The Dead just Keep Coming

 I know, it's out of control.

The Undead Army is complete. It's been complete for years now.

And then I pick up a huge box of minis for a dude selling off his stuff and guess what? Yep, a whole heap more deadies in there. I tried to pass 'em pon, I really did. Sold a couple of old carrion with the riders after I peeled the paint off. A legion of plastic skellies, some fancy old 1992 wights, a few individual metal skellies, and still wound up painting up a load more cavalry and then three added chariots.

Yes. I had a blast.

Empire Army of Wissenburg and the Knights of Morr

 I have no real idea how this came about.

Perhaps I was being thrashed by the unded army so much I wanted to make an army specifically to counter them. Perhaps it was a whole heap more knights and archers in that big box of minis I managed to purchase. Perhaps it was because I was trying to finish the Elector Counts. Maybe I had a cannon, flagellants and a griffon. I guess they gathered of their own accord and here they are, finished!

Most of the knights were the first models I had, and I finally had a plan for them. Two units of the Knights of Morr. Battlemaster models make up the majority with the GW models for the commanders.

I split them into the Knights of the Black Rose and the Raven Knights.
The shileds for the Black Rose were some old skull transfers I had for years and finally used them and painted the gold wreath over them, whilst the Raven Kights shields I attached the wreath directly.

I eneded up selling the halberdiers, crossbow and archers from the Battlemasters set and bought the Empire spearmen and converted them into halberdiers. They are better that the monopose Battlemasters halberdiers but not the lastest GW sculpts. I had already decided on the black, red and white theme, so Wissenland seemed the best infantry option.

I had some old metal flagellants that I originally had painted up as diseased flagellants for the Nugle 3rd edition army. While I was in Goeblins, Germany, I picked up the plastic kit and it took me years to finally finish them off, with the Empire army being the motivation. Throwing in a Bones gravedigger as a witchhunter and adding a printed witchhunter sculpt will buff the infantry.

This gave me the idea that the local populace had become and angry mob, and in a force directed against the undead, even the villiagers would join the army and be motivated by the flagellants. Off to the internets to get some prints and test out some OSL painting technique. This ended up a good spot for the two Bones minis of the barkeep and the blacksmith and why not put the Raven priests in as well?

The hand gunners were purchased with the spearmen and provided another great exercise in speed painting.

The mages I selected were a printed Raven mage and a GW Elementalist.

For a captain I already had Boris from the Elector Counts box.

Artillery was only supposed to be a mortar, but I lacked the crew.
Somehow I ended up with the crew, the great cannon and a hellblaster volley gun with none other than Leonardo Di Cabanossi.

For the last of the infantry, I speed painted the archers in 2 days and gave a few of them some feathers.

To finish off, I painted up the Empire General, a Morr Knight on a Bones Silicone Griffon to serve as the centrepiece for the Army of the Empire!

Bones Naga Daemon & Succubus

 

Whilst getting stuck into painting up an entire Empire army, it was nice to take a few breaks here and there to work on other models to keep the momentum going.

Here's the silicone Bones Naga model which I'll use for a demon in Frostgrave.

Not a lot of modification on this one - apart from trimming one dagger that had too many blades on it, but otherwise a relatively easy one pose and paint. 

l bit of finish with snake eyes and gold trimmings and we have another menace for Frostgrave.

The Succubus was another Bones Silicone model and a little tricky to get into all the nooks, but I thought the blue paint would look so much better than red.
The photo is still a bit fuzzy.

Old-arsed Vampire

 

I never would have inentionally purchased this model, but he came with a very large bundle of other minis, so I thought I'd tackle the oldhammer Von Carstien Vampire

He was a bit mushed in the face and had a terrible glug paint job of oils on him,
so... into the drink with ya!

After a few days of soaking, the paint was soft enough to get off and then I fixed his snout with some delicate scalpel surgery. At least this Von Carstien still has his nose, albeit a little batty-looking.

The cape is the main reason I never was into this model, as it is very thick, heavy and lopsided.
It did seem a touch familliar though and I soon found out that an unpainted Dark Elf Sorcerer I had was wearing the exact same cloak! Looked better on him though.

I decided to rummage around in the bitz box until I found a suitable cape. I filed down the peg on the back and carefully sculpted the right fit, allowing some of that nice armour detail at the back to be seen, something that was covered by the original cloak.

For the rest of the paint job, I wanted him to be blueish pale like some of the other vampires I have painted, giving him a bit of a deathly pallor. He needs blood!
The blood-drinker sword and Von Carstein ring are prominent features in this model, so I game them a bit of attention as well.

All done! Velcome to ze undead army, count. Velcome.

Graveguard

 It seems that the dead never rest, and even though I have said that the undead army is all done and finished, (and yes there are two werewolves in progress too), as fate would have it, I happened upon a very large box of minis being sold locally which happened to have a LOT of undead models in it.

I sold a great deal of the minis from that hiest, with a lot of old 1980s wraiths and the like, but kept back some, including another screaming skull catapult with all the bits that were missing from the previous project, chariots, skeletal cavalry and a lot of infantry.

A Cursed City box comes up on my radar, and now I have some cash, but it's too steep. What do I really want from that box, you ask. The skeletons of course! Possibly the best skeletal scuplts GW has actually ever done so far. So, I hunted them down from a guy who splits the game minis and bought them rather than the entire Cursed City box.

I really wanted these in particular for a unit that was missing from the army, namely the Grave Guard.
I didn't have any actual armoured skeletons, and certainly no elites, so these made for an excellent unit.

Although I admired the orginial red colour scheme with these guys, I imagine that bright colours would fade on such ancient fabrics, all but woad dye blue, (which I learned from a documentary about medieval tapestries), so blue it was to be.

Despite the detail, the models were easy to paint and the most amount of mucking about came from adjusting the rust on their weapons and armour.

Frostgrave Game 3

 Frostgrave Game 3

It is high time to incorporate a scenario, so we rolled The Keep.

It's a weird one with 5 teleporting discs that can randomly teleport characters to another portal or not at all depending on the roll of the die. We set the terrain.

Hiring out 2 new dwarven thieves names Silver and Ginger, Father Christmas and Noah bring the rest of the crew back to fight, steal and otherwise cause mayhem.
In the first Wizard Phase, Father Christmas reads a scroll of Power Word and causes a -3 cast on Telekenisis, the very one advantageous spell for Azmuth and his warband.

Azmuth attempts to cast telekenisis on the loot crate despite the Power Word spell, but fails badly and gives himself a minor hernia and nasty groin pain.

Thruddy the Barbarian moves toward the first treasure, as does Robbie the dwarven thief.

Noah moves up and attempts to cast Wizard Eye, but fails and causes his own eye to become bloodshot and red. The dwarven thieves move up, as does Snappy the croc and Arnie the barbarian.

Skulk the thief, armed with a magical dagger, attempts to grab the loot crate but activates the teleport disc and appears on the other side of the ruins, where he is attacked by the warwolf.

In round 2 Azmuth goes first and teleports to Skulk, as does Robbie. The ensuing brawl takes out the warwolf, by Skulks magic dagger.

Thruddy teleports to an adjacent portal and grabs the loot crate.

Not to be outdone, Arnie manages not to trigger the teleport and make it to the crate but is unable to pick it up as he used his action to move.

Jeffrey the Knight, a new addition to Azmuth's warband, teleports to face Arnie and they both fight until they wound eachother.

With failed spells and wizard wounds everywhere it went to the soldier phase where Thruddy makes a break for it and manages to secure a loot crate off the table.

Robbie snatches a crate after the warwolf is downed and teleoprts back to his initial portal.
This triggers a random encounter of 2 ice spiders who appear close to Simmo the archer.

Sluggers the thug wates no time in entering the portal and gets right into combat with Skulk and Azmuth. Noah fails another spell and decided to make a run for the teleport disc.

The dwarven thieves sprint for the central treasure.

Turn 3 and after finally successfully casting Call Storm, Father Christmas whips up yet another freezing snowstorm, disadvantaging Simmo the archer.
Ginger grabs the main treasure, triggering a white gorrilla to wander into the teritory.

Combat ensues in the north, with sluggers taking out Azmuth with a cruel leg wound.

The apocathery leaves the side of Father Christmas to assist Arnie and does not get teleported, however, Swinton teleports in and bashes him over the head with his staff.

Battling it out, Skulk is overcome by Sluggers and is dealt a terrible gut wound that sees him miss the next battle... and several meals and also makes bowel evacuations an afwul daily ordeal.

Arnie swings his sword so hard that Jeffrey is knocked out cold. Tantrum the bear lumbers up to assist, but spies Snappy doing the same.

On the south side, the treasure hunter takes advantage of the appearance of Silver and the dwarven thieves battle it out while he sneaks a loot crate from the disc.
This also triggers a random encounter of 2 wolves.

The monster mash is on, the bear and the croc smash together with a draw!

Ignoring the oncoming spiders, Simmo shoots at the treasure hunter, once again just missing the opportunity to put an arrow through his fancy hat.

Tantrum beats Snappy in the monster mash, but a couple of numbers different in the die rolls and the tables could have oh-so-easily turned.
The apocathery beats the shit out of Swinton, bringing him to his knees, beeding in the dirt.

With turn 5, Father Christmas attempts an elemental bolt at the teleported White Gorilla, but fails to summon enough oomph to complete the spell. Ginger positions himself wisely behind a pit-trap for protection, should the gorilla advance upon him.

The wolves and spiders tear into the treasure hunter, but he squishes both spiders, even after a poisoned bite. He fends off the smaller wolf. Tantrum attempts to murder Noah, but gets teleported into the fray with Silver and the Apocathery.

Silver kicks Robbie in the groin and incapacitates him, but teleports whilst trying to recover a crate.
Simmo follows him but gets overwhelmed by both Noah and Silver.

Sluggers slashes his name (he spells it with an X) into Tantrum, and takes out the last remaining member of Azmuth's warband.
The treasure hunter valiantly attepts to fight off the wolf, but is taken down and torn to meaty chunks.

Confused, the white gorilla teleports into Noah and beats him sensless, ending the game.
Father Christmas and his warband collect the main treasure and three others, whilst Azmuth collects one. All members retreat to ther camps. Snappy, dead, becomes a feast for the flies.