Cry Havoc

Team, Errr, Who's The Werewolf Again?

I've talked before about my general hatred of Games Workshop's dire Dire Wolf models.  (Do you see what I did there?)  I've also complained about painting skellies and zombies to the point that even I'm tired of me banging on about them.  The ghouls core units are still out (living things), but dire wolves are a possibility, if only I could find models I was happy with.  An internet trawl reveals two things.  One, there aren't many undead wolf models out there that don't suck.  Two, I have no patience of searching for minis on the internet.  Fortunately, Andy Leask rode to the rescue with his fabulous wolf rider conversions.

Andy Leask's Wolf Riders (sorry for "borrowing" the photo, Andy!)

Paint It Black

Royale With Cheese

As I had a Date With Destiny (or at least with Orcs and the Empire) yesterday, I've been painting like a maniac to enable me to field a reasonable army.  Even with my crunch production skills, I was still the limiting faction, points wise, at the Lawhammer hosted Battle Royale.  It was fun though and it did give me a kick up the backside to get on with a couple of units I've been putting off of late.  So without further ado, let's meet our new friends!

Black Knights

Ahh, cavalry.  The thunder of hooves, the clank of armour, the err... creaking of skeletal horses.  OK, so skeletal cavalry perhaps lack some of the romance of knights in shining armour, but they make up for it in two important respects.  One, they are pretty hard.  Two, they are easy to paint!  That's a win in my book.

Black Knights, with barding and lances, ready to charge.

The Dark Knight Rises

Not a proper post, just a short update. Having painted solidly for 5 hours, I've managed to get a unit of Black Knights ready in time for a (theoretical) fight tomorrow. That is, assuming that Nurgle has not struck down the Lawhammerers too badly. Anyway, here's a sneak preview of my newest cavalry unit.

Noooooooooooooo!

If I may borrow from Andy Leask for a moment, noooooooooooooo!

First paint pot top disaster of the hobby. Abbadon Black all over all my other pots. Stupid lid.

The most annoying thing? I haven't even used that colour for weeks. What the hell happened? Was it jealous?

Dem Bones

Today marks an important day in the life of the Teatime of the Dead army.  For today I have...

Painted five skeletons!

One skeleton, ah ah ahh... Two skeletons, ah ah ahh... Three... you know what, even I'm bored of this joke now.

I know what you're thinking.  "That's more than five skeletons, idiot.  Also, big whoop."  To Which I counter, "True, but I wanted to show off the whole unit.  Also, those are five Very Important Skeletons."

Why?  Because those skellies mean that I can now field a fully legal, fully painted 1,000 point army!

A Converted Try

I've mentioned before that there's a role-play based reason behind my army.  It's now reached the point where I actually have an army, so it's perhaps time to address this reason and add it to my shambling horde.  This reason has a name.

Eichengard.

OK, that's a name that will mean precisely bugger all to anyone who's not Andy, Andy, Lindsay or Dan.  Eichengard is my character in Andy's WFRP campaign who, for reasons I am not yet sure we fully understand, began manifesting necromancy spontaneously.  This went on for a while, resulting in him developing an allergy to sunlight and a personality best described as "-5% to all fellowship tests".  Then various things happened to limit the worst aspects of the necromancy, then we went into spaaaaaaaaaaaaaace and the whole thing became a touch irrelevant.  (Until we returned, anyway.  God knows what's going to happen this Sunday.)

So, when it came to choosing a WFB army, I picked the undead witht he thought of having an alternate reality Eichengard leading them.  A reality where he went fully down the path of corruption and dhar.  A reality where he still had his sunlight issues and no hair, thanks to an inopportunely timed Tzeentch's curse.  Hence the "no vampires" rule I'm working with.  Eichengard also had a variety of spells for skellies, zombies and spirits, but nothing beastial, thus explaining the "no beasts" rule.

Now, as mentioned in the previous post, I've realised I could do with an extra wizard in my army.  I've had my eye on a conversion for Eichengard for a while, so now seemed like as good an opportunity as any.  The thing is, because he was never a magister character, nor really a proper necromancy, I want my Eichengard mini to represent that.  He should be Eichengard, not some wizard.  He should be wearing a frock coat and carrying pistols and a rapier, not garbed in robes with books and a staff.  So there's going to be a bit of work involved in this.  Thankfully, I found a nice starting model.

Older than I would expect a Witch Hunter to live to be.

Arise!

So I've been grinding away at the painting, even if I've not blogged about it recently.  The end result is that I have, finally, got a small, fully painted, totally legal army!  Woo-ho!  And here they are:

CHAERG!

Braaaaaaaaaains...

Or Drybrushing Zombies For Fun And Profit

I have something of a love/hate relationship with my zombies.  On the one hand, the models are characterful, amusing and, given the fact that zombies have a Weapon Skill of 1, you have carte blanche to play about with them as much as you like.  For example:

One armed zombies.*

Core Values

Thematically Appropriate

I mentioned last post that I had an army theme.  It's probably worth elaborating on a little.  For various, not overly interesting to anyone else roleplay based reasons, my army is going to be a necromancy only army.  So no vampires (in a Vampire Counts army!), no vampiric things (like varghulfs), no units I think are ugly and certainly no living things!  (Beyond the necromancers themselves, that is.)  It's probably (definitely) not the best way to play a Vampire Counts army, but I'm not playing to win, I'm playing with friends.  (This may change.  I'm a competitive bugger.)

So what am I allowed then?  Well, basically it's skeletons, zombies, skeletons riding things and spirits (there are quite a few of these).  Largely, we're talking non-sentient undead.  Your classic shambling hordes, backed up by some ghosts.

In The Beginning

What the hell am I doing?

Look, this was never my plan. I was never that in to Games Workshop stuff. I played 40K for a few months - you know, about long enough to get over that first "wow, these guys have chainsaws!" moment and realise that you really, really suck at painting - before the obsession went the way of all hobbies. Happily I moved on, safe in the knowledge that tiny plastic men would never again rule my life...

Fast forward to a couple of months ago. A group of disparate ragamuffin former employees are called in to the Edinburgh Games Workshop store for pizza, painting and p... p... pnostalgia. I am not one of them. (For fairly obvious reasons, given that I never worked there.) However, Andy Law and Andy Leask were, and the Warhammer bug bite them hard. Soon, Andy's forum was filled with talk of Warhammer Fantasy Battle and our pre-roleplay chat was a confusing swirl of armies, campaigns and painting techniques. But I didn't mind. I wasn't going to join in or anything. I'm crap at painting. I don't have the time. Or the money. Or...

Raaargh.

Balls.