Vampire Counts: Zombies (Final - the Horde)

Well, it's Hallowe'en so I thought I'd share a post of (almost) all of my Zombies. I actually found another 20 in a drawer that I'd forgotten I'd painted after I took this photo.

Life has taken a swerve to the kerb over the past few days so I'm unlikely to get much painting and modelling done for a while, but I do have a few finished (or very near finished) projects that I may be able to get up to snuff to keep the blog ticking over.

I'm particularly annoyed not to have completed my Heresy Death Guard Dreadnought in time for the end of DreadTober 2017, but I will finish it as soon as I can and share it with you.

Happy Hallowe'en, everyone!

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Vampire Counts: Zombies (Part 4)

You gotta love a Zombie.

Well, I guess it's not actually compulsory, but still...

This is the final batch of Zombies for my Undead/Vampire Counts army. These guys are presented here as a unit, but really form part of the first Horde I've ever painted.

I've never been too sure of the value of Hordes. When you consider the trade-off in the monetary expense of purchasing a large number of models, each of which is actually very weak on the table, combined with the large amount of effort in assembling and painting them all it's always left me dubious of making that sort of investment.

However, when you rank them all up (which I'll do in a later post) they do look impressive and very imposing!

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Vampire Counts: Zombies (Part 3)

Wow - I didn't realise it was March when I last produced anything for this army.

Anyway - in a mad burst of activity, I've blasted through all my remaining Zombies which I'll present in three posts; this one, the remaining models, and the whole lot as a horde.

I've loved working on these models, which was unexpected.

There were two things that put me off:

1. The sheer quantity of models required to build a Horde; I've not based these in the regular "one per 20mm base" method; I've included a lot of 40mm bases which have either two or three zombies plus a gravestone or two. This looks, I think, quite atmospheric and stretches the number of models out (in this last batch, I've based enough models to represent 47 Zombies using only 33 models).
2. Looking at the painted examples in the Vampire Counts rulebook, I've never been too taken with them. I always thought they looked a bit "Scooby-Doo", if that makes sense. Cartooney and sanitised for younger players.

So I wasn't really expecting to enjoy the process of churning out (all told) about enough bases to represent 100 models.

I was wrong - I loved it.

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Vampire Counts: Zombies (Part 2)

I present here another small unit of Zombies.

I've followed the same practice as in my previous unit of mounting a mixture of 2- or 3 zombies on 40mm bases with a few Renedra grave markers scattered amongst them.

I think the not-ranked-neatly approach works well for Zombies. I'll probably do the same for my Ghouls, but they're a way off yet.

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Vampire Counts: Unit Fillers/Objective Markers

More distractions - I must try to focus. Still - it's a happy distraction and it is more or less related to my undead army build...

Anyway, I'm aware as you may know if you've seen my earlier post where I showed the Zombie unit I've built that Undead/Vampire Count armies are very much "Hordes" and as such require a very large number of models. Regular viewers of my blog will also know that I'm a cheapskate skinflint.

As such I didn't want to just spend money hand-over-fist on making millions of Zombies/Ghouls/Skeletons etc. but wanted to play a little, make something that looks a little different but still achieves the objective.

I decided to have a go at building some unit-fillers - bases that don't contain the regular model-type for the unit but that can be used in many places to bulk out a unit.

A bit of googling led me to some inexpensive grave markers made by Renedra - I bought a couple of sets and have used some here, I will use more to bulk out other units (I'm thinking Ghouls) and more still are being reserved for a scenery piece I have started working on.

So I built these:

It occurred to me when I'd finished that I could also use these as Objective Markers.

Then I stood them all side-by side:

And found I had an impromptu graveyard!

Then I remembered that they were actually intended to be unit-fillers:

There is one back-left and another on the back row just right of centre - they blend in well, I think

Now that's how you get your money's worth out of a small purchase and a quick bit of painting!

And before any of you post "but the monuments have Christian symbols on them and that's not right for Warhammer/Kings of War", please be aware that I don't care. It's a game of toy soldiers, not a way of life/religion in itself.

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Vampire Counts: Zombies (Part 1)

Hi all, and a happy 2017 to you!

I've been working on a few models over the holiday period and have (among other things) completed a unit of twenty zombies for my Vampire Counts.

I actually cheated a bit.

I did an audit of my zombie models and found that I had just over sixty models. As one of the games I'm playing at the moment is "Kings of War" which has fixed unit sizes of 10, 20, 40 or 80 models, I wanted to bump my model count up to 80.

I also wanted the zombies to look a bit more "shuffling mob" than "regimented soldier" so I elected to use a mixture of 20mm and 40mm bases, but to not fill the 40mm bases but instead to put just two or three models on them and fill spaces with grave markers (by Renendra, in case you're interested).

So I have made twenty bases of zombies using only about fifteen zombie models. I took a few top-down shots to illustrate the idea:

And here is the whole unit all lined up:

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Vampire Counts: Bat Swarm

I've painted a lot of models since I started roleplaying and wargaming 30 years ago. These have got to be the most annoying models ever.

They're lead which - as I'm sure you all know - is soft. The little "stalks" are also lead. Guess what happens?

Go on - guess.

That's right - they bend. And break.

Guess what else - they're so small that drilling in order to pin and replace the stalks is very difficult.

The sculpts themselves are OK if a bit cartoony, I guess.

Anyway - I'd not long before visited a museum which had a stuffed bat and the one thing that struck me was how not-black bats actually are. Their wings are very like parchment and they seem to be very pinkish - presumably from bloodflow - along the boney parts.

I tried to incorporate some of that into my bats (and Varghulf and other models too).

1st three bases

2nd three bases

Whole unit

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Vampire Counts: Dire Wolves

I'll begin with a confession: I didn't paint these models.

I bought an Undead job-lot from eBay a couple of years back and some of the models therein were already painted. I'm currently working on bringing the whole army up to snuff, but these guys were pretty much the only models that I don't need to do any work on, apart from updating the basing so it fits in with my regular scheme.

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Vampire Counts: Vampire Lord

I love this model!

I tell you what though: he like falling over. I need to think about that.

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Vampire Counts: Varghulf

Here is the first post for the second of my three new, parallel projects. Alongside the Orks that I posted about last week, I'm building a Vampire Count army.

I've always liked the Varghulf model so I thought I'd start there:

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