Armies on parade: Zombie hordes of Brácula

In the image you can see the cover of the the army book to play Undead for Warhammer Fantasy Battles published in 1994. From the moment I saw it for the first time, it really captured my imagination and since then I wanted to collect and play and undead horde!

I really did not have the energy for a 28mm scale undead army, but I knew I could tackle a 10mm project!

List building

If you check the army list you will see that undead have plenty of choices, but I decided to restrict mine to what I felt would be closer to the "classic" fantasy Vampires. That meant ghosts, zombies, skeletons, bats and wolves. After a few attempts using proxies I finally settled for the list that you see below, it is based around the idea of a giant horde of zombies resurrected by a Necromancer while a Vampire in a shiny armour leds the assault on top of some monster (could be a Dragon or a Black Pegasus).

The name of the General is "Brácula" which comes from a famous comedy movie from Spain (does not make any sense, I just find it funny).

My plan when painting this army was to get it quickly ready for battle. Due to the scale and how packed are the figures one next to each other, it is almost impossible to see them, aside from the first and last rank, therefore I decided not to dedicate much effort to them.

All units were painted using the same technique: base colours + agrax and a few highlights to make some stuff pop like blood in the zombies or skin in the bigger monsters. The colour palette was limited on purpose to get a cohesive feel but hopefully diverse enough to make it not look too boring.

Bases were a bit painful to make as first I needed to paint the ranks separately, then glue them onto the base, add texture to cover the tiny base included with the rank and finally paint it including in between ranks, with already fully painted ranks.

All miniatures are from Forest Dragon except for the Goreblights that are from Teremki Studio and the Zombie Trolls from Omnioji. The Vampire on Undead Pegasus was converted from one of my Bretonnian Army using head and sword from a vampire on foot.

From my original wishlist I am only missing the Wights because I have not yet found miniatures for them.

2 Regiments of Soul Reavers

2 Regiments of Deathpack

2 Regiments / 1 Horde of Zombies

2 Regiments / 1 Horde of Zombies

2 Regiments of Zombie Trolls

2 Regiments of Zombie Trolls

2 Regiments of Deathpack

Vampire Lord on Undead Pegasus

Vampire Lord on Undead Dragon

2 Goreblights

Vampire heroes

Vampire heroes

Necromancers

Army pic

Kings of War Proyect Kick-off

Last year I played a couple of games of Kings of War and I got aboard the hype train.

I have always wanted to play some small scale fantasy games, I have tried a few, including Warmaster, simply because I love how nicely the armies look like as an horde in the table, but I never found a rule system that I really liked. Up until now with KoW.

The fact that it is 10mm and not 28mm is great because it is just small enough so I won't feel bad about not painting all possible details. And also it helps increase the feeling of huge army vs skirmish.

I always wanted to play Undead and Bretonnia but never got around to do that due to the amount of time it takes to collect and paint a new Army, on average, it takes me 2.5 years to collect and paint a 28mm Army. Choosing them for this project was a no-brainer. In addition, they are natural enemies and they look amazing in the table, especially if you paint your zombies in the same livery colours as the Bretonnia, so that the Necromancers and Vampires are actually feeding on them!

Kings of War

It is a relative easy system that would feel familiar to many Warhammer players despite having key differences with it, that actually take time to master. I am still making many mistakes especially when moving or placing units ready to counter-attack thinking in "old fantasy" while I should be thinking on how combat is done in Kings of War.

Nevertheless, I really enjoy the fast and streamlined gameplay. On top of that, the basic rules are free, you can find them here. And you can also create your armies for free here, although only two lists without a paid subscription.

Important to mention that the rulebook assumes bigger scale (typically 28 or 32mm) so what we do is we just divide by two all measures, for example a unit with Speed 10" would mean 5". We play in a table that is half the size and you can transport a full Army in a tiny cookie box (eating the cookies first is an added benefit!).

If you are interested in this combination of KoW and 10mm check out the following links. Here is an introduction to the armies being collected by my local club and here is an article about one of the armies.

Miniatures

I browsed many different armies, catalogues and manufacturers until I settled for Forest Dragon, You can find the store here and the patreon here. I bought the STLs and asked a colleague from the Berlin Club to print them and another person to cut the MDF bases. To choose the list of figures that I wanted to print I created two 2300 points army lists that I could use as a base from where to expand in the future, and printed that.

I have followed the rule of cool to base the miniatures, and not necessarily sticking to the guidelines of the rulebook since at this scale it does not matter too much and the exact figure count does not matter for KoW. That is why you will see for example that each Regiment of Zombies have 24 zombies instead of 20. Each stripe contains 6 so I was not about to cut one from each :)

Without further ado, here are the two lists and pictures of the unpainted miniatures!

Vampires (Undead)

• Infantry
• 4 Regiments of Zombies
• 2 Regiments of Soul Reavers
• 2 Troops of Wraiths
• Swarm
• 2 Regiments of Deathpack
• Large Infantry
• 4 Regiments of Zombie Trolls
• 4 Regiments of Wights (not pictured below as I have not found miniatures for them yet)
• Heroes
• 1 Hero on Black Pegasus
• Dragon
• Monsters
• 2 Goreblights

Since I am adding a magnet sheet into each MDF base, I will be able to combine each 2 Regiments into 1 Horde if so desired, for example, for the Zombies. After printing I realized that the zombie trolls were too big for the scale as they are for 15mm and not 10mm, I should have scaled them down, they look like giants!

Bretonnia (Order of the Green Lady)

• Infantry
• 2 Regiments of Men-at-Arms
• Cavalry
• 2 Regiments of Order of the Brotherhood
• 2 Regiments of Order of Redemption
• Large Cavalry
• 2 Regiments of Order of the Forsaken (Pegasus)
• Hippogriff
• 2 Unicorns
• 2 Pegasus
• Lots of mounted characters

I made a few creative decisions with the miniatures as I really do not like the Beast of Nature style of figures but I want to use them in my Army, so I will have a few "count as" miniatures.

And just to round it all up, I also got a few terrain pieces printed that make the table look amazing. Need to build now a few forest and hill pieces to round it up, but that should be hopefully be easy.

Blood Bowl: Undead (II)

Back in June I posted about my Undead Team. I mentioned that two Ghouls were missing because the box comes only with two although the roster can fit up to four.

Therefore, after getting my hands on them, here are the first painted miniatures of 2021!

These are two ghouls as well as two skeletons and two zombies. I do not really need the skeletons or zombies, but I thought that maybe at some point I want to use either only zombies or only skeletons and I would not have enough, therefore, I decided to paint them as well.

Painted in 2021

Glaivewraith Stalkers

Here are four Glaivewraith Stalkers painted using my Nighthaunt method.

They come from Mortal Realms issue #4

I don't have any more Nighthaunt figures and with these 18 I should have roughly enough to make a Warcry band although I lack I leader.... I took a quick look at the issues and in order to have all the options that I can use in a Warcry band I would need to get:

• #10: Tomb Banshee
• #19: Knight of the Shrouds on Ethereal Steed, Guardians of Souls, Spirit Torment
• #24: Lord Executioner, Grimghast Reapers, Glaivewraith Stalkers
• #28: Spirit Hosts
• #39: Cairn Wraith
• #44: Liekoron the Executioner

And perhaps the following just because they look cool although I can't use them in Warcry:

• #6: Thorns of the Briar Queen
• #14: Dreadblade Harrows
• #38: Crawlocke the Jailor
• #48: Reikenor the Grimhailer

(so basically, almost every Nighthaunt issue published)

But that would put the investment around the 100€ mark and it would no longer be "a few of those nice cheap ghosts minis to experiment with" and suddenly would become "my Age of Sigmar Nighthaunt Army" which I am not prepared to start, so I am going to pass on this. Maybe as a future project sometime...

For now, I leave you with the pictures of the Stalkers:

And here is a group picture:

Painted in 2020

Banshees

Here are four painted Banshees using the same technique described for the Chainrasps but omitting the Blue part since they are fully ethereal.

I had a blast painting the bases and all the ghostly stuff going through them.

Got them from Mortal Realms #2

Painted in 2020

Chainrasps

I managed to get my hands on a few numbers of the Mortal Realms collection.

Here are ten Chainrasps that come from issue #1. At a cost of 1,99€ not buying them was like losing money :)

I experimented with them a little bit and asked around with a few test colour schemes until I got them exactly like I wanted. It turns out that they are extremely fast to paint. And I really mean it, each one takes roughly 15 minutes, excluding drying time.

To be honest of course the end result is quite rough, but can be easily improved by cleaning up the messy drybrush and doing proper highlights. That would turn the figures from "horribly painted" to "acceptable tabletop".

This experiment has helped me check that I could get an Army painted in no time with this quality. Which for a Nighthaunt Army due to the look n' feel it has I guess it's ok. But let's not go there yet.

The step by step is:

1. White base coat
2. Paint base and details using grey for stone + dark tone wash. Bone and Brown for bones. Green + dark tone wash + yellow highlight for bushes
3. Gold from Game Color on weapons
4. Paint white over any mistakes done on previous steps
5. Paint Nihilak Oxide (from Citadel) over all white and gold areas
6. Paint Night Blue from Game Color on the cloth
7. Highlight with light grey or grey + white the cloth and the green areas either with dry brush or fine edge highlight

Without further ado here are the photos.

Painted in 2020

HeroQuest: Zombies

The last two Undead of the set.

Pale green for the skin with a strong dark wash to give it deep shadows and putrid feel. Clothes painted with blue and purple pants because if you are painting a green human figure, you need to give it purple pants if you can!

Here is a family picture of all the undead.

Painted in 2020

HeroQuest: Mummies

The next two Undead join the ranks of painted HeroQuest figures!

Even faster to paint than the skeletons. Basecoat white, sepia wash and highlight with bone and white. Cold blue for the skin with a tiny highlight.

Painted in 2020

HeroQuest: Skeletons

Here are the first of the Undead that I have painted for HeroQuest.
They have been very easy and fast to paint.
Basecoat white, sepia wash for the bones, highlight of bone. Brown for the wood and boltgun for metal. A bit of extreme weathering on the blade ... and done!

And with these four skeletons, I have breached the 100 miniatures painted mark for the year! Yay!

Painted in 2020

Blood Bowl: Undead

And here it is, a new shiny and putrid Blood Bowl team, The Lybaras Buccaneers!

This marks the third milestone of the year! And all within the first half of it, so I am on a very good track to make all the milestones :)

This is my fifth team, the others are:

1. Dwarfs: Petisos Carambanales
2. Humans: Satanases del Infierno
3. Ogres: Gordonchos de Zara
4. Chaos: Agol Bashers

Since I decided to "name" every team I feel like the end result is much better, as they get a logo, a suitable matching livery and unique attitude. If you follow the links above, you will be able to see each one and why they were named like that.

The reason why I have decided to name this team as Lybaras, can be seen in the following map:

Lybaras is a city on the East Coast of the Realm of the Dead. It felt like the right location for a fleet of Buccaneers, similar to other well-known but in the wrong Coast :) Therefore, I decided to take it as the home site of my team.

You can read more about Lybaras in this extract from the Khemri Army book:

I have embraced the History of Lybaras to adapt it to my team. While of course it cannot be led by the Queen Khalida herself, the team are devote followers of Asaph, goddess of vengeance and magic. They hate Nagash's Vampires and they are quite independent from Khemri's rule.

The colors of the team are black, red and white. Helmets are black and red.

Painting recipes

As for the painting, I base coated all figures in white and applied different washes and thinned down colours with medium to get interesting tones.
All bones were painted with Sepia Wash, then highlighted with Bone and some final lights with pure white.
The bandages followed a similar approach but I did a mix of Bone and Siena for the highlighting.
Zombies were painted in pale green, pale blue and putrid flesh. I used thinned versions of these colours to get the base layer and used the pure color to apply the highlights.
The Ghouls got a thinned down violet wash to get some depth and let it flow into the recesses, then highlighted with pink.
Black parts like trousers and boots were painted with dark german grey and highlighted with lighter grey.
Red parts were painted Blood Red directly on top of the white base, and highlighted with a mix of orange and red. The holes in the armour were given a dark wash to give them depth. The red color I use is quite glossy and provides an interesting final effect that looks like it was lacquered.
Metal parts like spikes and such were painted with space wolves grey, washed with dark wash and highlighted with pure white to give some contrast. It is not NMM but uses some of the concepts for the stark highlights.
Bases were painted using Agrax Technical paints with some tuffs and black borders.

After painting them, as I have done with hundreds of miniatures, I sprayed anti-matt varnish from Army Painter and.... disaster! A thin layer of white particles covered a few of the models (see picture) and I needed to carefully repaint some areas. In the end, I was so fed up with it that I left a few areas, mainly the boots, without repairing them... I might come back to that at some point, but for now, I leave them as it is.
The spray that I used was almost empty so I have just thrown it away and bought a new one!

The team is still lacking two additional Ghouls, as the box does not contain them. So, when they release a booster upgrade I will need to get it and paint them following the guidelines written above.

Painted in 2020