eat a loss on 20 pricey infantry plus a decently converted hero.

 

[Pigeoneater]

The best way I have found to strip plastic is put it in a jar covered with Fairy power spray (dettol does the job as well but stinks) and leave for a day or two.

Then in a bowl of warm water gently scrub with a toothbrush. Don't scrub too hard, if the paint doesn't all come off put it back in the jar for another day.

Repeat and you'll have a clean model. Takes a long time with soaking but the actual time where you need to do stuff is low.

Hope that helps.

 

[Sception]

Thank you for the suggestion. I will keep that in mind, should it prove necessary. I don't think I'll have to resort to it on the grave guard (worse comes to worse, I'll just remove the weapons and heads and switch to HW&Shield, and put them in the back ranks), but the BSB in particular I would like to preserve, as I'm pretty happy with the conversion (LotR barrow wight w/ empire hero bits, will post later today).

 

[Mad 'At]

*Eagerly awaits photos*
You know, you can't just tease us at CN like that with talk about photos, we crave them here.

Looking forward to see what you can conjure up this time. Also, I'd stick to GW zombies, but I just love those minis. If you don't really like the mantic ones I see no reason to switch. Mixing the GW zombies up with other kits is great fun too, anything goes really. Try asking around your gaming group and see if they have any spare parts, nice way to score some cheap extra zombies and to add to the mixture.

 

[Sception]

I know, I know, I promised inventory pictures at least. I actually lost the memory card for my camera and have been looking for it for a couple days. Didn't find it yet, but did find the cable that lets me just hook it to the usb.

Anyway, I haven't done the inventory pic yet, but have been testing out a potential new color scheme:

I'm pretty happy with the colors and overall effect, though the technique needs work to improve the look of the corrosion on the metal bits and reduce the graininess on the ethereal looking bits. maybe even work in a bit of a glow where the two come together? not sure. And while I think this will work great for skeletons, wights, and ghostly stuff, I'm not sure exactly what I'll do for zombies/ghouls/other fleshy stuff.

Anyway, like I said, for an initial test of the overall look I'm pretty happy, so I think this is going to be the direction I'll be moving in, a pale, ghostly, magicky, greenish-blueish necromantic look army-wide, with dark corroded metals and black cloth for contrast. Should give me a much more 'team Nagash, Old Undead' feel, as opposed to the 'team Von Carstein, Vamp Counts' feel of my old scheme, which just wasn't doing it for me. Next up is a second test model to refine the effect, and once that's good, I'll be ready to start bulk painting some skeletons.

Well, that and the full visual inventory, which I'm aiming to get done on Thursday now.


Purchase-wise, I've budgeted for Nagash, his campaign book, the undeath lore deck, and some morghasts and/or spirit hosts, depending on how their prices pan out. That'll probably tap me out till January - if I'm still pushing warhammer fantasy then, and have painted a fair chunk of what I already have, then I'll look into picking up a couple vamp counts battleforces to fill out my ranks some and a mortarch.

 

[Sception]

Well, I was working on different corrosion methods, and most aren't really working out for me yet, not as dark as what I was looking for, a bit too colorful, I think I'm going to ditch the effect paints and go for a simpler 'dark metal plus brown and black wash' thing, but then this one model stuck out to me, what with the way this particular corrosion scheme looks and with the green of the half-done ethereal effect, it kind of struck me as a sort of under water kind of look, which I thought was kind of need:

The flash kind of washes it out a bit, but, yeah, not the effect I was going for, but a neat sort of happy accident. That said, I'm not sure I'd want to take the plunge on a whole army with that sort of theme. I mean, how far would I take it? Kelp/seaweed bases? sunken pirate ship terrain / mortis engine? converted fishie themed monsters?

I think that would probably be too much bother for me, and I'm really not sure how nagash would fit into that, which is a problem considering he's the main reason I'm doing this.

So anyway, just thought it was a neat accident to post, I'm still hunting for an effective ethereal + dark armor/metal effect.

 

[lord marcus]

It looks like your spray primer is fudging things a bit, and granulating as it dries. I'd suggest either getting a new can, or working within the constraints of the temperature and humidity ascribed by the label.

 

[Sception]

Yup, definitely a problem with the first couple test models. It's my first time trying out Army Painter spray primers, and sprays in general are finnicky, so I'm doing two more before I give up on the cans/brand entirely. Humidity & temperature wasn't an issue, but after reviewing online discussion and the brand's tutorial builds, it seems that the problem comes down to spraying the models from too far away. Apparently the spray is particularly fast drying, so if sprayed from more than six inches away tends to dry and clump in the air before reaching the model.

That seems rather frightfully close to be working with a spray, but the two I tried this morning look much better. I'll paint up the ethereal colors later today, and post up the results, and we'll see if the problem is solved.

If not, I'll need to find another priming method. Obviously these kind of kinks need to be entirely resolved before I get around to painting Nagash.


Priming issues aside, do you have any suggestions on a paint scheme for a dark, corroded metal, bronze or iron, that would look nice & provide some contrast to an ethereal paint scheme?

 

[Sception]

Inventory pics are up in the first post. On the plus side, I found an unopened box each of zombies and skeletons, and have just in general more zombies than I remembered.

On the down side, I'm missing the crossed daggers bit from one of the mortis engine banshees. This is extremely frustrating. If anyone reading this built a coven throne instead and still has that bit, I would be willing to trade for it. Any of the old vampires or necromancers or the banshee or lotr spirit hosts perhaps, as I think I'll be replacing all of those eventually.

Still not pictured, probably about five dire wolves still on sprue, plus about eight GW metal fellbats. Oh, I'd also be willing to trade fellbats for that crossed daggers bit.

Or just, like pay for it. The bits order places all only sell all three banshees together for like $20, which is a bit much when I only want the daggers.

 

[lord marcus]

Yup, definitely a problem with the first couple test models. It's my first time trying out Army Painter spray primers, and sprays in general are finnicky, so I'm doing two more before I give up on the cans/brand entirely. Humidity & temperature wasn't an issue, but after reviewing online discussion and the brand's tutorial builds, it seems that the problem comes down to spraying the models from too far away. Apparently the spray is particularly fast drying, so if sprayed from more than six inches away tends to dry and clump in the air before reaching the model.

That seems rather frightfully close to be working with a spray, but the two I tried this morning look much better. I'll paint up the ethereal colors later today, and post up the results, and we'll see if the problem is solved.

If not, I'll need to find another priming method. Obviously these kind of kinks need to be entirely resolved before I get around to painting Nagash.


Priming issues aside, do you have any suggestions on a paint scheme for a dark, corroded metal, bronze or iron, that would look nice & provide some contrast to an ethereal paint scheme?

I dislike army painter. mostly because of the viscosity of the sprays. i use dollar primer from wal-mart, and if i get a bad can it's not a big hit on the wallet, as i can simple green the models back to shape and continue in a day

 

[Mad 'At]

Yay, lots of pics ^^

You got some really cool character conversion there. I wouldn't worry too much about having so many of them though, they are what adds flavour to an army so you can't ever really have too many.

The ethereal effect on the new skeletons looks cool, though as you are well aware the graininess of them is quite disturbing. I use the army painter spray myself and has never had any problem with it, so I find it strange that it causes you so much trouble. I hope that you'll be able to find a way that works.

On the metal part I guess you could try to go with rusted iron instead of patina bronze. The orange might give it some nice contrast and I think it's easier to make the rust dark (just give it an appropriate number of black washes).

 

[Sception]

Alright, I think I'm getting close on the rough test scheme:

I could not get the AP sprays to work for me, so I've gone back to the old GW black, which, yeah, is overpriced, but it's never fuzzed up on me or given me bad results. I've also gone with a slightly simplified version of GW's ethereal scheme from the new Nagash model, which honestly was pretty close to what I was already doing. It is a few more steps and effort, but I'm also dropping a lot of colors out to go for a more restricted pallate, saving purples and bronzes for elites or characters. It gives a stronger effect, and lets me spend more time on the ethereal effect without spending more time on individual models.

I do need a bit more work on the highlighting/glow on the non-ethereal bits. Maybe a bit brighter highlights, maybe a bit more focused green.


But all in all, I think I'm getting close to the effect I want here. The less colors I use, the more I'm liking it, which makes me feel far more inclined to paint ghouls and zombies in basically exactly the same colors.

 

[NebuchandnezzarCD]

OOOH those skeletons look really good with the whole ethereal effect that you're getting with that scheme, the non ethereal bits do look good with the minimal colours.
Keep up the good work and I'm looking forwards to seeing the zombies.

 

[Sception]

Thank you. I've just got to work a bit on the highlighting & shading of the non-ethereal bits, and figure out what I'm doing for basing, and I'll be just about ready to get a whole unit or two of skeletons done. Don't know if zombies or ghouls will be next after that, but all three will be done before I move onto more exciting units, like black knights and grave guard, the latter of which have some significant modeling work still to do. I'll be moving up the ladder from core to special, rare, heroes, lords, and eventually Nagash. Right now I figure I'm looking at about 2,000 points total, not including Nagash, but heroes and Lords will be a big part of that.

I'm all kinds of broke right now, so I have to finish painting everything I already have before I can justify buying any new models, much as I might want to pick up a mortarch or some morghasts, and as much as my army might need more core troops. I might be able to justify a spirit host or two, depending on what price they come in at, but even that might be pushing it.

As pictured above, though, I've got plenty to keep me busy for some time, plus that aforementioned Nagash that I just could resist, even if I can't technically afford it right now.

 

[Sception]

Alright, things are busy with classes starting up, but I do have some progress to report. I've begun fixing up my skeletons to prepare them for painting. This includes scraping away the old sand/flock (thankfully I used tacky glue, making this possible), in preparation for a new textured paint base, which should result in a thinner basing surface, so as not to obscure the thin feet of the undead models so much. I also decided to swap hand weapons for spears, which is a somewhat laborious process, as detailed below.

First up, a picture of my work space:

I'm pretty happy with this set up, in particular the painting tray scratch built from an amazon shipping box.

Here's the progress on the skellies:

First clipping away the arms. I had to be careful to cut below the shoulder so that I could excavate the peg that the spear arms will glue onto.

Here you see how I've carefully gut the remainder of the arm bit away, leaving the peg free for the spear arm. I did screw up and break the peg off of a couple models, resulting in a slightly more difficult repair:

On models where I accidentally broke the peg off, I had to drill a hole in the torso, and glue in a new peg made from brass pinning wire, then file the outside end round. I don't recommend doing this, it's a major hassle.

While doing this, I took the time to glue a small rare earth magnet on the bottom of each model.

The magnets hold the models good and tight, so no falling over during battle. Unfortunately, this temporary tray will not work, as the wood edge bits simply will not stay affixed (I've tried everything up to Gorilla Glue). I've got another plan, but I'll get to that later.

Anyway, here's the unit as they currently stand. 30 skellies ready for new spears, and I've still got 20 waiting to be built from scratch:

Unfortunately, I think finishing them up and assembling the other 20 will take me all of this weekend, which means I won't be able to start painting in earnest until next weekend.


EDIT: oh, I forgot to mention, I also cut the tabs off above and below the hand on the shield arms, in order to make way for Tomb Kings skeleton shields. I've bits ordered a bunch of them (they tend to be cheap bits, since TK players tend to prefer to assemble their skellie models as archers), in order to give my Undead Legion army more of that mixed undead feel, aesthetically, even if I plan on sticking mostly to vamp counts units.

 

[Bullhax]

Wow very good progress already, looking really good.!
For smaller models like skeletons you can buy a can of magnetic paint (used to make custom magnetic boards) They don't attach as tight as on regular iron but enough to hold pretty well.. I found this easier than custom cutting the thin metal plates.

I got a bad can of GW white had never had any trouble so I happily blasted away on my CT conversion, not happy about the final result in places..

 

[Sception]

Magneic paint is actually exactly what I got. I don't expect it to hold them upside rown or anything, just kep them from falling over during the game on hills or whatever.

*whole buncha typos, sory, on mobile

 

[Bullhax]

Magneic paint is actually exactly what I got. I don't expect it to hold them upside rown or anything, just kep them from falling over during the game on hills or whatever.

Exactly there is not anything more annoying than placing a unit on a Hill and half your models falling off the tray you having to feign begging your opponent for forgiveness when you then try to shuffle the tray into an angle where models don't fall down..

 

[Sception]

Actually, now I'm looking at Shogun mini's steel trays, and I'm kind of wishing I hadn't spent the money on the magnetic paint. Hrm.

 

[Sception]

As another week of work and classes gives way to another weekend of relaxation and hobby time, I find myself embarking on a slight change of direction. I had planned on completing & painting a big block of skeletons before even starting to work on other units, but the local store will be hosting an End Times escalation campaign, starting at 1500 points, which is an easily reachable target for my current collection, so instead of painting the skeleton unit proper, I'm spending this weekend fixing up basic unit assembly on everything (at the very least torsos to bases), plus unit trays, and army transportation.

For unit trays, I'm going back to the steel sheet trays I already have for now. I actually got the wood trim to hold with super glue, of all things, by first scoring the metal sheet with knife around the edges in a cross hatch pattern. Which I really should have thought of before, but anyway.

On the transportation front, I have emptied out a large GW carrying case, and glued some of my larger & stronger magnets to the bottom of it (scoring the plastic with a knife was necessary to get the glue to hold). The models are magnetized to stick to the trays from above, and then the trays hold to the magnets in the case from below, allowing everything to travel easily and be ready to deploy the moment I get to the store. Here's how it's looking so far:

That's tilted somewhat upside down, and jostled around a bit. The magnets hold the unit trays quite sturdily, and I carried it around the house a bit without anything falling out. I wouldn't want to shake it about, or ship them this way, or travel via plane, and when it's in the car I'll want to be careful to set the case flat in the trunk and right side up. But for general 'to & from the game store' transportation, this seems like it will work great, and save me considerable time setting up before battle.


I'm not quit done fixing up the unit trays and affixing their magnets into the case, but when I am it should carry:

40 skeletons (5x8)
105 zombies (2 5x8, 1 5x5)
15 Black Knight (5x3)
28 Grave Guard (7x4)
28 Ghouls (7x4)
10 Dire Wolves (2 5x1, though I'm not sure I actually have this many)

That's 201 Infantry and 25 Cavalry, for 226 models total in one case, plus I should be able to fit some extra room for a small tray to carry a few plastic and finecast characters.

Of course, I'll have to find other transportation arrangements for models that are too big (terrorgheist, mortis engine, nagash once I get around to him), or made of metal (I've got a bunch of metal character mosels - vlad, blender lord made from mounted manny, necromancers, wight kings, etc, as shown in previous inventory, plus some bats and spirit hosts).

I've put a bit of work into fixing up the ghouls & cutting them off of & reattaching them to their bases, to get them to rank up somewhat. Their tray is still in progress (was a horde tray, cut down because I just don't have that many ghouls anymore, and it's probably going to be a long while before I do again):

Sadly, the financials are a bit crap right now, so I won't be able to add anything to my collection for the foreseeable future, which means sticking to my current metal lotr spirit hosts instead of getting the cool new models, and no new mortarch on abyssal, and no monstrous infantry or Tomb Kings stuff to flesh out my Undead Legion. At least, not for a while. I may have the opportunity to pick up 6 to 8 plastic ogre bulls from a friend to use as / convert into crypt horrors, but I'm not sure if I want to do that, since I'll eventually have money again, and I really do like the official models. I don't want to put a lot of work into models that I'll eventually replace anyway.

My last purchase for this army was a bunch of tomb kings shields from bits order, enough for most of the skellies, black knights, and grave guard (which will all be modeled with hand weapon, shield, and great sword, some holding the gtweps with the shields on their backs and hand weps at their sides, others holding hand wep and shield with the gtweps on their backs, so whatever I equip the unit with, I'll just put the models holding those options in their hands in the front of the unit). So that much mixing of vamp and TK aesthetics is at least still happening.

 

[Eternal Salvation]

Nice conversions!

 

[Sception]

Thank you.

continuing the trend for the weekend, i have done no painting, instead fovusing on modeling to get my army vaguely assembled for the league. I have decided to go for a boring netlist black knight blender bus with terrorgheist and chaff, just because im super uncreative that way, and didn't have a lot of time to write a list.

Army list: 1500 point end times undead legion

Spoiler

* Vampire Lord
Barded Nightmare, Dread Knight, Heavy Armour, Lore of the Vampires, Quickblood, Red Fury, Wizard Level 4, Enchanted Shield, Ogre Blade, Talisman of Preservation

* 25 Skeleton Warrior, spears, standard bearer, champion, musician

* 20 Zombies, standard bearer

* 20 Zombies, standard bearer

* 5 Dire Wolves, champion

* 5 Dire Wolves, champion

* Spirit Host

* Spirit Host

* 9 Black Knights, Lances, Barding, Champion, musician, standard bearer

* Terrorgheist

his list, far as i can remember, 1500 points of mostly savage orcs

Spoiler

savage orc lord w the works
savage orc mage lord lv4
biggish mob of savage orc biggun spears, full command

orc fighty hero w the works
biggish mob of orc bigguns with choppa and shield, full command

night goblin shaman lv2
25ish night goblins, nets and spears, full command

12 savage orcs, champ

6 savage orc boar boys, champ

The game was narrow deployment, set up as an army of the undead led by a vampire serving nagash, stumbling accross orcs while making its way south through a mountain pass on the way to support the invasion of Nehekhara, with abandoned tombs along the cliffsides.

The narrow deployment put a damper on my plans to outflank the foe, which was then cimpounded by my, in retrospect, excessive fear of a patch of quicksand, which led me to try to force my cavalry right through the center of his force instead of aiming to turn a flank.

while my lord and his retinue were mighty, it still took them several rounds of combat to chew through his meaty mob of biguns, and it would have gone poorly had he been able to encircle the retinue. Fortunately, between some abysmal squabbling among the orcs, and some stellar performances by my chaff, the lord got all the time he needed, such that by the time his only real remaining threat, a largs savage orc mob with his general, was finally clear to move in, i had chased away his big uns and had a charge reafy to go against them with the cav, skeletons, gheist, and a spirit hosts.

the cav and gheist did well, but the mvps were the spirit hosts easily. The orcs had a couple dangerous but small and non-magical units on the flanks - a mob of 10 savage orcs and one of six savage orc boars, both lacking banners for some reason, and neither of them could hurt the incorporeal swarms, and were instead wiped out as they failed combats by ones and twos and fled. I could not have asked for better targets for the spirit hosts, and both i and my opponent came out of the game feeling they were somewhat overpowered for their points.

Magic didnt have a big showy impact on the game despite level fours on both sides due to anemic winds of magic rolls. A couple successful invocations kept my black knights at full strength, though, which was key to the battle, if somewhat understated.

game pics

Spoiler

The gobling squabble, a trend for the game, as the rest of the orcs march forward.

The lord and black knights slowly pick apart the steadfast orcs, while the spirit host and pair ot surviving dire wolves hold up the units on the flanks. The terrorgheist helped by screaming the one point of rank bonus off the smaller unit of savage orcs. Later the zombies would block the larger savage orc unit for adfitional turns. By the time they fought free, the biguns had fled, allowing me to crush the savave orc big uns from all sides.

in the background, The savave orc boars had smashed my other wolf unit and been broken by my spirit host in turn already, clearing a path for my skeletons to move up and block the night goblins. Poor animosity rendered that unnecessary, however, so i threw them into the rear of the savage orc bigun charge instead.

dats a lotta ded orcs. The general, shaman, and standard break and are caught. With only the night goblins left on the board we call it a game.

in terms of leage results, my opponent still pulled out a bit ahead of me, on account of his fully painted army compared to my ramshackle, not even fully assembled force, which i can accept. Still, a nice opening outing for my undead legion.

In celebration of my spirit hosts' stellar performance, i have traded my old metal wight king on skeletal steed to another Unde@d Legions player for a box of the new plastic spirit hosts, allowing me to retire the old metal lotr models.

*pls excus typos, am on mobile.

 

[Bullhax]

I like the carry case, was thinking of doing the same myself.!

Great bat. rep. keep 'em comming! The gaming board is stunning!

 

[Sception]

The game was played at the FLGS, Titan Games & Hobbies in Timonium, Maryland, US. If you're ever in the vicinity, you should check it out. Tons of gaming & hobby space, nice tables & terrain, lots of games played, including various minis games, board games, tabletop rpgs, and of course Magic the Gathering. The MtG events do occasionally eat up most of the hobby/gaming space, even with the store as big as it is, but I can't really complain since that game by itself does the majority of their business, keeping the place open and spacious for everything else on other days.

 

[Banat]

Regarding the skeletons, I like the ethereal colours for them but I think trying to do green/blue verdigris on the metal actually overloads the model with green tones. I would suggest instead testing a model out with rust effects instead of verdigris. The brown and red tones in the rust will deepen out the models and make them feel more rounded and less... tonally flat/thin if you know what I mean.