#corpse cart

Finally finished my Corpse Cart. This model was the most fun to paint but the worst I've ever had to assemble. I came way to close to just crushing the whole thing in my hand. Had to shave some of the bottom pieces down.

Added some rust to the metal on the cart now. Went quite heavy on the effect, I can see the corpse cart slowly roaming the back roads of Sylvania and the nearby countryside, drenched in the rain, before ending up in my army. 

I've started to prepare the latest edition to my army: the Corpse Cart!

Similar to the Grave Guard, I wanted one of these in my army because they looked awesome. I'm not hugely sure how effective it'll be, but it's a reasonably cheap chariot-type unit, causing impact hits and a potentially large number of zombie hits.

The buff you get for casting a spell looks pretty good, so I envision this advancing alongside my zombie units to give the enemy a surprise when they get into combat! I guess the only issue is the slow movement... Chariots can't march, so it's stuck to the standard undead movement of 4 even if in range of the general.

I'm going to go for the standard look to the corpse cart; wooden frame, dark-cloaked corpsemaster and zombies. I'll be doing the zombies to match the rest of my army to keep a consistent look, will be able to spend more time adding detail though I think. And, of course, plenty of congealed and dripping blood... this is a really grisly unit in the fluff, a very gruesome model (and a lovely sculpt as well), and it deserves to be spattered with gore.

I've seen someone do glowing eyes on the Zombies elsewhere, may be tempted to do that on the poor Zombies that have the job of pulling the cart to represent the extra infusion of dark magic that has animated them.

Everyone I've spoken to about painting the corpse cart has told me the important thing to do is to NOT ASSEMBLE IT ALL! I'm going to paint the cart first, then add painted zombies and finally the corpsemaster. I should be able to get each bit looking nicely consistent without worrying about splashing paint onto bits I've already done!!

Putting it together was good fun, though it took me a while of fiddling to get the corpses onto the cart... Also, noticed after I'd done the wood that I'd not removed some of the mould lines from the ribs... A little disappointing, but hopefully the Zombies when painted will detract from that.

So, here it is!

Was painted fairly simply; base coat of bestial brown. I did a couple of thin coats to get even coverage without obscuring the detail. There was then a drybrush of Snakebite Leather to pick up the wood grain and a final lighter drybrush of Bleached Bone, and picked out the tips of the ribs in the same colour to make it look as though they've been sharpened. I then gave it a brown wash (I think Ogryn Flesh, but I'm not sure) to help pick out the knots and grain in the wood.

When I finished painting it I regretted not starting darker for the wood. Looking at it the next morning, though, I'm actually quite pleased... the sharpened tips of the ribs don't look as stark as I thought they would either.

I'm currently debating what to do about the metal! I'm either going to do a dark silver (Chaos Black + Boltgun Metal) colour then add in some Mithril Silver to represent scratches, or go with a full on rust look and highlight the edges Bolgun Metal where the rust has worn off. I'm worried the latter will be lost among the brown of the wooden cart, though!