Thursday, June 18, 2009

The Dead Arise...and are painted! Also some BRs

It took me a couple of evenings (ok like 5), but I finally finished up my unit of zombies. They turned out pretty nice I think. Nothing really special to them, but I did like the way the skin turned out. I also decided to stick with my original basing scheme even though they blend in a little bit with the gray. In the end it will probably help with the consistency of the army.





I also got the chance this last weekend to play a couple of games against the ND crew. Though I was slightly intoxicated from the wedding dance, on Sat. night I took on Brian's warriors of chaos. I think he made up the list shortly before I got there just so I could get a game in. The short summary of the game included me march blocking a large part of his right flank with my bats, raising zombies to take table quarters, my cairn wraiths taking out his shaggoth, and my vamp lord making some amazing dice rolls to save his ass (his general was on a disc with the runeshield thing (negates all magic weapons in BtB) and the sword of "I wound you and you are now T2 S2 for the rest of the game)). All in all a pretty fun game, and he definitely gave me some great tips on playing my army. I think I ended up with a minor victory.

The second game I played was against Seth's tomb kings. I barely knew the rules to this army, so it was a good learning experience. I also remember it better because it was the next morning. The first couple of turns weren't too eventful. He shot up some wolves with his archers, and also managed two great misfires with his catapult. By turn three things got a little interesting. He set up a charge trap for my blood knights, but didn't position his chariot quite correctly, and I managed to get a charge off on his catapult instead. Smoking the catapult my BKs ended up behind his lines, awesome. Meanwhile, his general with the tomb guard was getting close to my general in with the grave guard, not so awesome. Turn 4 came around, and his ushabti managed to get a rear charge on my blood knights. I wasn't too worried, until he rolled amazingly well, and smoked the whole unit! His general unit also got into combat with my general unit. With the hammer of "smoke everything in BtB" on his general (can't remember the name of it) and a flank charge by some chariots, he managed to get up to a +14 CR before I got to hit back. Thank God for dreadlance and red fury. 7 dead tomb guards later I only lost CR by 4. Still, my grave guard was slim and my vamp had only 2 wounds left, and with a lot of his stuff left I knew my vamp lord wasn't going to last much longer. In my next turn (with the help of Jason) I noticed that his heirophant was in charge range of my vamp with the talisman of the lynci (M9). Sweet. I took it out and overan into his casket of souls. Commence the crumbling. On the other side of the table my bats managed a charge on his archers, almost wiping the unit. I also raised back some of the grave guard, and tried to put some wounds on his general with no avail. Top of turn 5 he took his LD rolls with pretty good success. The combat I dreaded was coming. He got off 2 wounds on my lord, and me needing a 6+ to save, couldn't manage. Commence MY crumbling. In the last turns we just shuffled units around to try and take quarters, and tried to roll low. The result was a minor victory for Seth. Overall it was a very fun game, it can't be too often that both armies crumble during the battle.

Tuesday, June 9, 2009

Working on...Zombies!

I finally got a camera back, so I decided to take some pictures of the models I'm currently working on.

I've been painting up a unit of 20 zombies. Yay for block painting...bleh. I think they will turn out pretty nice though. I'm going for a more gray and decrepit look instead of fleshy. So far all I have is the base coat of gray on them, along with the green on their tattered clothes. I plan to do a drybrush of a flesh color over the gray, with a final very diluted black wash. The clothes will turn out very much like the dead corpses on my corpse cart model. After that it's just down to highlighting and the fancy stuff. I'll probably have to do a variation on my usual basing though, as they will blend in too much with the grey gravel I've been using.


So when my eyes and brain can't take it anymore I've also starting working on my horseless vampire. He's going to be a beast in my army. With the Talisman he will be able to charge 18" on foot, have a good save, and will also be my BSB. He is also arguably the best looking model that's going to be in my army, though I really like the look of my vamp lord so it's debatable. Just got him glued together and primed tonight so when I can't take block painting I'll move over to him.


Monday, June 1, 2009

Wraiths

While I don't have access to a camera yet (my wife took it with her this week to her internship), I thought I would post my most recent purchase.

I really didn't like the look of the GW Cairn Wraith models, so I started searching for some substitutes. Scooby D-bag gave me some great sites to look at, and I finally decided last week to buy the wraith miniatures from Heresy Games (great models here btw). They arrived today unscathed, and I even got a free cherry sucker!