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.

I'm pretty pleased with how this unit turned out.  Sure, they're simple - spray black, drybrush greys, leadblecher, drybrush copper for that rusty look, then standard skellie drybrushing where required - but it's worked out remarkably well.  These models seem to have the optimum level of detail for my painting style, not too fussy, but not so plain as to call attention to the paintwork.  Overall, they're pretty sweet.  They clock in at 105 points basic and 160 when barded, armed with lances and with a full command.

Black Coach

Next up is a black coach.  Strictly speaking, this is a vampyric unit - it has the remains of a vampire within it, feeding on the energies of death released during battle - but in fluff terms it's not really a vampire.  It's easy enough to say that Eichengard (my army general) has somehow captured a black coach (or taken command of the wraith driving it more likely) and is now using it to his own ends.  This is almost certainly a Terrible Idea.  However, Terrible Ideas are pretty much Eichengard's stock in trade, so that's fine.  Thus armed with a flimsy justification, let's have a look-see, shall we?

My black coach, manifesting its "fly" special rule.

Again, pretty pleased with this one.  I seem to be getting better at painting.  (Somewhat.)  The coach itself is a nice model, with nice details on the sides and roof, even if it was a total nightmare to assemble.  The model is "finecast" (a resin based replacement for metal minis) and required a certain degree of abuse to get all the bits to line up true.  Even now, as you can see, it doesn't actually sit flat on the ground.  It was also almost impossible to work out which bit went where, thanks to a complete absence of instructions.  In fact, there was a piece left over that I literally just worked out where it's supposed to go.  Bugger.  Excuse me while I go undercoat it...

Right, back.  Sorry about that.

The coach's inability to sit on the ground doesn't really bother me, as I plan on basing it so that it's either taking off or landing (the unit can manifest the "fly" rule during games if you're lucky).  I'm just waiting for a chariot base I have on order to do so, hence the unfinished bases above.  What I don't particularly like are the skeletal steeds.

Skeletal steeds, circa 1990.

There's nothing especially wrong with the models, I suppose.  There's just not much right with them either.  They're a bit chunky, bland and, above all else, static.  Andy Lawhammer thinks they look OK.  I suspect the problem is that I've been spoilt by the Hexwraith/Black Knight skeletal steeds.

Skeletal steeds, circa 2011.

The modern skeletal steeds have a tattered rug across them and much more dynamic poses, giving a far better sense of motion than the old models.  If these modern steeds were available in a mounts only pack, I'd replace the black coach steeds in a shot.  Sadly, they only come in the five model Hexwraith/Black Knight pack, which isn't cheap.  Still, I think I will invest in another pack of cavalry, snaffle a couple of skeletal steeds and bulk up either my Hexwraiths or Black Knights by the remaining three models.  Not sure which yet.

Regardless, the black coach is worth 195 points of rare unit goodness.  Cha-ching!

Yet More Skellies

I've also painted another 10 skellies, for a total of 40 skeleton warriors.  Urgh.  I am pretty bored of these buggers at this point.  Still, I've got them down to a fine art of bare minimum painting, meaning I can go from boxed to painted in about 3-4 hours, ignoring drying times.  Two evenings for ten models.  Not bad, not much fun either though.  Just grinding them out.  These latest recruits means I now have two units of 20 skellies, one with sword and shields, one with spears.  This means they are both double the minimum unit size and much more likely to survive combat.  Not much more likely to win combat, mind you, just likely to bog other units down until a more capable unit can sweep in and help.

A thicket of skellies.

Pass The Ret-Con Hammer, Bob, I'm Making A Change

So, you know that whole "no vampire" rule I'm playing to?  Yeah, well, that might be getting the chuck, or at least a subtle re-alignment.  One thing that last night's games taught me is that, no matter how you kit them out, Master Necromancers really don't make much of a Warhammer General.  They're also not a brilliant representation of Eichengard in stat terms either.  (Eichengard is a high level PC in a (very) long running game.  He's not a great wizard, but he's brutal in combat and absurdly tough, Master Necromancers are the exact opposite of this.)  A much better stat match is the Vampire Lord character (although in truth Eichengard should probably be Strength 3with armour piercing, not Strength 5, but you can't have everything).  So out goes the old Master Necromancer profile, in comes a new Vampire Lord profile.  In fluff terms, he's still mortal old Eichengard and I won't be taking vampiric units unless there's a good explanation (like the black coach).  However, he'll now be kitted as follows (fluff explanation in italics, rule applied in (brackets)).

Eichengard (Vampire Lord) - M6 - WS7 - BS5 - S5 - T5 - W3 - I7 - A5 - Ld10
Instinctual Necromancy (Level 1 Wizard - Lore of Vampires. )
Taalin Blade and Dyrathin Scabbard (hand weapon, additional hand weapon) 
Brigandine Frock Coat (heavy armour - 5+ armour save).
Lightning Parry & Amulet of Fire (Talisman of Protection - 4+ ward save)
Furious Assult (Red Fury - for each unsaved wound caused, may attack again)  
Combat Reflexes (Quickblood - Always strike first)
Petty Jade Magic (The Hunger - for each unsaved wound caused, roll a d6, on a 6, regain a wound)

Built like this, Eichengard costs 355 points.  This happens to be exactly the same as my core points total.  Handy!

Points Painted

So, given the endless juggling of totals, items and bits and bobs, I figure it might be easier to report on the maximum legal total I can field, rather than actual total.  So, I can now field a fully painted, fully legal (according to the excellent Quartermaster app, at any rate) army of 1,425 points.  The breakdown is:

Lords
Eichengard - 355
Heroes
Necromancer - 100
2x Cairn Wraith - 120
Core
20x Skellies with full command - 130
20x Skellies with full command and magic banner - 155
20x Zombies with standard and musician - 60
Special
5x Hexwraiths - 150
5x Black Knights with standard and musician, barding, lances - 150
Rare
Black  Coach - 195

That's almost 1,500!  I'll need to grind out another 20 zombies, and then I've got some dire wolves to paint as well, which will add about 150 to my core units.  That'll give me some more wiggle room in my more interesting troops.  Good stuff.  Guess I'd best get gluing those zombies together then!