Iannick's Red Templars Wrap-up

 Well here it is, the end of the line! And another OWAC project completed from yours truly. Woo!

It was a fun ride, although a very different ride for me. Painting 40K, something I hadn't done since the early 90s when I was listening to to Guns N' Roses and drinking copious amount of Mountain Dew, was a completely new experience. 

What did I learn? Well a few things :

1. I'll admit I cannot understand how people can paint huge armies of Space Marines. I was pretty burnt out by the end of it. So monochromatic! 

2. Remind me to never do a project that involves massive amount of edge highlighting

Still, I'm super happy with this force, I'm going to use it for sure (I'm coming for your purple false marines Blue). It was clearly an "out of my comfort zone" project, and I like to push myself here and there, so success!

The completed force. Yep, all infantry. No shortcuts, pretty proud of that fact.

My original list looked like this :

- Lieutenant Commander Martin (Major Hero) : 94 pts

- Lieutenant (Minor Hero) : 50 pts

- Chaplain (Champion) : 19 pts

- Librarian (Epistolary) : 50 pts

- 2 Techmarines : 34 pts

- 2 Medics (Champion) : 68 pts

- 3x Tactical squads : 750 pts

- 1x Terminator squad : 450 pts

- Terminator Captain (Hero) : 150 pts

- Contemptor Dreadnought : 201 pts

- Conqueror Robot : 160 pts

So, what did I painted?

The Terminator squad and hero

First Squad

2nd Squad

3rd Squad

The Medics

The Techmarines

Standard bearer and Captain

The Librarian

The Chaplain 

So the final list looks like this :

- Lieutenant Commander Martin (Major Hero) : 94 pts

- Lieutenant (Minor Hero) : 50 pts

- Chaplain (Champion) : 19 pts

- Librarian (Epistolary) : 50 pts

- 2 Techmarines : 34 pts

- 2 Medics (Champion) : 68 pts

- 3x Tactical squads : 750 pts

- 1x Terminator squad : 450 pts

- Terminator Captain (Hero) : 150 pts

- Contemptor Dreadnought : 201 pts

- Conqueror Robot : 160 pts

- Terrain !

So basically I managed to paint almost everything I wanted, minus the robot and Dread. I'll probably have to paint these two one day to round out my force. But still, pretty happy with my focus.

And here's a few extra pics of the boys in action amongst the ruins of Fortuna III :

And the mandatory Warhammer Armies pose pic

So, next year? Nothing concrete yet, but in all probability, I expect to be back in the Old World. I missed the units.

And so this conclude this edition of the OWAC, our fourth and without a doubt our best, both in terms of numbers of participants and quality of armies and entries. It was spectacular (and also very demanding from yours tuly, I probably reached my participants limits!) Congratulation to all participants who managed to finish the challenge, let's do it again next year!

Iannick's Ruins of Fortuna III (50 points)

Wild Card

Well here it is, the end of the line. My initial plan was to paint a robot and a dreadnought for my Wild Card month but unfortunately I did not manage to do so. I blame it on the extreme heat, and also on the Habs magical Stanley Cup run. No sport is as demanding on its fans as playoff hockey; reaching the finals is such a stress ride! And it also means one evening out of two watching a game for like 2 months. Anyways...

I used my time watching the Habs to paint something completely different (no red, thank the Gods) which didn't involve edge highlights or such fine work. Terrain. 

When I made the rules for this year I wanted to encourage challengers to paint some terrain and figured I had to paint some myself. Now, since I mostly play WFB and Napoleonics, I have very little in the way of scatter terrain and such tools for skirmish games. Figured this had to change a little if I wanted to play with my marines one day. Time was lacking so building terrain from scratch seemed like a losing proposition. So looking at my pile of shame I had quite a few resin pieces from an old Kickstarter. Not necessarily an obvious choice for a Sci-Fi army BUT it fits well with my army's basing and it will get used often.

A marine for size perspective

I figure these are the ruins of an ancient and long forgotten alien race who once lived on Fortuna III, the homeworld of the Red Templars. That's what I like about Rogue Trader, the possibilities are endless. It was a long project to put together (lots of surface to wash and drybrush) but an easy one. I could've/should've used some weathering powder to make the ruins look a bit more decrepit but other than that I'm pleased with this. I still have quite a few pieces left from that KS, so in the end that should make for a pretty cool table.

More scatter pieces

I intend to use these as a background for my army shot next month. As a bonus these pieces can be used for a multitude of fantasy projects, RPGs, etc. Win-win.

And yes, I'm claiming my points. I don't need them, but rules are rules!

Well there it is, my watch has ended. Another OWAC in the books. See you next month for the money shots!!

Iannick's Red Templar's 1st Tactical "Mors Manipulus" Squad (250 points)

We are the Mors Manipulus. We've killed more traitors, fought more battles, shed more blood, and stomped more ass than the rest of the company put together.

Sargeant Gaudin, 1st Squad, 1st Company, Red Templars

Rank & File #4

Hey look at that, more marines! 

May was my last rank & file month, and so it was also my last month painting marines. And I've kept the best for last. I wanted to represent the first squad of my force as a bad ass veteran outfit. My idea was to use helmetless marines as well as marines with a lot of individual honours, badges, weird armour type, etc. All the things a veteran of many campaigns would accumulate along the way, and adapt to his needs. Basically, the opposite of my 3rd squad, which is quite vanilla in it's look.

It wasn't really difficult to find 10 such marines because really the Rogue Trader range is full of those types of figures. It also allowed me to use those weird death eagles armoured marines, as well as the marine with terminator honour figure. Any of those would've looked out of place in a normal marine squad, but here, surrounded by an eclectic looking bunch,  they all fit right in. 

However, sitting down on May 1st and looking at them, I felt I needed to make them stand out even more. For aesthetic purposes, sure, but also because I needed a little variety. Because one thing I had never really noticed before is how monochrome space marines really are! Little bit tired of red, yeah...And I needed to spice things up, if only a little. 

I figured the 1st Squad of the 1st Company of the Red Templar chapter should be special. And as such I decided to add black to my repertoire, and I gave them black helmets striped red. I was afraid it might constrast too much, or detract from my force's overrall red & white, but no, it *really* works and gives them that little extra badassery and unique factor. I call them "Mors Manipulus", i.e. death squad (the latin doesn't have that Nazi connotation!).

I gave Sargeant Gaudin a white helmet striped red, as all my leaders and special characters have white distinctions, but gave him a black banner to tie him with his squad. I really like the banner. I've always wanted to paint that figure, and I'm quite happy with the results. The marine with the bionic leg was a very old figure from my youth collection, and his sword broke aeons ago, so I gave him a chainsword instead. It looks better than the sword if you ask me. 

Some of my fav RT figures. Brother Martin with the cybernetic leg might be my favourite, but
really they are all iconic figures

Two of the marines in Death Eagle armour, and then there's the multi-melta
marine with a very unique "skull" helmet and decorations. He fits right in.

I'm really pleased with this squad, and I feel I may have kept the best for last! 

With this submission, my OWAC is "unofficially" over and I can do whatever I want with my Wild Card month. Damn, I love that weight off my shoulder feeling of ending an OWAC. It's a sweet, sweet feeling. I'm pleased with myself as this is the first OWAC where I manage to go 5 straight months without using my mulligan (Wild Card). It was my plan all along as I didn't want to have to paint in June. My painting room has no AC so I often take a painting break in the summer and I didn't want to sweat come late June, forced to paint under unrelenting heat (and stress!). A lot of people assume Canada is always cold, but yeah, no. Montréal in the Summer is extremely hot and humid. Our Summers may not last long, but they are intense.

So the weather will quite possibly determine what I will submit in my Wild Card month, although I have been working on a little something different the last few months that I hope to submit next month, if nothing else.

Technical stuff : 

Red Templars tactical Squad : 250 points

Iannick's Red Templars 3rd Tactical squad (250 points)

You must know your enemy to beat him at his own game, but be ready as well for the ultimate sacrifice, for nobody comes out of hell without a scratch!

Sergeant Jean Ratcliffe, 3rd squad, 1st Company, Red Templars 

So...April. And guess what? More Marines! Yes, here's my 3rd Squad of Space Marines for my Red Templar project. All plastics from the venerable and legendary RTB01 plastic boxset. They aged well, although as usual for plastics from the 80s they do have soft details.

By now, not much to say about the colour scheme, its pretty standard stuff. Wine red, gold, etc. I thought of painting sarge Ratcliffe's leg or right pauldron in white, as my other squad leaders have a left white pauldron with terminator honours, but in the end opted not to. Figured this is the 3rd "vanilla" squad of my company, and that Sarge just got promoted from the ranks. Ratcliffe has to earn those honours!

Sergeant Ratcliffe and the boys

Although something very weird happened; this batch of marines is a lighter red hue than the rest of my force! Same recipe, same colours, etc. I did open a new bottle of Andrea red as well as a new AP wash, and I suspected the answer to my question was there. And after doing some tests I'm pretty sure I can blame AP for that one. Apparently my older (very old) AP red wash is much more dark than their new red. Now I'm not sure if it's a new recipe or due to age or such. In any cases this is literally the first time this ever happens to me. On an army scale its not really apparent, but it bugs me nonetheless as I'm don't think i'll get to replicate exactly my "original" shade.

There is a pretty cool story behind these guys. Last summer I bought a substantial lot of plastic RTB01s from a local fellow. He told me they were glued over 30 years ago using super glue. I bought the figures, put them in my pile of shame, and figured I'd come back to them in the Fall. So last November I looked a bit more closely at the figures, and started trying to disassemble them. It...did not go well. Super glue my arse! They were glued with some kind of hot glue gun, and instead of snapping nice and tidy the glue had melted the pieces together in an horrible mess. It was impossible to salvage them without some serious sculpting reconstruction (Yes, I tried the fridge and many other tricks). Even worse, they were so badly assembled almost none of them could be used as is. Panic set it, as the OWAC was very close and my first plan was to use 20 of these guys to fill two squads! I lamented my misfortune (and stupidity) on the OWAC FB page and a miracle hapenned. Challenger John Ratcliffe (hence my Sergeant's name) came to the rescue and told me he could trade me 10 unnassembled, still on sprue, RTB01 marines.

Woo! Gotta love this community, sooooo helpful. So I traded a lot of Skaven to John in exchange (which took like 4 months to reach poor John, what the hell Royal Post?!), and received these guys like two weeks later! I was relieved to say the least! I then managed to find a few metal marines to fill my other squad. 

Next month? You guessed it, more marines! But this time, 1st veteran squad. La crème de la crème. A bunch of tough looking SOBs, many without helmets.

Technical stuff : 

Red Templars tactical Squad : 250 points

Iannick's Red Templars Command group (213 points)

In times of war, as in life, surround yourself with people of value, virtue and high morals, because it's always better to lose, perish and vanish in glory than to live in shame.

Lieutenant Commander Guillaume Martin, 1st Company, Red Templars

After two months of painting infantry I felt a change of pace was needed and so decided to tackle my "Leader Month". In hindsight, it was a very wise decision as March has been an insane month at work (often is since it's the end of financial year) and there's no way I could've finished a squad. Heck, I barely finished 4 guys in time!

So I went with a command group instead of going with just one leader, as it seemed appropriate for this army and I really like the specialist troops from Rogue Trader, and wanted to use as many as possible.

First we have Lieutenant Commander Martin, the leader of my company. He bears my last name. Why? Well because just like me he has legs issues! You see, I had a (very successful) knee surgery last Fall (my 4th in the last 5 years, don't ask) and so I promised myself I'd paint a marine with a bionic leg as my leader!

I mounted him on an appropriate elaborately resin base, in case his status wasn't clear! Fun figure to paint, although it's interesting how quickly GW left the Rogue Trader aesthetic. I believe this model was released towards the very end of RT, and it shows. He already has a lot more stuff on him. It does work well for a leader, though.

Then we have Lieutenant Celestin, bearer of the Red Templar's 1st Company Holy Colours. Another later figure, I enjoyed painting him more than I thought. I gave him the usual white pauldron to represent his veteran status. I went with a white striped helmet to differenciate him. He's going to be one of only two marines in my force sporting the Mark VII armour. Obviously the man had first pick of the newest equipment.

The third figure is an old school Rogue Trader style Chaplain. I went with a predominantly classic black colour scheme, with a touch of red and white to tie him with the rest of the force.

And then finally a librarian. Once again I used white (pauldron, helmet) to illustrate status. I may add a transfer on a knee, I was lacking in time. Transfers are fun but they add a good three days to my schedule (one day to apply gloss, another day to apply transfers and let dry solidly, another day to apply microsol and matt varnish) and I mismanaged my time. 

With the quality of leaders entry to date these guys won't win it all but the important part is that I'm still standing, 3 months to go with a Wild Card in my pocket!

•  Lieutenant Commander Martin (Major Hero) : 94 pts
• Lieutenant (Minor Hero) : 50 pts
• Chaplain (Champion) : 19 pts
• Librarian (Epistolary) : 50 pts

March total : 213 pts

Iannick's terminator squad and specialists (702 points)

Do not fail your Brothers. Though their bodies die, their spirit must return to the Chapter. That is your charge.

Medic credo

Rank & file month #2

Woo! I finished this month's entry at the very last minute, with barely an hour left in February. In hindsight, doing the Terminators in the shortest month of the Challenge was probably not the best idea. These guys are not only big, but they have so much details!

It was also an extremely difficult month for me as last week I had to say goodbye to my best friend, my cat Leto. 19 years together is a very long time, and his passing really hit me hard. I had to muster all of my discipline to finish my February's entry as, frankly, the last few days the OWAC and painting little miniatures seemed trivial.

Anyways,  here they are, my squad of Terminators, including the iconic Terminator captain model, which was a blast to paint. I purchased these models, I believe in 1990 or 1991. They were not part of an army or anything, just a classic impulse buy I would so often back in the days (age hasn't made me that much wiser on those I must admit). I just thought they look really, really cool. Well, they still do. 

But I never did anything with them. For two reasons :

1. I remember having the toughest time gluing them together, the arms especially. My two part epoxy glue skills were a mess, and my father's trying his glue gun on them didn't achieve the results I was hoping for, either! 
2. Man were they indimidating! These guys were in every golden demon book and white dwarfs, and they had so much details I was so afraid I would screw them up!

So I did what any young hobbyist does, and put them back in the book, never to apply paint to them. 30 years later, they were overdue!

And while the gluing part went pretty well (death to two part epoxy!), they were still intimidating to paint. Those figures have a ton of details, and I would've liked to have a bit more time to work on them. Notheless, they look bad ass!

Close-up on Captain Leto 

I obviously went with my red templars colour scheme, but gave them the white left pauldron of my elites. I didn't do checkerboards or stripes, as is the tradition, but rather used my chapter's iconography and my trusted transfers. Time was a factor in that decision, but also I'm just not a big fan of hasard stripes. I know, pretty shameful for a Oldhammerer. I also wanted to give them a clean look and keep to my gold-red-white colour triad. I like them.

Close-up on some of the iconography

Next up we have a quatuor of specialists. I gave the Techmarines golden helmets and backpacks to give them a different look than the regular marines. Metallics seemed like an appropriate choice given their role. I'd love to know why the GW crew at the time thought techmarines should sport creature claws on the pauldron, it's a weird choice. But they are just such iconic miniatures.

The inspiration for my medics colour scheme came from the Ultramarines (Filippo will be proud) with a change or two. I really like them. The white and the red just pops. Although the white highlights are lost in the photography. I wasn't really happy with my previous white recipe so I tried something new and used GW's white contrast as recess shading, along with an off white as the main white and pure white for the highlights (did the same with my termies and techmarines) and I quite like the final results. My first attemps at using contrasts were quite disappointing but that white is a great tool. Good job GW. I may not like a lot of your new figures but your painting tools are often super useful.

I'm not sold on that banner...I realized at the last minute that I had no plans for that banner and I really didn't want to publish an unfinished figure! Panicked, I looked online for a printable banner and had little success. Even worse I realized I was out of red in my ink cartidge. Doh! So I came up with this. Not great but it will have to do. 

• 2 Techmarines : 34 pts
• 2 Medics (Champion) : 68 pts
• 1x Terminator squad : 450 pts
• Terminator Captain (Hero) : 150 pts

Total for the month : 702 pts (lol)

Next month? I'll probably take a break from the rank & files entries.

Iannick's Red Templars Tactical Squad (250 points)

Rank & File month #1

Seek freedom and become captive of your desires. Seek discipline and find your liberty.

Credo of the Red Templars

Red Templars "Templiers Rouges" Chapter

Warcry : To the Emperor we give the glory!

Successors of Imperial Fists

Number : 1000

Primarch: Rogal Dorn

Chapter Master : Hugh Depayens

Homeworld : Fortuna III, Laanah sector

Fortress-Monastery : Basilica Honorius

Allegiance : Imperium of Man

Colours : Wine & Gold

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So for the first month of the challenge I went with a squad of tactical marines, i.e. the bread and butter of a Space Marine force. Which is not surprising, really, since I always start any painting project with the regular rank & files. 

What was a first, though, was painting space marines. Yes, you read that right, these are the first space marines I've ever painted in my life. As I mentionned in my previous post, while I did play some Rogue Trader in my youth I went with the Imperial Guards, and then went fantasy and never looked back. I wonder how many 40 something wargamers can make that claim? 

Anyways, it was fun. I never really noticed before how much of a marine is made up of one colour. So yeah, my red pots worked overtime on this! 

This squad is made-up entirely of metal marines, lovely old school sculpts with loads of personnality. There's a lot of small different details on the armour depending on the model, which I find adds to the realism and gives them a more realistic and campaign look than the current GW's marines.

They are a bit darker in real life but red is always such a bitch to photograph right

The gold details of the Red Templars are usually the aquila and the shoulder trims, i.e. two things missing from the Mark VI Corvus armour, and since I wanted the gold to be more than just tiny details I decided to give my marines a golden pauldron, and I'm happy with the results. As you see, the sargents and my other leaders will sport a white pauldron with golden details. I was hesitating between white or gold. You know, those minor details than drive you insane and sometimes paralyze you in your process! Lots of thinking was done in the shower on that one! But a decision was made in the end (shout out to my wife Laurie who also participated in that decision making).

Talking about first time, I hadn't used transfers in almost 20 years, dating back to shields on an ancient greek army in my college years! These are actually transfers for historical miniatures from Magister Militum, and they fit nicely. A nice bonus is that they sell them for 28mm scales down to 6mm, so I get a nice variety of size.

Stress was high on that one, as I hadn't made any tests prior (very reckless of me) and, well, this was the last step of the process with very little ways of fixing mistakes at this stage. Even more stressful I was using those MicroSol/Set transfer products, for which I had heard good reviews but had never tried for myself! In the end, all went very well and by the 3rd or 4th marines I was in a groove and it went really smoothly. I'm happy with the finished product and I completely recommend those two products.

The lovely bases are from Dragonforge. Great product but be advised we are talking about a 2 months turnaround. So plan in advance! I decided to go the opposite route of what I often see, and went with hex for my normal marines, and rounds for my leader. I just wanted to use as many hex as possible really. I find the muted grey of the stones contrasts well with the colourful marines.

A close-up of some of my favourites from the squad

So, the technical stuff :

Red Templars tactical squad : 250 pts

Next month? Well it's a short one. Nevetheless, my plan is to terminate the shit out of it.

Iannick's Red Templars - An introduction

And they shall know no fear

So when I decided to include Rogue Trader\40K to the OWAC (after some polite lobying from a few members) I decided I would join that wave. 

I have a complicated relationship with the 40K universe. Like many 80s Oldhammerers, I started with Fighting Fantasy books, then RPGs, then Warhammer Fantasy (3rd edition). After some fantasy gaming with mostly unpainted figures, I got Rogue Trader in my early teens and I played a lot of it for around 2 years with my best friend, my Imperial Guards vs his Eldars. Then puberty came, along with parties, drugs, girls and we stopped playing. When I came back to the hobby in my college years I didn't really like the direction 40K had been going, and I plunged back into fantasy, never to look back.

Since then, I painted a few sci-fi figs, lots of Epic, but never 40K, although the aesthetics of Rogue Trader, and to a lesser extent 2nd, still pleases me. 

I figured this edition of the OWAC was my opportunity to get back into the far future, after more than 25 years! I contemplated rebuilding an IG force, but quickly settled for Space Marines. When I was younger I always wanted to paint marines but I found them intimidating. Lots of flat surfaces, edge highlights, and the need to do free hands on those pauldron put me off. No more! 

The real and agonizing choice came next. What chapter to do?! I didn't want to do one of the classic ones, I wanted something unique, and none of the Badab wars colour scheme really tempted me that much either. And there was also the question of transfers, as I'm still shite at freehands.

So I decided to go with my childhood dream and build my own. Looking at my favourite iconography, I settled on using Fleur de Lys (I'm from Québec, with french ancestors, and I have a soft spot for them). And then while perusing the Web I realized there was already a Chapter sporting the Fleur de Lys, the Red Templars. I even liked their colours, which were classics and had an old school RT vibe to them. So a decision was made! Even better, transfers were easily available from a number of vendors specializing in historical transfers. Case closed.

The Red Templars are also a very obscure Chapter, and its lore has never been explored by GW. That leaves me tons of creative options when it comes to its history, markings, etc. Yes, the pieces of the puzzles were coming together nicely.

Then it was just a question of putting a force together. I wanted to stay true to a Rogue Trader force as much as possible and wanted to make it infantry heavy as a core. Obviously painting all those classic models I saw in WD as a kid. Beakie heavy, as I still don't understand to this day the dislike GW has for that fine helmet. 

I almost had a huge disaster late November, when I realized the 20 odd plastic beakies I had were pretty much useless, but fellow challenger John Ratcliffe came to the rescue and saved my ass with not only a squads of RTB01 beakies, but a RT dreadnought to boot! One of the many things I love about this hobby, the helping each other out!

So, let's look at that project shall we?

1st Company, Red Templars, Harrowing of the Night Reapers campaign

2nd Tactical Squad (crappy picture, as you can see these are already sitting pretty on my painting table. Just a few hours left before paint is applied)

3rd Tactical squad (all RTB01 plastic marines)

1st tactical (veteran) squad, with Lieutenant. Bit short at the moment, I know. I'm waiting for reinforcements before deciding the other figures I'll use. My plan is to use helmetless marines, marines with weird armours, terminator honours marines, etc. to make this a bad ass looking veteran outfit.

Terminator Tactical Squad, with Captain

Specialists (Medics, Techmarines)

My Wild Card stuff; Dreadnought, Robot and an Assassin. Because it's Rogue Trader and I want an assassin!

Command group; Lieutenant-Commander Martin (with the mechanical leg, of course), Company Standard Bearer, Chaplain and Librarian

There might be a surprise or two depending on how things go

Tentative Army list (I went pretty vanilla on upgrades. After all the goal is not the min-max a list but to paint) :

- Lieutenant Commander Martin (Major Hero) : 94 pts

- Lieutenant (Minor Hero) : 50 pts

- Chaplain (Champion) : 19 pts

- Librarian (Epistolary) : 50 pts

- 2 Techmarines : 34 pts

- 2 Medics (Champion) : 68 pts

- 3x Tactical squads : 750 pts

- 1x Terminator squad : 450 pts

- Terminator Captain (Hero) : 150 pts

- Contemptor Dreadnought : 201 pts

- Conqueror Robot : 160 pts

For a nice total of 2026 pts! 

The OWAC can now officially begin in a mere two hours. They are 39 challengers this edition, which is our record (what have I done?!) and they are some truly great and unique projects this year. I wish best of luck to all the challengers ballsy enough to join this event, and a personnal thank you for all the great offerings you worked on. Now, fuck 2020 and let's get this party started!

Iannick's Undead Wrap-up

Well here we are, the end of the line, my final post of the second OWAC. Yeah! I won't lie, this year was a real challenge for me. I got a nice promotion at work this winter, and as all things with more money comes more responsibilities, which means more work! Then some knee issues (recurring problem). Ha yes, I also thought it would be a good idea to run a painting challenge while preparing a wedding! (Narrator : it was not a good idea). So in a surprising twist, this challenge was a lot more difficult for me than last year's, even though I painted a lot more figure last year (goblins) than this year (skeletons). I've also realized I prefer painting goblins to skeletons! Who knew? 

Yeah, I'm happy. New army, and soon a beautiful wife

But anyways, enough of the bitching, I nonetheless managed to finish a second OWAC and I am quite happy with myself. It always makes me chuckle when I hear people say "oh 200pts per month is a breeze". NO IT IS NOT. It's the grind of the challenge, the marathon that gets so many motivated challengers (just look at this year's Field of Bones) and so I realize how difficult and rewarding the end of the line really is.

How did I do? Well I always like to go back to my original plan and see how close I got to it. The plan was to paint :

- 15 Skeletons warriors, equipped with shields, including standard and musician : 187pts
- 15 Skeletons warriors, equipped with shields, including standard and musician : 187pts
- 1 Plague Cart : 100pts
- 12 Zombies : 48pts
- 3 Mummies : 240pts
- Ethereal Host : 1 Ghost (50pts), 1 Wraith (150pts) for 200pts
- 1 Lv5 Undead Hero, equipped with shield & heavy armour : 34pts
- 1 Lv5 Undead Hero, equipped with shield & heavy armour : 34pts
Planned total : 1123 pts

And I managed to paint :

- 15 Skeletons warriors, equipped with shields, including standard and musician : 187pts
- 4x Death Riders, equipped with light armour and lances : 100pts
- Level 10 mounted Undead hero, equipped with horse barding : 69pts
- 1 Plague Cart : 100pts
- 12 Zombies : 48pts
- 3 Mummies : 240pts
- 1 Gorgon : 110pts
- Ethereal Host : 2 Ghosts (100pts), 1 Wraith (150pts) for 250pts
- 1 Lv5 Undead Hero, equipped with shield & heavy armour : 34pts
- 1 lv 5 Liche : 90pts
Total : 1228pts

So all in all I managed to follow pretty closely my plan, and this always pleases me. I would've liked to paint that other unit of skellies. but those unplanned Death Riders took a lot more time than I had anticipated. It should make for a nice small force, or a very useful undead contingent to my Nurgle force. Also, many of these figures are really useful in my D&D games, which is always a nice bonus.

I really like my ethereal host

So, what about next year? Well I have many ideas for my next force ; Barbarians, Halflings, Forest Goblins Part II, or maybe even Skavens. Oh man oh man this is going to make for an agonizing choice! 

Thanks to all who read my stuff, commented on it, and congrats to all challengers who reached the finish line!! Great group of guys once again this year.