Undead Army - 28mm

I thought I'd show you what I've been working on for most of the past year. I started a new Warhammer Fantasy army based on the Mantic Kings of War range of figures. Their undead range is really nice and much superior to the Games Workshop one for around a 1/3 of the price.

This is the army as it stands at the moment including all the unpainted/WIP bits and bobs

It comprises (Mantic names in brackets):

Vlad Von Carstein

Konrad Von Carstein
Blood Dragon Vampire

Necromancer Lord (Mhorgoth)

2xWight King (Revenant King)

Wight King Battle Standard Bearer

3x Necromancers

Necromancer on a Corpse Cart

40 Skeletons
20 Ghouls
82 Zombies
10 Dire Wolves

10 Black Knights (Revenant Knights)

40 Grave Guard (Revenants)
5 Wraiths
5 Blood Knights (GameZone)
9 Fell Bats
9 Bat Swarms
2 Balefire Catapults
2 Spirit Hosts

The stuff in blue is what I am still working on, so I'm getting there with it. I've actually only used the army once as I don't get to play much Warhammer. I do enjoy painting up units and armies though (odd I know!) so its been fun collecting it. All of the Games Workshop models were purchased from ebay, mostly in unpainted condition, so that saved me a lot of money, in total it costs me ~£225 for the lot. When you compare to GW retail prices of £62 for 40 skeletons and £61.50 for 5 Blood Knights it starts to look like an incredibly cheap army.

I'll post up some unit pictures over the next few weeks but in the meantime I've got a shot of the painted portion of the Mantic Kings of War army and one of the skeleton units to get us started.

Mantic Kings of War Army

Mantic Skeleton Regiment

I painted these over an undercoat of Army Painted Skeleton Bone primer. This stuff is fantastic for painting undead and lends itself to a quite unique painting technique. By using very thin paint for the basecoats the undercoat shows through, however as the thin paint naturally pools in the recesses and the undercoat showing through is light it effectively provides a basecoat and shade in one step. By careful colour selection these can be painted really quickly.

I used Vallejo French Mirage Blue for the cloth, GW boltgun metal for the weapons/armour, Vallejo US Field Drab for the leather and GW Foundation Necron Abyss for the shields. The helmet plumes were just given a heavy wash of GW Baal Red wash. The wooden shield backs were just glazed with dark brown ink over the undercoat.

The entire models were then washed liberally with GW Devlan Mud and then everything but the metal was drybrushed with Vallejo Iraqian Sand (like a lighter GW Bleached Bone).

For the weathering the chips on the shields and dirt on the banner were added with a sponge and GW Khemrian Brown. Then a couple of stages of rust weathering powders were added to the metal (MIG Old Rust, then MIG Rust) by mixing them with thinners and just randomly dabbing it on with a paint brush. I think the weathering powders give a more realistic texture to rust than using orange paint, for probably less effort.

The last stage was to wash the eye sockets with a couple of coats of GW Aysurman Blue wash and then pick out the eye balls with Vallejo Pale Blue to give them the appearance of glowing blue eyes.

The bases were painted GW Cathyan Brown, drybushed Vallejo Iraqian Sand and then covered with patchy dead grass. The grass is Steppe Grass from Antenociti's Workshop. I think its parched, dead look works well with the undead.

Mantic Skeleton - shows the effectiveness of the brown ink wash over the bone undercoat on the shield back

Mantic Skeleton

I'll post up some more units soon.