Zombie Week: Day Seven

Day Seven... "I wasted time, and now doth time waste me..."

Time really is the killer when it comes to having this hobby alongside a busy job and a full-on family life (son 4, daughter 20 months, wife beautiful with reasonable levels of maintenance...). It might not look like I've managed to do that much here, but believe me, this took some effort. Being a hobbyist in circumstances like mine, you find you have to steal time with guerilla tactics, or negotiate it like a slippery politician. Every moment counts.

This has been an incredibly worthwhile exercise. Not only have I got a unit up to a basic tabletop standard, I've developed a new painterly technique that I'm still happy with after a few days (this really IS an achievement!), and I've set a new era of productivity in motion. Sure I'll still flip flop between projects but so much more will happen between flips... with minimal flops, I hope.

I'll put the final touches to this lot after the compulsory summer week at the in laws, which begins Friday, and will see me focusing on my warbands for Oldhammer day.

Apologies for the slightly blurred picture, it was raining so I had to be quick

Zombie Week: Day Six

Nothing at all glamorous today as I completed all the black edges on the bases.

I feel like this is essential at this stage so that the unit looks at least minimally 'complete' come tomorrow.

That also clears the final day of this mini challenge for highlights and shading.

Day seven photos will be accompanied by a few philosophical thoughts on painting targets and techniques.

Gosh, you're excited, I can tell!

Zombie Week: Day Five

Day five... Ah, the grim realities of painting large regiments for WFB. On day four I enjoyed the discovery of a new way of using wet brushing and glazes to achieve a hugely satisfying Blanche-type effect. Oh how the mighty have fallen! Yesterday and, I must admit, a little bit today I slogged through daubing the bases in sepia ink and white wet brushing all the remaining human zombies. What a chore. There truly is no glamour in painting the regiment way. It's easy to see how people who just admit to getting painting 'done' struggle to feel motivated or even bothered sometimes. I do gain some solace though from that fact that my usual WFB play from now on will be in 3rd edition, where smaller units are more common. The undead, however, need to be fairly horde-like in all editions. Maybe in future the trick will be to paint a regiment for 4 or 5 days, then spend a couple on a character? 

Zombie Week: Day Four

Day Four... Last night I brought all the rotters up to the same stage with basic washes and highlights, and added black edges to some of the bases. I must say that while the Titan Forge undead trolls are rather neat, the zomblins are of a much lower standard. It looks as if the casting hasn't work properly, something like that. This is disappointing but I'll focus on them tomorrow and see if I can get them up to a reasonable standard.

With the models in the picture you can see the effect of my white wet brushing, a technique I'm using to give an multi-layered 'John Blanche style' look to my work. This - like so many good things - started as an experiment. I'm now slightly realigning my plans for the overall look of the army and getting an extra burst of excitement!

Zombie Week: Day Three

Day three... And the undead are looking all shades of putrid thanks to some Dark Tone ink (watered down a little to make it flow better) followed by highlights of Elf Flesh and Sunburst Yellow. More shading tomorrow I think, plus some glazes on the clothing to get a little differentiation started. 

Zombie Week: Day Two

Day Two... No true progress today due to long work journeys and it being our regular games night (with a first play test of some 40k skirmish rules I've been playing around with). So here a lovely zombie picture to cheer up a summer evening.

Zombie Week: Day One

Day One... Warm weather through the evening means undercoating couldn't go smoother right now. The zombies were duly bathed in Army Painter Necrotic Flesh last night and came out with a perfect common colour that will allow me to do my ideal necromantic glow. 

It also gave me a chance to experiment a little with a bottle of Amry Painter Dark Tone Ink that I picked up recently out of curiosity. This ink is basically a good quality black wash. As such, it needs to be more carefully controlled than you might've initially thought (given the quick splash solution that Army Painter use for their Dark Tone proper), but it does have a very strong pigment, meaning deep crevasses can be granted truly satisfying darkness. The undead troll here has had some Dark Tone, followed by Athonian Camoshade, and Waywatcher Green glaze.

Zippy work for me with all the zombies now at this stage.

Zombie Week: Day Zero

Day Zero... The dead are rising from their resting place, deep in the darkest corners of my hobby cabinet. I need a quick fix that can only be gained from a completed project (too many slow burners at the moment). Zombies will be the first to give me that pleasure of completeness.

If zombies are raised from the field of battle, then shouldn't there be some non-humans in the mix? Thanks to Titan Forge, there are zomblins and undead trolls!

I've had these undead knocking around for a while and it was by chance that I remembered the plan I had to give them a very simple but effective paint job: quick undercoat, shade, highlight, shade, highlight, bang in a couple of signature touches... done. 

I've always like the idea of doing undead as if they are glowing with necromantic energies, which is the only thing giving them any coherency. The rules support this, so why not the paint job? Let's see if I can achieve a necrotic-bile green glow across the whole army.

Twelve Treats Of Geekmas #1

And so to top this must-have list this geekmas we have.... drum roll please.... TA DA! It's only a blooming zombie-proof house. Details here for all your end-of-the-world needs. Happy holidays everyone!

Help For Parents Explaining The Zombie Apocalypse To Their Kids

Absolutely love this! (From Bloody-Disgusting's facebook page).

Warhammer Forge Mourngul

It's the end of the working week so that means it's time to spin the Forge World wheel and see where she stops... And it's a very pleasant surprise this week in the shape of the Mourngul. As with all their stuff I have no use for this at all, but it would look so very good in an undead army that I'll make some space for it once other projects are nearer completion. I love the sculpting on this model; such a neat solution to getting a highly dynamic, almost flying monster, without the need for a flying stand. Now that my week is full of 'real job' rather than the academic bumbling that was previously my forte I do appreciate being pleasantly teased with new toys that tempt me to part with my hard-earned!

Fabulous Undead From Zenit Miniatures

A quick post today and a very well deserved shout out to a small manufacturer - Zenit Miniatures. I particularly like their Nemesis range, with the Not Alive a highlight.  

This Bones Golem is amazing. It would fit right into any undead army and look fantastic. It might even work with Dark Eldar.

A 'Summoner'. Simply a great looking necromancer figure.

Climbing Sprue Mountain #2 - Vampire Counts

It's the second day of the ascent of sprue mountain and it's time to take a look at my Vampire Counts. As you can see from the photo, I'm using models from several ranges and I've assembled maybe a quarter of everything in the box - a box that, sharp eyed punters will notice, initially housed the Mantic undead army deal.

The foulest stench is in the air, the funk of forty thousand years. And grizzly ghouls from every tomb are closing in to seal your doom (maniacal laugh...)

The Mantic rank and file undead are great value and pretty good minis too. Given that a Vampire Counts army can't escape being formed as a shambling horde, Mantic provide a cost effective way of achieving this. I've added Lords and Heroes from the GW range of plastics and finecast, along with some of the Mantic undead characters. In addition I have a few more GW figures to add to the mix, including some grave guard and a few of the excellent LotR miniatures. The Titan Forge Flesh Reapers will stand in for crypt horrors, while I'll be using a range of minis (including the female ogre from Foundry pictured on the left of the sheet of paper) as spirit hosts.

Although I've started to paint a few of the grave guard I'm currently giving the whole paint scheme a rethink. I want to do something different for each of my armies so that I get the maximum challenge, interest and enjoyment from the hobby. For the undead I'm thinking of how I can get them looking as if they've swathed in the glow of foul necromantic sorcery. A mixture of that effect alongside a good dose of rot and decay should fit the bill nicely. Overall I'm going for something quick that will look striking on the tabletop - should make for a good few winter evenings of work! 

Titan Forge Flesh Reapers, Zomblins and Bases - Out Of The Box

My first package from Polish company Titan Forge arrived this morning, so here's a quick out-of-the-box review...

Everything arrived in well presented blister packs, apart for the larger miniatures, which came in their own box. All the pieces are good quality resin and I couldn't see any miscasts or problems on first viewing.

Here are the zomblins - zombie goblins. I really like these. They're very inexpensive and even come with their own scenic bases. The sculpts capture the humour of the Night Goblins very well and blend it with the downright silliness of the shambling horde: the fellow dragging his own arm is great, but my early favourite is the one with the exposed brain (far right in the picture).

Here are some of the 40mm scenic bases, showing a rather decrepit graveyard. Plenty of detail on each of these so they could be used as simple unit-fillers.   

These are the Flesh Reapers - kind of flesh golem ghoulish chaps. They have a pleasing scale, meaning they could be straightforward stand-ins for the GW Crypt Ghouls, while retaining some sense of humanoid-proportion - they look like they could've been patched together from various cadavers.  

And finally, the 40mm scenic base that was supplied with the 20mm set (see the Zomblins above). This will make an excellent objective marker or unit filler.

Overall then, excellent minis and bases - very much looking forward to seeing what Titan Forge bring out in the coming months. 

How Do You Know If A Vampire Is Constipated? Because He Can't Pass Water...

Overall, I'm not that fussed about the new Vampire Counts stuff that GW will 'unleash' this coming weekend. January is, however, the first 'month of monsters' on the Marienburg Gazette 2012 calendar, so it seems only right that I splash out the GW vouchers that I got over Winterval on one of the new releases. The choice is a no-brainer really (insert your own zombie joke *here*): it's got to be the Vargheists. These aren't knock out amazing models, like say the River Trolls, but I'm very taken with the dynamic poses on the wings.

I've spent a while today studying the pictures of the alternative build Crypt Horrors that can be made from the kit - the sprue photos on the GW website are also useful. It's always good to get an idea about what the left-overs can be used for. With these chaps I'm thinking that the arms might work for zombie ogres, although it's impossible to tell without the parts actually to hand. We shall see on Saturday...

   

Mantic Undead Army - Out of the Box

A rather big 'out of the box' this time, as the forces of the undead march relentlessly onto my desk. This is the Kings of War Undead Army from Mantic, a set of 110 miniatures that I'd been coveting for some time and which were bought for me as part-present-part-model exchange by my brother. 

These will form the backbone of my soon-to-be Vampire Counts army. I say soon, but of course, it will take me quite a while to work my way through this lot! In fact, this box arrived with the parts to make an extra 10 zombies (I had to count them several times to make sure) so this won't all be finished until at least the middle of next year - it all rather depends on when the next VCs army book comes out and whether that gets my creative juices flowing in that direction.

I took a quick look over the slim rule-set that was included with the miniatures. Kings of War is a very simple game from the look of things, but I'm not going to be rushing to give it a try over 8th edition Warhammer any time soon. On the whole it's too simple [and available for free download here, so judge for yourself]. However, I'm all in favour of other companies developing rule sets for fantasy battles - it wouldn't be a good thing is GW were the only developers in town. Of course, Mantic are a young company, so there's plenty of time for things to evolve in interesting directions.

One area where Mantic have developed rather well in a short time is in the quality of their miniatures. In fact it's rather common for people to suggest that the undead from Mantic are far superior to the current offerings from GW. There's some milage in this, particularly the zombies: the Mantic offerings are right on trend - wonderfully posed, shambling and lurching, while dropping to pieces - whereas the GW models are rather funny looking (to say the least - look at their massive meat-puppet hands).     

Here's my son having an extreme close-up look at the zombies - he's really started to get involved in various hobby activities, even though he's only two and a half (although I've only let him loose on my crappy 1980s plastic orks!). Overall this is a fantastic set and really worth the money - £50 from Mantic, about £45 from other suppliers. I've spent a great amount of time looking over miniatures from non-GW manufactures over the last 18 months or so, and I have to say that these are by far the best alternative in terms of the sculpts and the price. Oddly enough, the only miniatures in this set that I'm not that fussed about are the elite 'revenant' skeletons - grave guard style wights - these don't work so well with the additional armour on the models, leaving looking rather flat and two dimensional. This is only a slight downside, however, because these are the smallest troop type in the box, so it doesn't really change what is an amazing deal. 

Caution... Undead stink!

Yesterday I acquired the first characters for my gathering Vampire Counts army. Some of these were GW models, but in this post I want to focus on the miniatures that I got from Mantic Games, specifically the Death Kings Cabal. These are the first I've bought from Mantic, after spending the last month or so looking at their website and a few models that are on display in my local hoppy shop, the excellent and highly recommended Firestorm Games.

The packaging

The models in their box with foam, bubble wrap, 

some stickers and a 'mantic point'

This is worth a mention in its own right because the box has been designed with storage in mind. On opening I was very pleased to see the two reasonably substantial sheets of form that can be used to protect the figures once glued and painted, and not just hold them in place in the shop. I really like this way of supplying miniatures and I hope (somewhat pointlessly) that a certain other company takes up the idea. I also like the humour on the box, which includes the following warning: "Assemble your models in well ventilated area - decomposing undead are unknown to stink" :-)

The miniatures

In their pre-assembly state the miniatures were all a little bent and I was worried that they might not withstand straightening - however, all the parts that required a little tweak went into the desired positioned easily. The detail isn't knock-out stunning, probably being on a par with early 90s Citadel, which is no bad thing on the whole. The trouble is that I was comparing them directly with the Finecast models that I'd just opened (more of which in another post); not really a fair comparison.  

Standard bearer, wight king, male necromancer, and
female necromancer (apologies for poor photo quality,
autumn has finally arrived in Wales!)

I would say that my favourite at this stage is the standard bearer, whose ghoulish banner will certainly be fun to paint and field. I like the concept behind the male necromancer but having inspected the model closely I think the intentions rather outpace the realisation - it just doesn't look as good as it should. Once painted of course, it may be a different matter, and I plan to dedicate some time to getting the swirl of magical energy beneath him just right. The revenant/wight king is fine, while the female necromancer actually reminds me of 40k Dark Eldar. There's quite a bit of cleaning up required on these miniatures, although this won't trouble an experienced modeller.

Overall I'm cautiously optimistic and I'm looking forward to getting these undercoated and then applying a light wash to see how the detail will take shape.

The gathering of the undead warhost begins...

I like mixing up my painting projects because I either get bored very easily or just get tempted away by something new. That's why it helps to have a number of armies/projects on the go at the same time. I've been collecting the odd undead model for a while without much direction, but I recently decided to dive in properly and start a Vampire Counts army. There are some many good models made by lots of different manufactures that it will be impossible to ever 'complete' an army - this is why I'm so keen on collecting humans together with the Marienburg theme: the possibilities are endless. Anyway, here are the first two undead models to leave the painting tray. A Wight Lord and a Tomb Banshee (both metals from GW).

Wight Lord and Tomb Banshee

Back view

The main aim with working on these two models was to experiment with colours, generally the mix of the green, red and blue, but also more specifically with getting the rotting/aged look without losing the sharp colours and contrasts. I'm particularly happy with two aspects. Firstly, the metals on the Wight Lord: here I used Tin Bitz and then successive dry brushing with Bold Gun metal, Chain Mail, and finally Blazing Orange - I think this has achieved a pretty good rusted look. Secondly, I'm pleased with my experiment with the green: here I used Scorpion Green and then a wash of Leviathan Purple, followed by highlights of the green again, mixed with different parts of Skull White.