Angie's Undead.

[Angie]

A while ago I picked up two very cheap second hand armies of Vampire Counts and Warriors of Chaos, and I'm slowly working on cleaning them up and painting them.

This is what I started with: a bunch of partly undercoated, partly painted and partly still-in-bitz-form bunch of models.

I cleaned up the painted skeletons and zombies in dettol, managed to assemble another 10 at least from the assorted bitz and primed them grey, and then put them into neat movement trays to get a much better overview of exactly what I have. Some of the models that came with the whole package were the little bat swarm bats and one lone doom wolf. I used the bats to break up the ranks a bit. The wolf will become a unit filler: jumping forth while being held on a leash by a skeleton behind it. I've already painted some of the skeletons on the back here. I plan to go for a lot of dark brown and dark green as main colours.

The army currently contain the following units. The green coloured ones still need to be painted.

Vampire Counts:

55 zombies (fielded as 20; expanding by necromancy)
30 skeletons
25 skeletons
6 fell bats
1 black coach
1 necromancer on horse
1 tomb banshee
1 spirit host
1 necromancer
1 wight king
1 vampire lord
3 bat swarms

 

[Angie]

I had hoped to post earlier and show what I planned to do with the bases of my fel bats and bat swarms, but I got sent the wrong bases for them. Instead, I painted up some more skeletons, making the unit roughly halfway finished. I just need the front ranks and the unit filler done. The skeletons paint very, very fast and I can easily do them in batches of three or four next to my other stuff. I made a few pictures to show the stages of how I paint them.

Step one: the skeletons are primed grey. All bone-sections are then painted with varying mixes of bleached bone and white, making some skeletons darker than others.

Step two: filling in the rest of the colours.

Step three: a heavy wash with Agrax Earthshade.

Step four: drybrushing the bone and touching up the other colours. The metal has been stippled with the old chestnut ink to give a rusting effect.

Step five: basing and adding some yellow grass.

 

[Santawraith]

Gives a very nice style to basing kinda a ancient dead scrub land look.

 

[Angie]

Thank you! It's pretty much what I am going for, inspired a bit by the first chapter of Diablo III and Warcrafts Undead.

I finished the unit of skeletons. The unit filler was made from a spare doom wolf. I sculpted a bit of fur on the shoulders where the chains attach to give the impression they are embedded in its flesh. I also tried using some clumpy foliage as moss on the gravestone. I think it turned out pretty well.

 

[Emicrania]

i love the wolves!

 

[Angie]

Thank you!

I started to work on a few zombies as well. I have to slog through 55 of them, so I'm keeping them relatively simple, with only highlighting the skin, heads and some detail. The base curves up slightly, which will probably be fixed once everything is magnetized when the unit's done. The skintone is based around GW's Nurgling Green, which is then washed and drybrushed with 50/50 Nurgling Green and white.

 

[adicto]

I really like the blazing orange eyes. The second zombie is staring straight into your soul...

 

[Reaper]

Hi,
you have some very nice models here. The dire wolf on the leash looks perfect! And as adicto, I also really like the blazing zombie eyes

Btw. I'm asking in relation to your nickname - do you enjoy Morrowind?

 

[Angie]

Thanks for the feedback! And yes, I very much enjoy Morrowind <3!

I got a few more zombies done, and because I finished the unit of skeletons I allowed myself to paint up a Tomb Banshee too.

I finally got the bases for my bats as well, so I finally assembled. One of the fell bats is WIP. The tombstones are all from Renedra. The big bat swarm is from Reaper, and the two smaller ones are from Masquerade Miniatures.

 

[Raven Torrid]

Gotta get me some of these Masquerade Bat Swarms someday. Good work on spreading them throughout the bases. Liking the bases themselves as well, all the bitz and bobz on them add a lot of character.

 

[The Sun King]

Nice work on the bases!

 

[Angie]

Thanks a lot! The fell bats and bat swarms are rapidly turning into some of my favourite units. When everything I currently have is painted up I might see if I can get myself some other bat-themed models like the vargheists/terrorgeist/varghulf.

But first, zombies. 20 out of 55 are done now, including a small bat filler. I couldn't resist finishing the fell bat from the post above, so here it is, based and all.

 

[Wolfrahm]

Looking good. I just got me 5 of those reaper bat swarms, they are pretty nice and not comical like GW's, that's why I never had any. Keep up the great fix ups.

 

[Angie]

Thanks Wolfrahm
I got a few more zombies done, totalling 30 now. Once I'm done with this unit I have a feeling I never want to paint those again. I may add a bit of blood for the blood god / rust effect on them later though since I don't have those paints here. It would work pretty neat with the guts hanging out.

 

[Angie]

I finished the unit of zombies and added some slight blood effects to it.

The back row of the Fell Bats is done too.

 

[John Rainbow]

Nice work, bases are really cool. I'm looking forward to seeing those swarms painted.

 

[jediguru]

Things are coming along nicely here.

 

[Hasdrubal]

The work on your bat is very clean ! I also love the base!

 

[Duke Danse Macabre]

Two words my friend. "More Ranks"

Looking great so far, only problem is though with these models you always need bloody more, even if you have hundreds.

 

[lord marcus]

I like the dwarfish zombie!

 

[Angie]

Thank you for the nice comments and feedback all of you! I really like how the bases turned out too, it makes the models look a bit more lively. The bat swarms will have to wait a bit though, I just started on the second unit of skeletons first. The dwarfish zombie was made from the mangled remains of a leftover Bretonnian peasant body with a zombie head and arms stuck on.

Here are the front row of the Fell Bats and the full unit (If I don't field them as two units of three).

And my Wight King, a Reaper model (Ghost King). It was part of the Bones range, which is a pretty interesting material to paint.

 

[Alastor]

I really like the wight king, both the model and the paint job. Your gold looks very orangey though, might be worth doing some highlights to pick it out more and maybe rust up that sword.

Really nice highlighting in the cloak, gives it a creepy feel.

 

[Wasteland Jack]

The paint job on all of them is very crisp and clean. Love the Wight King, especially like the cloak. Nice job.

 

[Angie]

@Alastor and @Wasteland Jack: Thank you! I highlighted the gold up to Auric Gold, making it more bright and yellow which does indeed look better. I also painted the gems with a thin coat of clear nailpolish so they're shiny. I didn't take another picture of the wight king, but I have other goodies!

These lovelies came in the mail last week.

I bought them second-hand for half the price of dire wolves. Although I do like the dire wolf models I don't feel like they fit with the idea I have of my army. The goblin spiders are a nice and cheap alternative. I took off their riders and modified their bases somewhat so it looks like they're running/jumping over a graveyard.

I'll paint them along the lines of NWN's and WoW's bone spiders. I'm not sure if the carapace will be bone coloured or alternated brownish red and green like a lot of my other undead.

One of my Necromancers on foot is another Reaper Bones mini. The highlighting on the cloak is a bit smoother than the picture makes it look.

Three ranks of the final unit of skeletons are done.

I also painted two undead for a friend, a Liche Priest and the champion of the Cursed Company. He doesn't have much Tomb Kings painted yet, so I picked the colours as resembling those on the Ishtar gate. The champion was painted to fit in with his army.

 

[Booah]

Love the spiders. I was trying to think of a way to include them in my army. Toyed with the idea of making them into centaur type creatures with bows to act as skeleton archers but decided that wouldn't look right. I also wanted to include dire wolves but am not a fan of the models so I think having them as alternative dire wolves is perfect. Consider the idea stolen!