All In Vein

Sorry, not a great picture, but I've had a go with the new citadel paints. Used one of the heads from the Skeleton Warrior sprue on him, this head stands out a mile in the unit :P

I ordered a few colours to do bone, namely Zandri Dust (base), Screaming Skull and Ushabti Bone (layer), Praxeti White (dry... also, what on Terra is a Praxeti?!) and Seraphim Sepia (shade). I only ended up using the Zandri Dust, Ushabti Bone and Praxeti White... I shaded with good old Devlan Mud as I prefer the darker look it gives. For important units (like my new large winged Undead monstrosity... ;) ) I'll put the extra layer in there to get a smoother look.

For anyone who's interested, I reckon I'm going to use some of GW's LotR figures for my 'Tomb Banshees'.

I'm pretty sure no-one will have any issues with this, the only thing they're likely to be confused with is Wraiths, and the difference will soon become clear when my opponent's knights begin collapsing dead in their saddles from hearing them scream :P Also, the GW Ringwraith models are pretty damn cool as well, might be getting some of those to use as Cairn Wraiths.

As I paint the army, I'm leaning more to an army of ancient warriors raised from their eternal rest... I do like the stock VC Banshee and Wraith models, but's there's only one of each of them, and these two chaps really have the ancient warrior look going for them!

Looking at the models, I'm thinking of doing matching corroded armour to the Grave Guard with some rusted metal details. Then I might aim for a much greyer look to the cloth, so it's less blue than they appear here.

I can picture the resting metal of the armour heaped in a pile in a tomb with the Grave Guard, before lifting itself up as the Banshee appears within it...

...is bad, because the other guy gets all the credit, right?

Seriously though, wondering whether anyone has any good ideas for painting ghosts (that I could use for Tomb Banshees, Spirit Hosts, etc.)? At the simplest level, I thought a simple white undercoat with a blue or green wash would work, but I could maybe stretch to something more exciting… I have read about people doing their models in reverse, so they undercoat white and highlight grey to get a creepy ethereal feel.

So, managed to finally round off my army to 1,000 points with another box of Grave Guard!

I picked up a box of Skellies as well, I'd like to have a unit in the future plus it'll be handy to have some in case I ever get a Raise Dead spell off! So, opened the box, and this is what I saw...

Wow. This kit is amazing! There are easily enough bits in this to make 10 completely unique skeletons (only ten whole skellies, I know, but still...) with a bag of extra skulls and arms left over. When I increase the number of skeletons in the unit, I'm not going to run into the issue of every 5th skeleton being identical. At the same time, their poses are similar enough that they'll look like a regiment rather a rag-tag bunch of screaming skeletons (*cough* zombie sprue *cough*).

The detail is fantastic... They look like they're falling apart, armour is chipped and weapons corroded, the shields all half battered away. They are going to look brilliant when all painted! I've decided to go with spears, gives the unit a tad more killing power (and allows for an impressive number of attacks in a horde formation, 29 against a 5 wide enemy unit!).

Light starting to fade a little outside, but a look at my test Grave Guard. Still a few bits and bobs to do (jewellery and final highlight on the bones, weapon shaft...) but I'm definitely loving the purple. Again, the verdigris on the armour hasn't photographed that well, it does look good in the (lack of) flesh. 

Might try and take some pics with proper lighting when I get a chance this week. Quite pleased with the colour scheme, it didn't really come together until it was nearly finished!

Man... what is there to say about this other than DROOOL

This thing is amazing. Found a quote from the guy about how he made it:

Hi and thanks to everyone who has posted comments about my undead army! The zombie dragon head is from the giants weapon, the wings are extended plastic dragon ones, melted with a hot flame to look like they are decaying, the legs are also from the plastic dragon kit with some extension and conversion work and the skeletal frame is made up from bits and pieces from my bitz boxes, but mostly green stuff.

Got some of the magic cards printed off and into sleeves. Here's what they look like!

Only done Lore of the Vampires, Lore of Death and Lore of Shadow so far as they are usually the only ones I can take... Not bad for half an evening's work! Still a few spelling mistakes and typos, so will probably print out corrected ones over the weekend.

Army progress in general is going well... Slowly but surely assembling Zombies, up to just over 60 now, onto the last of my initial three boxes! Grave Guard and Corpse Cart all assembled, and I should be getting the final two unit boxes I need (another GG and a box of Vargheists) next week.

Then, just to focus on the painting... This isn't progressing as quickly, I really need to get down to it and get a production line of Zombies going. Still got less than 20 painted out of 80 in my army list!

Not a painting post today, but something else related to the army.

I'm off out to watch the new series of the Apprentice at my friends' tonight, so no time for painting or modelling. I did, however, have a quick go at making some of my own spell cards. I realise they were available limited edition from GW, but I don't think you can get them any more, so I had a quick bash myself. Will have a go at making a custom card back when I've got a chance too!

You could well be right! I'm keen to give it a bit of my own spin, I'm hoping to do a blog about the backstory of the Vampire family that make up my army. I'm kind of torn between green, red and purple at the moment... Maybe I can use Green for some of the details, witch-fires, glowing eyes and magic weapons, that sort of thing, then use dark purple for cloth. What would you recommend for painting purple cloth?

While I'm here, I used the Verdigris effect I got is simply the Vallejo Verdigris glaze, it was really cheap online (£1.50 I think) so I figured I would get some to experiment with. I watered it down a tad and added a smidge of Hawk Turquoise to make it slightly brighter. Just slap it on then rub it off with a tissue to leave it in the cracks. I'm even experimenting spreading a little on the weapons to make them look dull and corroded!

So, another decision I'm going to have to make soon is what colour scheme I'm going for with the army. I've mentioned red before, but that's by no means certain. I have evolved playing a lot of Necromunda, and I learned there that a cohesive colour and limited palate really ties your army together.

Red is the 'classic' colour for a Vampire Counts army. The army colours for Sylvania are red and black, and I think the Von Carstein house colour is a deep blood red. I'm a bit hesitant to go with this, any gore or blood I use on models won't really stand out. How do you paint blood splashed onto laquered red armour? In fact, I think this is why they traditionally paint the deck of warships bright red!

Purple is a good colour, it traditionally is an expensive royal colour lending a 'faded nobility' theme to the army. And, it looks great on the tabletop! Unfortunately, the very nice chap at GW Derby I was talking to has done his Vampire Count army like this... I feel a bit unoriginal stealing it!

Dark grey/black could work, but it leaves me without another colour to accent it; traditionally, I'd go for metal (rusty iron/steel or verdigris copper/bronze), black, and army colour. So, that's maybe not the best colour either!

I did consider a blue of some type as well... I've never really worked with blue, so that would be quite good, but I don't know whether to go dark or light, pale or whatever! Same applies to green, though I did have a Tau army in green so might be able to dig out some paint from the loft...

Or maybe something outlandish... Yellow? Orange? White? (Painters start sweating when you talk about painting something white...) Possibly a bone scheme, though obviously hard to make that stand out against an army mostly bony!