05 October 2025
Good evening to the lost and damned, this thread will be exhaustive collection of the decisions I make for my first* Warhammer Fantasy Army. In this first post, I'll lay out a lot of background information about myself, the army, my plans for this army, my goals, and the progress I've made thus far.
Edits made at 9am EST: spacing out the paragraphs more to make it more readable on mobile devices.
First, let's start off with the fluff (so far):
The yet unnamed Red Prince is a vampire lord fighting for dominion over the border princes. In his previous life, he had been a wealthy book merchant of both Imperial and Bretonnian descent. Books of high value include arcane tomes, banned literature, antiquities, and anything penned by a prestigious author. His unlife began when he traded something that was all of that for a countless number of lifetimes to amass a library without peer. This fate did not come to merely an avaricious merchant. The yet unnamed Red Prince acquired and dealt with his business with as much skulduggery as scholarship. A man educated at the forefront of Imperial academies, he took on radical thinking. If he wanted to amass his treasuries, he needed a power base, both to store them and to raise funds to furnish new additions. Furthermore, ruling land would give him subjects and power to protect his collection and feed himself. Naturally, this endeavour would require allies, underlings, diplomacy, and statecraft. Just like that, the yet unnamed became the Red Prince of the Borderlands.
Effectively, this is the fluff I will have for any narrative games or campaigns I can take part in. I’m very much drawn to the idea of doing narrative campaigns and being immersed in the world (while still being tongue-in-cheek about it). I’ll be retooling this fluff for AoS (but effectively the same thing), and use these models if I can get involved with Mordheim locally.
Backgrounder on my journey here
I've been interested and aware of Warhammer ever since I was 12 years old, after playing the demo for Warhammer: Mark of Chaos. A few years later, as a teen, I moved to an FLGS; I spent that time wandering the shelves of the Warhammer section, getting over the decision paralysis between 40k or fantasy? What Army? Turns out it was Vampires. I would scrap together allowance & summer job money, and buy the books and some kits. Sadly, by the time I sold out in Undergraduate, I had mostly just assembled some of the miniatures and not enough in a way to have a playable army - Warhammer Fantasy had gone through its end times, and it really didn't look like there was much of a future for Fantasy with the early version of Age of Sigmar. I still kept the bits, though (thank you 18 18-year-old me). I got back into Warhammer in 2018/2019. I got into 40k with the Tau Empire, over 6 years, I worked at a snail’s pace assembling and painting (or at least priming) around 1250+ points of models, and playing 2 games. I found I did not care for the Tau at all and was disappointed with them in all aspects of the hobby. When Old World was announced, I was very interested, though disappointed with our legacy status. One day, I realized that armies like Chaos Daemons are famously used in 40k and fantasy, and with that, I started my collection in earnest:
About 50% of what was assembled and primed thus far was done in the last 48 hours. The other-half has been chipped away at 1-2 years.
Assembly process:
This army confirms that I have a love-hate relationship with assembly. I have spent the most time engaging with tabletop Warhammer through assembly, and I find it very tedious. However, I enjoy the creativity with kit-bashing and making things feel unique. Throughout the years, I’ve kept my bits stashed away throughout several moves and periods of my life, and being able to mix and match the old skeleton kits was a blast. I was so happy with some of the unique miniatures, as well as replacing some of the weapons on the vampire lord and blood-knights. However, I am very slow at the assembly task, so I was so happy to get it done (the day of this post). Regarding specific kits:
Priming:
I’ve so far primed half of the army. I was pretty frustrated with my grey spray paint. I found the coverage some what dusty, and I had some sputtering issues with the can despite being well shuck several times. I also found that the outside steps of my apartment are not ventilated well enough. I was unable to continue the project for the rest of the day as it was getting dark and the lack of ventilation would be a problem - best stop for the day.
Painting & Basing:
Basing:
I plan to use the basing to tie the army together over the paint scheme itself. The idea for the bases is the army moving through an area with partially buried cobblestone roads in autumn. Some of the conversion bases I bought came as roads, which I’ll partially cover with texture paints. For the models without these, I’ll be using Miliput and Green Stuff to create sections of partial roads on the model, covering the rest with a texture paint. I’ll need to find some better fall basing material, what I currently have feels too summery.
Colour scheme:
I have not landed on specific colours yet for my scheme. I have a range of GW, Vallejo, and Army Painter paints. Some models, though, I have some clearer ideas:
Future plans:
In the immediate future, I’ll be priming these and start painting with either skeletons or zombies to get myself re-acquainted with painting. I also need to order some conversion bases for my miniatures, magnets, a magnetized storage solution, and basing material.
Regarding future units, a Wight King, Grave Guards, and more vampires (currently considering the blood bowl vampires for conversions) are on the list. I have a few conversion ideas in mind, one of them being a conversion of Lady Élisse Duchaard into a Vampire Lord on Nightmare. I think once I play a few test games, I’ll also be able to judge how much more chaff my army needs.
Finally, I hope to have a match sometime this month once everything that is currently assembled is also primed.
16 February 2026
Progress Updates
It has been a few months since I last wrote an update. I entered into the Golden Bat competition and then swiftly withdrew due to obligations and my inability to get something done in time. Throughout the months since I've chipped away at priming my models and getting paint on them. In February I joined two leagues in the Toronto area. The first, is an old world narrative campaign set in Lustria. The second is an age of sigmar path to glory league set in Ghyran called blighted wilds. I'll be discussing all of this below, both leagues give me a motiviation to keep painting.
Painting update:
I didn't do any new modeling but I did prime all of my miniatures. And what a disaster! I primed them in mid/late fall, in Canada. It gets pretty cold and wet here in the fall as winter to starts to creep its way into our lives. Realizing that I'd be locked inside for the next few months I figured I better get everything primed while conditions were ideal, or so I thought. It turns out conditions were not quite optimal and the vast majority of my models were left with this dusty, chalky residue on the surface. I knew what the optimal condidtions were to prime them, but I ignored them figuring that it wasn't *that* bad out. Doing some research it seemed that the only method to remedy this was to strip them and start again. I did paint the skeletons and zombies as both a test to see how bad this could be and because as my chaff units it wouldn't be so bad if they were a bit messy. I was relatively happy with how they turned out but thought better of painting anything else without stripping the models. My cursed spelchures, blood knights, vampire count, wolves, and base coated necromancer got this treatment.
On the other front I got a good chunk of painting done on 40 skeletons, one corpse cart, and 20 zombies (one zombie is currently MIA). There is still a lot to go on all of them, ranging from basecoating to highlighting. Basing also needs to be done, as referenced earlier I'm tying together my army with a basing scheme. Some of my models are on fully cobblestone modled bases, others are on totally plain bases - this needs to be remedied. I've been adding miliput to the bases and carving lines in them to replicate a cobblestone road or at least patches of it. Anywhere between 20%-70% of a model's base is going to be cobblestone with the rest being dirt. This is to sell a narrative that the area they're in is perhaps off the beaten path, in decay, or just very old and worn down. Much of this modeling has been done AFTER I primed the model already on its base, why did I do this? Simple. Poor planning. I'll be remedying this but experimenting with something totally new to me: paint on primer. I'll be using a black primer and paint the bases later.
Finally, I in one night got a very quick paint job on my vampire lord and necromancer. They were both fairly easy to get to a near battle-ready standard. The vampire lord was painted using a corrupted metal colour which has a somewhat dull brass look to it, with a red metlallic colour used as an accent. I used nuln oil and a blood red speed paint to darken and redden the metals. I used a brown speed paint for the bats in his hair, a vampiric fleshtone, black for the hair and a corrupted iron for the sword with a purple wash. I am not happy with this model and I'm unsure how much I want to radically change them - or if I should revisit him and keep the current scheme until I complete him.
The necromancer was equally experimental for me as I tried a technique I initially failed with my army. When I primed my army originally, I wanted to experiment with zenithal highlights from my spray can; and I totally failed. The greys and whites completely tookover the shadows ruining what I was going for. This time around I had primed both the necromancer and vampire lord black and then dry brushed grey and white onto the necromancer. I did this to try the slapchop method on my necromancer. I was quite pleased with how most of it came out. I find his robes quite boring being a totally monotone grey. However, the rest of the model turned out great for a model I needed to get done quickly the night before my first game of Age of Sigmar. I'll certainly revisit the necromancer in the future.
Acquisitions:
As a gift for Christmas for myself I bought a unit of Bretonnian foot knights and a few months prior I also bought a team from bloodbowl for the vampire team. My goal is to eventually kitbash these into a unit of vampiric grave guard + a few vampire heroes
Games:
I have joined a narrative campaign set in Lustria as well as a path to glory campaign in Age of Sigmar. I have not had the chance to play Old World yet, however, my first game of Age of Sigmar was played yesterday against the Ossiarch Bonereapers. I was fairly tired playing the game so I did not have as good of a time as I would've hoped but the game was a helpful introduction to Age of Sigmar. I lost the game quite dramatically due to a few bad moves and not having a great understanding of my factions rules.
Good evening to the lost and damned, this thread will be exhaustive collection of the decisions I make for my first* Warhammer Fantasy Army. In this first post, I'll lay out a lot of background information about myself, the army, my plans for this army, my goals, and the progress I've made thus far.
Edits made at 9am EST: spacing out the paragraphs more to make it more readable on mobile devices.
First, let's start off with the fluff (so far):
The yet unnamed Red Prince is a vampire lord fighting for dominion over the border princes. In his previous life, he had been a wealthy book merchant of both Imperial and Bretonnian descent. Books of high value include arcane tomes, banned literature, antiquities, and anything penned by a prestigious author. His unlife began when he traded something that was all of that for a countless number of lifetimes to amass a library without peer. This fate did not come to merely an avaricious merchant. The yet unnamed Red Prince acquired and dealt with his business with as much skulduggery as scholarship. A man educated at the forefront of Imperial academies, he took on radical thinking. If he wanted to amass his treasuries, he needed a power base, both to store them and to raise funds to furnish new additions. Furthermore, ruling land would give him subjects and power to protect his collection and feed himself. Naturally, this endeavour would require allies, underlings, diplomacy, and statecraft. Just like that, the yet unnamed became the Red Prince of the Borderlands.
Effectively, this is the fluff I will have for any narrative games or campaigns I can take part in. I’m very much drawn to the idea of doing narrative campaigns and being immersed in the world (while still being tongue-in-cheek about it). I’ll be retooling this fluff for AoS (but effectively the same thing), and use these models if I can get involved with Mordheim locally.
Backgrounder on my journey here
I've been interested and aware of Warhammer ever since I was 12 years old, after playing the demo for Warhammer: Mark of Chaos. A few years later, as a teen, I moved to an FLGS; I spent that time wandering the shelves of the Warhammer section, getting over the decision paralysis between 40k or fantasy? What Army? Turns out it was Vampires. I would scrap together allowance & summer job money, and buy the books and some kits. Sadly, by the time I sold out in Undergraduate, I had mostly just assembled some of the miniatures and not enough in a way to have a playable army - Warhammer Fantasy had gone through its end times, and it really didn't look like there was much of a future for Fantasy with the early version of Age of Sigmar. I still kept the bits, though (thank you 18 18-year-old me). I got back into Warhammer in 2018/2019. I got into 40k with the Tau Empire, over 6 years, I worked at a snail’s pace assembling and painting (or at least priming) around 1250+ points of models, and playing 2 games. I found I did not care for the Tau at all and was disappointed with them in all aspects of the hobby. When Old World was announced, I was very interested, though disappointed with our legacy status. One day, I realized that armies like Chaos Daemons are famously used in 40k and fantasy, and with that, I started my collection in earnest:
- 20 Deadwalker Zombies (primed)
- 40 Skeletons (assembled)
- 36 Zombies by Atlantic Wargames (unassembled)
- 10 Dire Wolves (primed)
- 3 Fell Bats (assembled)
- 3 Vargheists (assembled)
- 10 Blood Knights (assembled)
- 1 Corpse Cart (primed)
- 1 Coven Throne (unassembled)
- 1 (3 building) Cursed Spelchure set (primed)
- 1 Vampire Lord (assembled)
- 1 Vengorian Lord/Lauka Vai (not yet assembled and I’m not really into the monster side of VC so I’ll likely be trading this or using it for bits/terrain).
- 1 Unassembled kit of old world fences and walls.
About 50% of what was assembled and primed thus far was done in the last 48 hours. The other-half has been chipped away at 1-2 years.
Assembly process:
This army confirms that I have a love-hate relationship with assembly. I have spent the most time engaging with tabletop Warhammer through assembly, and I find it very tedious. However, I enjoy the creativity with kit-bashing and making things feel unique. Throughout the years, I’ve kept my bits stashed away throughout several moves and periods of my life, and being able to mix and match the old skeleton kits was a blast. I was so happy with some of the unique miniatures, as well as replacing some of the weapons on the vampire lord and blood-knights. However, I am very slow at the assembly task, so I was so happy to get it done (the day of this post). Regarding specific kits:
- Bloodknights - Very frustrating if you decide to cut every piece out before organizing them by knight. I also found them to be a slow build overall. Very happy with the weapon conversions, and the one headswap I made for a classic WH:F vampire over the more feral AoS ones.
- Skeletons - So, so delicate for my big, clumsy fingers. The legs and spears are just too brittle. If I could redo any choice, it would be to ditch the spears where they are. I think I found some of the poses or limbs a bit awkward, but I was also freely doing these without following the instructions.
- Cursed Spelchure - I was rather surprised by this kit. It was a lot more model than I was expecting I like that you can have all three models. I thought it was a bit short on flavourful décor bits, so I included a skeleton rising from one of the open graves, as well as the banshees from the coven throne kit. The one flying out of the roof and the one rising from the grave are my favourites by far. I am a bit worried about their stability. I was very frustrated by the amount of mould lines on this kit, it really added to the time on this kit, and they’re still visible if you look for them.
- Corpse Cart - I had a lot of fun with this kit. I don’t recall enjoying putting together the cart itself or the pile of bodies. However, I had a lot of fun retooling the old corpse cart driver with this lich ringing a bell as the zombies propel him to the battlefield.
Priming:
I’ve so far primed half of the army. I was pretty frustrated with my grey spray paint. I found the coverage some what dusty, and I had some sputtering issues with the can despite being well shuck several times. I also found that the outside steps of my apartment are not ventilated well enough. I was unable to continue the project for the rest of the day as it was getting dark and the lack of ventilation would be a problem - best stop for the day.
Painting & Basing:
Basing:
I plan to use the basing to tie the army together over the paint scheme itself. The idea for the bases is the army moving through an area with partially buried cobblestone roads in autumn. Some of the conversion bases I bought came as roads, which I’ll partially cover with texture paints. For the models without these, I’ll be using Miliput and Green Stuff to create sections of partial roads on the model, covering the rest with a texture paint. I’ll need to find some better fall basing material, what I currently have feels too summery.
Colour scheme:
I have not landed on specific colours yet for my scheme. I have a range of GW, Vallejo, and Army Painter paints. Some models, though, I have some clearer ideas:
- Vampires, my tentative plans are to use the classic red for the armour and white for their clothing. I would like to experiment with glowing effects on their weapons as I believe in both systems, vampires have magical weapons. For non-armoured Vampires, I’ll likely be sticking to white and perhaps using red as an accent colour or incorporating darker tones of other colours. Regarding magical effects, I’m debating between colours like teal-cyan, green, purple, or perhaps a black/white contrast.
- Spelchures: I’ll likely use speed paints where I can get away with it and practice my dry-brushing. Plenty of greys and darker tones for this piece. For the banshees, I am thinking of using a grey-black-white scheme with a blue wash inspired by some artwork. I do need to decide on if these will be glued to their bases or not. From a storage and transportation standpoint, that would be ideal. However, it may be nice to see the insides or remove the tops for games like Mordheim or TTRPGs
- Skeletons: Likely speed paints with the only great decision being on how I want to do the metalics and which wash I’ll pick.
- Zombies: Again, speed paints, with a little bit of room for me to experiment on doing different undead skin tones. I’d like to use the zombies before I move onto Vampires, where I’ll be spending a lot more time on their skin.
- Beasts: I’ll look up what the local wolf and bat populations look like of Central Canada and use that for my scheme.
- Coven Throne: I’m not emotionally ready for that.
- Army-wide: I’m excited for the opportunity to practice and create small lighting effects from candles, torches, and spells. A challenge I would like to try is trying to sell a somewhat desaturated night effect. I stumbled on a Vince Ventruella tutorial that is far outside of my skill level, but I think it would be fun to take on for more elite units.
Future plans:
In the immediate future, I’ll be priming these and start painting with either skeletons or zombies to get myself re-acquainted with painting. I also need to order some conversion bases for my miniatures, magnets, a magnetized storage solution, and basing material.
Regarding future units, a Wight King, Grave Guards, and more vampires (currently considering the blood bowl vampires for conversions) are on the list. I have a few conversion ideas in mind, one of them being a conversion of Lady Élisse Duchaard into a Vampire Lord on Nightmare. I think once I play a few test games, I’ll also be able to judge how much more chaff my army needs.
Finally, I hope to have a match sometime this month once everything that is currently assembled is also primed.
16 February 2026
Progress Updates
It has been a few months since I last wrote an update. I entered into the Golden Bat competition and then swiftly withdrew due to obligations and my inability to get something done in time. Throughout the months since I've chipped away at priming my models and getting paint on them. In February I joined two leagues in the Toronto area. The first, is an old world narrative campaign set in Lustria. The second is an age of sigmar path to glory league set in Ghyran called blighted wilds. I'll be discussing all of this below, both leagues give me a motiviation to keep painting.
Painting update:
I didn't do any new modeling but I did prime all of my miniatures. And what a disaster! I primed them in mid/late fall, in Canada. It gets pretty cold and wet here in the fall as winter to starts to creep its way into our lives. Realizing that I'd be locked inside for the next few months I figured I better get everything primed while conditions were ideal, or so I thought. It turns out conditions were not quite optimal and the vast majority of my models were left with this dusty, chalky residue on the surface. I knew what the optimal condidtions were to prime them, but I ignored them figuring that it wasn't *that* bad out. Doing some research it seemed that the only method to remedy this was to strip them and start again. I did paint the skeletons and zombies as both a test to see how bad this could be and because as my chaff units it wouldn't be so bad if they were a bit messy. I was relatively happy with how they turned out but thought better of painting anything else without stripping the models. My cursed spelchures, blood knights, vampire count, wolves, and base coated necromancer got this treatment.
On the other front I got a good chunk of painting done on 40 skeletons, one corpse cart, and 20 zombies (one zombie is currently MIA). There is still a lot to go on all of them, ranging from basecoating to highlighting. Basing also needs to be done, as referenced earlier I'm tying together my army with a basing scheme. Some of my models are on fully cobblestone modled bases, others are on totally plain bases - this needs to be remedied. I've been adding miliput to the bases and carving lines in them to replicate a cobblestone road or at least patches of it. Anywhere between 20%-70% of a model's base is going to be cobblestone with the rest being dirt. This is to sell a narrative that the area they're in is perhaps off the beaten path, in decay, or just very old and worn down. Much of this modeling has been done AFTER I primed the model already on its base, why did I do this? Simple. Poor planning. I'll be remedying this but experimenting with something totally new to me: paint on primer. I'll be using a black primer and paint the bases later.
Finally, I in one night got a very quick paint job on my vampire lord and necromancer. They were both fairly easy to get to a near battle-ready standard. The vampire lord was painted using a corrupted metal colour which has a somewhat dull brass look to it, with a red metlallic colour used as an accent. I used nuln oil and a blood red speed paint to darken and redden the metals. I used a brown speed paint for the bats in his hair, a vampiric fleshtone, black for the hair and a corrupted iron for the sword with a purple wash. I am not happy with this model and I'm unsure how much I want to radically change them - or if I should revisit him and keep the current scheme until I complete him.
The necromancer was equally experimental for me as I tried a technique I initially failed with my army. When I primed my army originally, I wanted to experiment with zenithal highlights from my spray can; and I totally failed. The greys and whites completely tookover the shadows ruining what I was going for. This time around I had primed both the necromancer and vampire lord black and then dry brushed grey and white onto the necromancer. I did this to try the slapchop method on my necromancer. I was quite pleased with how most of it came out. I find his robes quite boring being a totally monotone grey. However, the rest of the model turned out great for a model I needed to get done quickly the night before my first game of Age of Sigmar. I'll certainly revisit the necromancer in the future.
Acquisitions:
As a gift for Christmas for myself I bought a unit of Bretonnian foot knights and a few months prior I also bought a team from bloodbowl for the vampire team. My goal is to eventually kitbash these into a unit of vampiric grave guard + a few vampire heroes
Games:
I have joined a narrative campaign set in Lustria as well as a path to glory campaign in Age of Sigmar. I have not had the chance to play Old World yet, however, my first game of Age of Sigmar was played yesterday against the Ossiarch Bonereapers. I was fairly tired playing the game so I did not have as good of a time as I would've hoped but the game was a helpful introduction to Age of Sigmar. I lost the game quite dramatically due to a few bad moves and not having a great understanding of my factions rules.
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