The Undead - up close and personal

Skeleton Horde, John Blanche, 1986

A few days ago I posted some army pictures of my Undead, and I thought I'd follow that post up with some pictures of the individual units. This army has been about 9 years in the making (off and on), and as I look at some of the models I can see how my painting style has changed over the past few years. I don't think that I've gotten significantly better at painting but I have certainly gotten faster. I have the airbrush to thank for that - I think it is a great tool with a steep learning curve, but it saves you basecoating time in the long run. With tools like an airbrush, washes and some of the new technical paints, it's really become a lot quicker to get an army on the table. Only prohibiting factor now is the astronomical cost of the models 

Enough chatter, on to the pictures, starting with a unit of grave guard ...

These guys are a mixture of the old metal grave guard from 7th ed and the newer plastics. I prefer the older ones TBH. Squeezed in a cheeky old wight lord in the front rank to the left 

Ye old terrorgheist sitting on a crypt. Been done before, I know, but I couldn't resist

Varghulf, one of the best individual models in the old VC range, in my opinion

Arkhan the Black. I just love this model. It's so dynamic, and the new Arkhan model puts the old one to shame

Coven throne

Corpse cart, from Gamezone Miniatures (Chariot of the Harvester)

Black coach, with converted steeds. 

Vampire chilling in his coffin. I didn't glue the coffin in place so that the vampire could pop out and say hello during photo shoots!

In game, I used these as vampire bats since I couldn't stand the bat models. They are obviously converted from Brettonian pegasus knights. The fluff behind them are that they are vampire thralls providing aerial backup to the army

Vampire bats, again from Gamezone miniatures (I think they are harpies in that range)

Spirit hosts, an airbrush painter's dream

Hexwraiths, really took me a while to settle on a color scheme for these guys. I'm not a big fan of models painted solely in monochrome ethereal colors, so I decided to to paint the riders differently to make them 'pop' a little 

Black knights converted from old vampire blood knights (pretty much just a head and weapon swap). I quite like how they turned out. I just love the Gamezone mounted vampires so much that they were a shoe-in for blood knights, meaning that I had to use my Games Workshop blood knight models for something else.

                                                              

                                                        

These are the Gamezone mounted vampires. Beautiful models. The champion (second from right) has been slightly converted. 

My army commander is a vampire from Enigma miniatures. His jolly banner-bearer is from Forgeworld 

These grave guard with halberds are some of my favorite models in the Games Workshop range. So characterful

I really dislike the Games Workshop plastic zombies, so I converted this regiment from Brettonian men-at-arms

My ghouls are a mixture of 5th edition metal games workshop ghouls and ghouls from Heresy miniatures (the latter being some of the best ghouls on the market, IMO)

A mix of old and new banshees accompanied by older metal wraiths. The blue vampire is from the Night Horrors range of miniatures. Apart from the banshees, I went for blue skin on vampires and vampire-like creatures (Vargheists, Varghulf)

From left to right, an old Sartosan vampire, Winged Vampire and necromancer conversion

I quite like this necromancer from Heresy miniatures

A Strigoi vampire lord, from back in the day when there were different bloodlines

Wight lord

Limited edition Skin-Wolf from Forgeworld (used as a werewolf or Varghulf)

A nice mix of dire wolves. The front 10 are metal models again from Gamezone miniatures, while the back 10 are the standard Games Workshop wolves

I hope you enjoyed this picture dump. It gave me a good excuse to bring out some of my toys for photographing, and to tempt me to get some of the new Nighthaunt models. Until next time, happy painting!