Ian's Undead - May Rank and File, and an extra (320 points)

" Just remember that death is not the end "

            - Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds (Death Is Not the End, 1996)

My goal for the month of may was achieved in 3 days at the beginning of the month. I painted 4 Bat Swarm bases (which I will count as a single Swarm for 250 points from the WFB Armies book). 

It left me plenty of time to add some extras to embellish my army... which I did not. At first I really wanted to finish 5 Black Knights I started in the previous OWAC but after two weeks I couldn't find the motivation to complete them. I was feeling bad because I really wanted to add something else, having still plenty of time. So I rummaged into my pile of undead shame and found what looked like a mounted necromancer. I had no idea where it came from. I asked on the Oldhammer identification group on Facebook and didn't had to wait too long : Nightmare Mounted GrimReaper from RAFM miniatures. It looked oldschool enough for me and would be a nice addition to my army.

The OWAC Ocho Undead Army so far :

January 2025

20 skeleton archers - 240 points

February 2025

Mulligan - 0 points

March 2025

10 ghouls - 80 points

4 wraiths - 300 points

April 2025

3 Screaming Skull Catapults - 255 points

May 2025

1 Bat Swarm - 250 points

1 Evil Sorcerer (Level 5 Necromancer) on horse - 70 points

Total : 1 195 points

Only one month left! June will be my leader month. I am planning on painting only 2 miniatures: a vampire and a necromancer.

Cheers!

Ian

Paul's Wood Elves of Avelorn - Leader Month: Lords and Ladies (315 pts)

Painting delayed - insert holiday here...

We had to alter plans this month as despite having our fourth and final rank and file months scheduled and underway, a very busy but enjoyable month away from the painting table got in the way so we have swapped over to Leader month

However, we did have great fun visiting cathedrals to look at tombs of kings and crusaders, and a spot of light weapons drill with reproduction medieval weaponry, and we managed to squeeze a game of WFB5 in with some mates using the minis we have painted so far this OWAC, so it wasn't all bad :p

Phwoar! Look at the patina on that!

As is often the case at this stage in the OWAC I found myself making some compromises on quality but finding previously unapproachable models half painted themselves because by now I knew the colour scheme and recipes I wanted to use to represent different parts of the army.

Firstly my general, the Lord of Late Summer, using the same deep reds and greens, and golden browns as my core archer unit(s).

I kept to a very restricted colour scheme, even with the mount, although I enjoyed varying the colours so that the mount has a slightly more fey appearance with its green mane and red hooves. It's not my best work but I think it's punchy enough to get away with it.

Next up is the Elven Sorceress on (Bl)Unicorn, which ties in with some rider/mount swap possibilities with my High Elves, and gives me a possible mated pair for D&D and narrative games etc. (I think the Blu-nicorn is the stallion).

In fact, although I've shown the Blu-nicorn and Wood Elf sorceress together as that is what I have painted this month for the OWAC, I think they are unlikely to team up together in games as the Chrace themed revamped Unicorn from a previous OWAC now fits much better with the Chrace/Winter themed side of my Wood Elf army, as shown below. The Blu-nicorn will better suit the Ellyria/Tiranoc elements of my High Elves (also shown below with the High Elf Sorceress from a previous OWAC).

Total for the month:

Wood Elf General (steed, lance, light armour) - 166 pts
Wood Elf Sorceress - 59 pts
Unicorn - 90 pts

Total: 315 pts

No extra points for these but I have been meaning to finish the banners for the archer units and in an effort to get things done and the spirit of compromise (for me the OWAC is about getting stuff finished, not necessarily perfect), I've added these pennants in the unit colours as my planned designs would work much better on standards with cross poles rather than the Wood Elf icons which I find tend to dominate. They could definitely be better, and I may revisit the banners with more iconography in the future, but they will do for now and certainly make the units look more complete.

Tom's Bony Bit

Having changed plans to paint my leader this month, I had the chance to use contrast paints as he is a D&D mini with a pre-painted white undercoat. The sculpt was hard to paint because it is all in one piece with lots of hard to reach places, and the white undercoat shows through. I liked using contrast paints because I could cover more area quickly, but the sculpt still made this tricky.  

I have tried to use the same colours as the rest of the army, although matching contrast paints to Vallejo and Citadel acrylics is not always easy, I think I did OK. I used purple again for his magic, this is a mix of purple tone and Vallejo acrylic, and the black body suit is Abaddon black citadel acrylic. My dad thinks he looks like a Marvel Supervillain, and I'm happy with that description.

Here he is raising a refurbished skeleton warrior to add to next month's unit

Total for the month:

Necromancer Lord - 410 pts

Total: 410 pts

Now for the good stuff - we finally get to play a game with our painted minis!

Battle Report - Undead vs Wood Elves 1500 pts (WFB 5)

In which mistakes were made, hopes crushed, and Elven reputations restored!

As the two sides lined up against each other the generals surveyed their troops. Much smack was talked about the terrifying wraiths and the potency of Elven archery, but it remained to be seen if the Elves would be able to prevent the evil forces of the Undead from encroaching on their sacred forests.

Elven archery did indeed prove potent, as did Elven magic, and the Undead Cavalry saw their numbers reduced in the first turn, and then were stopped in their tracks by pesky Elven magic. Heads up on our two big mistakes, we gave Wood Elves too much High Magic and we didn't make enough use of the Necromantic magic ability to cast spells multiple times until too late in the battle, tbf I think this did have an effect on the result, but it didn't stop us having fun!

The Undead marshalled their own pesky magicks unleashing the banner of wrath against the Elven archers and starting to whittle them down. The Wood Elf mage champion took aim with their Wand of Lightning and blasted the unit of Spectres that had been floating menacingly towards the Elven left flank. With lightning flashing back and forth between the forces it seemed like magic would be a deciding factor in the battle.

The manoeuvrability of the Undead army also became a factor as the fast moving Cavalry became isolated and were picked off by Elven magic and the special attacks and defences of the equally fast moving War Dancers, the main blocks of both armies moved only a short distance from their back lines. It was cunning Necromantic magic that summoned skeletons and then reinforced units to keep the right flank of the Elves engaged in dogged hand to hand combat for a number of turns before they were finally defeated by a flank charge from the Wardancers late in the game.

Meanwhile the advancing Wraiths had been causing much more terror in their real life commanders than in the Wood Elf units, with the high LD value of the General meaning that they withstood the effects of both Terror and Fear and stood their ground.

The magic weapons wielded by the General, and the Wardancer Champion combined with the special attacks and defences of the Wardancers proved enough to defeat the Wraiths, who had already been weakened by magical lightning. Phew! 

This was a turning point in the game as if any of those psychology tests had gone the way of the Undead then I don't think victory would have been quite so secure for the Elves, but at the end of the game the forces of the Undead melted back into the mists as their Necromancer turned tail and fled back to her master!

As you can see the Wood Elf general was magnanimous in his victory :p 

Maciek's undead: Return of the necromancer (890 points)

Leader month

As the last entry for this challenge, I give you the Necromancer and his evil lieutenants - a wight battle standard bearer, a vampire count and a vampire wannabe. The necromantic quartet is poised to rampage through the Empire and lead the undead legions in unrelenting onslaught against the living.

The Necromancer - is among the first Warhammer figures I acquired during a school-trip to the UK in mid-90s. I attempted to paint him before but results were never to my liking. I'm happy to finally give him justice after ~25 years. The classic styling choice for the undead is the funerary black & "liche purple" colour scheme, but it did not really pop. So I settled for a much more striking black and red. True to the Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay (WFRP) description, as necromancers progress in the black arts, they slowly take on corpse-like appearance - hence the alabaster skin, yellowish nails and circles under the eyes.

The Vampire - it is an old Heresy model which nails all the classic elements of a vampire look from the old Dracula movies - the dramatic cloak, imperious grimace, dominant pose and sleek clothing. As tribute to Bela Lugosi or Christopher Lee's depictions of Dracula, I painted him wearing all black with red lined cape and a white shirt underneath (not visible on the photo).

The wight battle standard bearer - I added him the roster later, as I wanted an opportunity to pour more WFRP soul into the army. My first post for this OWAC referred to the Lichemaster art as inspiration. My last entry has to reference another great WFRP cover art - the Restless Dead.

I always found this depiction of endless legions of skeletons inspiring, so that banner had to find a place in my army. Well, at least my interpretation of it :-)
 

      

Vampire wannabe / undead hero - This model was originally a hideous case of chainmail bikini vampire. I never had the heart to paint her, until I sculpted her a full chainmail shirt. I cannot sculpt well and her armour still looks really silly, but it is exactly that which triggered inspiration for the paint theme. What do you associate with ridiculous armours, strong desire to look "really evil", affinity for undead and literally wearing corpse-paint? Black metal!

Technically, she's still alive, but the darkness within leads her to join the legions of the undead.  With that corpse paint, she will fit well with the undead hordes and make a perfect dreg for the undead warband in Mordheim.

The acounting stuff:

The Necromancer (level 25): 340

The Vampire (level 5): 330

Wight battle standard bearer (level 15 undead hero): 135  (85-50)

Black metal warrioress (level 15 undead hero) 85

Total: 890 points

Overall, it was a fun month, I appreciate being able to spend more time on quality than on quantities of troops. Also a good opportunity to train different shades of black ;-) I cannot believe OWAC IV is now over and I actually made it to the end! I will try to use the momentum to finish off the few remaining undead models and if I can, will include them in the concluding post by end of July.

Cheers, Maciek

Jesse's Undead (1335 points)

This month was all lockdown so I got stuck into some painting. I was a bit worried after the earlier mulligan so I thought I would try and catch up on the plan I had come up with when I started. I ended up completing all of the units I had planned for the whole challenge so I am going to have to add in some extra units for the last two months.

The new characters, units and war machine.

I had a good time painting most these guys. The beast head champion and the beast pelt musician from the grim reaper unit were really cool miniatures. I had a couple of failures, my first liche and a vampire ended up in the stripping jar, which caused me to rethink my character choices. I painted a necromancer to see what trying to paint non-undead skin was like and it turned out ok so that gave me a necromancer. Next I wanted to try painting yellow so that turned into an army standard and resulted in all of the characters having a yellow element to make them stand out. Finally, the warhammer 3rd editition beastiary describes liches as 'power crazed weirdos' so I looked through my miniature trays to find something that matched that description.

Liche WIP

This miniature looked like it would work but I decided that a bone mask might make him look more liche and less chaos sorcerer.

The final breakdown of characters, units and war machines was as follows:

Level 20 liche 345
Level 10 necromancer 85
Level 15 undead hero, army standard, light armour 137
Level 20 undead hero, heavy armour 108
Level 10 undead hero, heavy armour 58
17 nightmare legion, standard, musician, spear, shield, light armour 266
Level 15 undead hero, light armour, double handed weapon 89
14 grim reapers, standard, musician, light armour 224
Stone Thrower & screaming skull ammunition. 85

Necromancer, Liche and Army Standard

The Grim Reapers

Knightmare legion

Stone Thrower

Dave's Ancient Auxiliaries (303 pts)

Last month actually featured the last model in the core army of Kravag's Cairn Host. Since it was just a single model (and one on foot, no less!) I promised myself to produce a further detachment in the final month of the challenge to push the army over 1,000 points. I had many ideas about what to add... mummies could give me more heavy infantry, a chariot would add another war machine, ghouls would provide me with some faster troops for flanking maneuvers... even a monster would be a nice addition!

At the end of the day (or rather, the long, dark night!), I decided to make a practical choice. What the army really needed was more rank and file. A bit boring, but a more tactically sound decision to be sure. Behold, reinforcements for the army of the night!

So, what do we have here? Skeleton warriors with bows provide a much-needed asset in this army—more missiles! Of course, Skeletal bowmen are a bit rubbish... 10 points each for a BS 2, Strength 3 ranged attack... but I figure they can sit back on some hill behind the main lines and plink away at any annoying fast cavalry that are trying to take advantage of my army's sluggish pace. On top of that, we have thirteen more Skeleton warriors with spears, including a command team. Why thirteen? Because it is spooky of course! Well, to be honest I found thirteen more in my collection and decided to just paint them all at the same time. Together with the original nine spearmen, this makes 22 Skeleton warriors with spears. In reality, I will probably remove a handful of these guys to keep as reserves for when my wizards cast Raise The Dead during a battle... can never have too many extras! And yes, I did say wizards, plural. Now my Vampire Lord will have a little magical backup in the form of a lowly Necromancer. All told that amounts to:

Zaghuul the Necromancer ~ 68 pts

10x Skeleton Warriors (with Bows) ~ 100 pts

13x Skeleton Warriors (with Spears, Musician, Standard Bearer) ~ 135 pts

Which is the most models and most points I have ever painted in an OWAC challenge month! True, not terribly complicated models, but I'm a little proud of that nevertheless. Now tremble in fear, mortals, for the next post will reveal the entire army in all of its rotting glory! I said tremble! Zaghuul commands you!