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:

The Deadminder

A 'Chariot of the Harvester' from Gamezone Miniatures, painting finished in April 2016. Despite being rather small, this one took much more time than it should. The assembly was a bit demanding but it was nothing that greenstuff couldn't fix. The painting after that was just tedious - it was really difficult to discern what is what on the mini and my motivation wasn't the best at the time.

Either way, I am rather satisfied with it and it was an interesting experiment with basing. It's difficult to see it here, but I made a road with wheel-ruts on it and covered only the sides and the middle part with grass. This was the first time I used big tufts of grass and they proved most useful for this one.

A deadminder was a very important profession in the varsavian society of Death God worshippers. Wars were being waged, animals were being hunted in the forest, villages were being raided by bandits. All of that left many corpses - which left untended, were later eaten by animals, forgotten and unmourned. The deadminder was supposed to gather all the corpses - in whatever state they were left - and later perform the necessary rituals and send the deceased to the Death God's embrace. Many people had this profession over the centuries, but one particular was immortalized in the folk stories. He was a father pleading his loyalty to both his family and the Death God. He often spent many days far from home, burying the dead and then coming back to spend few days happily together with his wife and children. One time, he went away and weren't coming back for many, many weeks. Then the hard times came and the mother began having difficulties to feed the whole family. The youngest daughter saw her mommy overwork herself, only to get barely enough food for all of them. She decided to lighten her mother's burden - being driven with the love for her father and the devotion to the Death God, she ventured into the forest to find the deadminder, live with him and help him, for he surely had a lot of work. It's said that she found her father, worked together with him and for their devotion the Death God let them stay in the world of the living. Some think they both died in the forest, but others can swear by seeing both of them traveling slowly through Varsavia, minding the dead as always.

Serrana - the Strigoi Sister

'The Harpy's Embrace' miniature from Gamezone painted in August 2015, converted to serve in my army as a Strigoi Ghoul Queen. The idea to make one came to me when someone on the net mentioned that there's no rule against giving vampiric power 'Beguile' to a Strigoi Vampire. One thing I changed to make her more 'vampiric' was adding bat ears - the conversion post can be found HERE. Just as her brother, she too can be mounted on a Terrorgheist base - which can be seen HERE. The painting itself was much more challenging than expected - it was the first time I had to paint so much smooth skin and it was difficult at times to discern what is what. Despite that I still think that the mini's sculpt and design is outstanding - the way she's cradling his head, the way she blocks his hands with her legs - tender yet deadly.

While von Greifens tend to look down on Strigoi vampires, Haralamb Gudvanger isn't so discriminating. He took care of two Strigoi siblings and helped them crush the witch hunt that was following them. Thankful, the feral vampires help the flesh-stitcher as shock troops and ghoulish commanders on the field.

Gavros' sister Serrana is a rare sight - a female Strigoi. One would be gravely mistaken to think she'll be docile though. While not as rage-driven as her brother, she definitely makes up for that in sadism and cunning. Loft upon giant bat wings, she often beguiles her prey with her sleek, shapely physique and a bit of vampiric magic - when the poor fool notices her wicked face it's already too late. Draining one unfortunate completely, she just jumps onto another one, more often than not playing with her meal before finally snapping the neck. Being the only other person her brother listens to and having a cooler judgment, she makes manipulating them a little more difficult than Gudvanger would like to.

Strigoi Siblings - WIP

A short post showing my conversions of two minis I use as Strigoi vampires - Gavros and Serrana. Both of them got large ears - which was inspired by Turelim vampires from the Legacy of Kain franchise - I just really like feral vampires with laarge ears. I heard also people saying it reminds them of gremlins, so there's that too. More detailed info on them is in their separate posts.

Gavros the Strigoi Ghoul King is first:

And his sister Serrana, the Strigoi Ghoul Queen: