Adding to the Undead Pile

The next campaign game between Mat and I will involve his Undead Necrolian army against my Beersteiners with just over 100 figures a side, a small to medium sized game. Mat's force is attacking my force at my capital. I think my firepower will stop his victory. On the other hand, nothing is differnt , especially as a dice roll of a 5 or 6 determines that there will be rain or wind. We then roll again to see if it is severe. These can have adverse results for musket and bows. He needs to get in close for his melee aces, the vampires and wight, whilst I need to give him some lead poisoning, to the extent that the dead can be 'poisoned', but I can blow their heads off. Anyhow, the approaching battle influenced me to do some Undead conversions and some more paintjobs.

First up is a very straight forward zombie paint job on a copy of a Timpo knight. I think this is my favorite of the Timpo Action Pack one-piece knights. I have already painted a number of these as ordinary knights. This time I started with a white GW spray undercoat. As he is a zombie, I painted him in faded and rusty shades. The metal was made from a mix of gunmetal, orange and bronze. The tunic was painted in a dull, dark red with yellow lion with orange wash. The face was given a wash of crimson. A black ink was applied to the armor; this works especially well with chainmail. Some silver dry brushing was added to the armor and the whole figure given a light drybrush of white. This zombie still retains his handsome looks as he is most likely recently dead and did not take any mutilating cuts and blows before death. He will be based on card, so I haven't painted his plastic base. If I wanted him to be a ghost, I would possibly have given a similar finish as on the face, to the clothes, armor and shield. This was a quick, easy paintjob.

 Below are some Technolog made in Russia armored skeletons. The one in the middle has been converted from the lefthand pose by scalping and removing the horns and adding a crown. What do you think I made the crown from?

    I needed more armored Undead cavalry. I could use my already painted ordinary knights, but I wanted them to be distinctive and I already had a couple of conversions to supplement. These cheapo, made in China knights, have mostly been given new heads and legs changed; the bases from some foot figures were removed on some of them and the left legs straightened.  There are a couple of other brands, including a Reamsa remold.

  Figures ready for undercoats. As usual I stick the odd figure from a completely different theme there. Those horses are Chinese copies of Britains Detail.

              My usual undercoat is white because light and bright colors look best over it.

  I often use black when there are more dark colors and armor. Citadel (Games Workshop) used to have a spray called Mournfang Brown which was excellent for horses. As usual, just when I become keen on a product it is discontinued. WHY get rid of such a useful product? At least they make the white and black and some other colors.

  Here is the figure with the crown. Have you guessed what it was made from? Yes, it is cut from the top of a Super Glue lid. It works with this head as it is a relatively large head. This figure is intended to be a Wight King, a melee powerful Undead warrior.
  The figure at left is a copy of Matchbox and will be part of 'The Warlord's army' a generic and period vague force for everything from 20th century style to retro SF.

   This is an original Britains Detail horse which I am repairing; it will have a putty tail built on the wire. The figure riding it is the Reamsa knight painted as Undead.

   Halloween is a favorite time of year for me as I check out the products I could use in my hobby. These nails make swell shields.

                                                 The cheapo knights are having bases removed...

                                                and given different heads and weapons.

    The Reamsa knight has been given a skeleton warrior head. All the figures had crosses carved off.

                                       I'll be posting more pics when these blokes are painted.

I quite like the white dry brushing. In theory I could do something similar with other armies, probably with alight sand as even brightly colored and elite troops look grotty on campaign. However, I have come to like my troops to look pretty - except when they are undead.