Mertvet

As promised, here I am going with more wights - or in this case, liches, disciples of Daremnych. This one here is a gorgeous model from Otherworld Miniatures, bought a long time ago, finally painted. He was something different in this typical scheme of mine - there was just way more clothes than metal, so I couldn't just drown it in verdigris! Still, I think it worked in my favor in the end - I got lots of space to paint freehands on, the red robe reinforces his image as an evil wizard and patina got used only as subtle, yet effective accents.

Immediately after being raised, Daremnych started to look for his old lieutenants - to replace living necromancers as soon as possible. The first one found was Mertvet - the most reliable one. That wasn’t thanks to his loyalty or stability, no - rather, the opposite. He could be simply expected to always act in his own interest. Where a loyal man could be broken in the most unexpected moment, Mertvet’s betrayals could always be planned for. He got recruited into Daremnych’s cult when he was busy terrorizing the countryside as a powerful, immoral wizard conducting experiments on people he captured. In exchange for his help in the Death God’s army, he could continue his deeds while enjoying the newfound security, without being harassed by heroes trying to slay him. That and he didn't have to risk the price of denial - fighting much more powerful Daremnych - which was in the end, the reason for his death a long time ago. After being raised, Mertvet and the Great Priest decided to simply continue their agreement as if nothing happened.

Sorin's Wolf Pack

I'm back to painting zombies! Well, sort of - I managed to finish a pack of Zombie Wolves from Gamezone Miniatures.

I wanted to have those beautiful miniatures probably ever since I started collecting undead - and got them cheaply some years later on eBay, that was quite a steal! Then I filled the gaps between the parts and then they lingered on a shelf while I was doing other big projects. I finally took them while I was working on Vaclav, because I wanted to post something new, instead of just spamming zombie groups and I hoped that I could squeeze a small project somewhere in between... and well, seeing as I am posting them now, that didn't work out that well! Still, I found some color schemes and basecoated them at that time, so I had at least that going for me! Painting them went really quick and I had lots of fun with it, unlike the last Gamezone model that I painted... that gives me great hopes about their Mournful Knights, which are also waiting for their turn for a long time.

Seeing as there is only one unit of them and they are much less generic than the current GW ones, I wanted to make them a little bit special - so I painted their fur differently, getting some inspiration from pictures of real wolves and dogs. It mostly got lost underneath the rotting flesh and blood, but I think it gives them an interesting feel and I think they turned out good enough.

Sorin, fond of using wolves in his plans, usually resorts to local ones buried under the Varsavian earth. Only on special occasions he uses his own, trained pack of undead canines brought from the far north. Bigger, stronger and more resilient than your usual raised wolf, they are very reliable scouts, pursuers and distractors. Sorin’s kennels are big enough that with some necromancy added, he will never run out of beasts to help him catch especially elusive prey.

First, the whole unit:

And all the dogs separately:

Daremnych the Great Liche Priest

The unpainted conversion can be seen HERE.

"Necromancer Lord" from Avatars of War range, one sculpted by Gary Morley - the same one who sculpted the old clown-style Nagash for GW - so this model can be seen as his another take on the topic, even if for another company and under a different name. I liked this mini the moment I saw it, but I still had to convert it a bit to make it fit my Slavic wights better.

And speaking of those wights, man it was good to be back to this patinated color scheme! It was more than two years since I painted anything like that and I had to remind myself of how to do it, but once I did (thankfully the tutorial is helpful to me too!) I had a real blast, kinda nostalgic! I took out two liches and a bunch of Grave Guards too - and I did the whole process on the all at once. Then I did the usual bone, blacks with freehands and reds, only this time concentrating on the giant liche here. I will be posting the rest during upcoming weeks. Daremnych was especially interesting because he had this ground with bones rising up from the base - I never painted something like this before. Well, that and flames too, even if I hate painting those!

This guy opens a new 'season' in my upcoming projects too, expect much more from this subfaction in the near future!

Alexander Hautfell and his necromancers were crucial to raising, sustaining and supporting the wight armies that were the most effective fighting force available to the undead. That gave them much independence and influence in the local politics. That lasted until King Zlyshko managed to find another well-hidden wight barrow. Necromancers, not knowing into what they were getting into, helped to raise another ancient wight. He introduced himself as Daremnych, the Grand Priest of the Death God and the Hierophant of Bones. Towering over everyone else, he was one of the rare Varsavian Giants, a powerful necromancer and a very old, experienced schemer. Centuries spent in the barrow rusted his precision of handling the wings of magic and he didn’t know the new, refined invocations of the modern sorcerers, but his incredibly powerful, if somewhat wild and unpredictable magic skills were enough for the wights to finally stop relying on the feeble, human necromancers. They could go forth really expanding their armies. Still, even if discarded and without protection, Hautfell wasn’t ready to give up yet.

Great Basilisk - WIP

And now something different - a Chaos monster! I bought him kinda like I did with my Boyar earlier - not because I intended to use it somehow on the tabletop, but because it would fit in my Slavic-themed collection. While a cockatrice isn't a particularly Slavic beast, a basilisk certainly is! It was probably the second mythical monster I heard about as a child - after the dragon from Krakow of course.

While it's a good base, I didn't find the GW Cockatrice to be 'basilisk enough', the rooster aspect of it wasn't as pronounced as I would like - and the most important feature of the beast, its eyes, were also way too small. So I made new eyes out of greenstuff and built all the fleshy parts around them to make it resemble a rooster a little bit more. I also didn't like the weird claw the original sculpt had on the end of the tail, so I just cut it off and sculpted a normal, scaly tail. I bent the wings a bit too, they were unnaturally straight and flat - thankfully it's very easy to do such changes in resin with just some warm water.

EDIT: The finished model can be seen HERE.

Zombie Legion - Idol Statues

Part of the Zombie Legion

When I was at the end of my zombie-building process, when I was completely out of suitable models and cool ideas, I filled the missing places with those statues. I planned it like that since the beginning - seeing as those are scratchbuilt, I needed only milliput, greenstuff and a free base - I could easily make them exactly as much as needed. They would also help to bring this chaotic mass of corpses a little bit closer to the Slavic theme of this force.

I thought I would make them stand alone on those 40mm bases, but they would become either way too thick or the base seemed empty. That's why the three ones seen on the top of the picture got a single zombie each to make them a little bit crowdier. Two below are kinda opposite - I wanted both the spider and the whipper to stand on something that would elevate them and those wooden idols were a much better idea than using a simple, boring stone. The minis were there first, statues came later.

I will make a tutorial in the future about building and painting those.

Giant sculptures depicting old gods, heroes and ancestors, carved out of whole tree trunks are a common sight in the Varsavian wilderness - it’s difficult to move through the land without stumbling upon at least one of them. Despite their true meaning becoming mostly forgotten today, the villagers still care for those idols - not wanting to anger the old spirits and being somehow proud of their old cultural heritage, something that makes them different from other people of Kislev. Boyars tend to ignore this sentiment because the villagers still pay their taxes and it's much better than worshipping Chaos.