Viktor von Greifen, Captain of the Prenzlauer Guard

Finally, Victor von Greifen, the Devil of Nemnov is finished!

Quite some time ago I kitbashed myself a model to try out an upgraded color scheme for my The Prenzlauer Guard, my Blood Knights converted out of older Chaos Knights. He was fun to convert, but then it was time to actually try out this new 'renovation' idea of mine.

The main idea was to avoid flat and featureless red plates on the armor and to replace them with something clearly similar, but fancier and more detailed. I went with a marble pattern because I really like painting those and it seemed like a good idea to give some regal, noble note to the model. This first step was messy - wetblending, sprinkling, washing, more sprinkling, glazing, all at once. When that was done I could comfortably move to the other parts - adding more contrast to the metal elements, actually highlighting the flesh on the black horse, etc.

While I like the dark and grim style of Viktor, the old vampires still have some charm to them. Still, I leave the judgment on whether I improved on the old The Prenzlauer Guard to you readers. All things considered, I'd sooner convert new Chaos Knights into Blood Knights than try to repaint anything.

The elite unit of the Prenzlauer Guard was with the von Greifen brothers since their killing of their own sire Laurentin - but they were a blood-crazed and unruly bunch. To keep them in check, Constantin turned a promising soldier from Kislev into a vampire and made him a captain of the unit. He may be more level-headed and intelligent than his subordinates, but he still managed to bloodily beat some discipline into them and it would be a grave mistake to consider him forgiving or compassionate. Known as the Devil of Nemnov, he keeps the settlements under his care in line mostly through fear - dealing bloody retributions for the merest of slights. While Constantin prefers a more pragmatic and humane approach to his mortals, he’s willing to sacrifice those people and tolerate Viktor because he gets the job done and keeps the flank secure, freeing the brothers to focus on other parts of their lands. That and his hammer in an invaluable help in any battle.

Viktor von Greifen, Captain of the Prenzlauer Guard - WIP

The Prenzlauer Guard are one of the oldest miniatures that I have in my undead collection - which means that they grew to look a bit dated to me - and I think about repainting them to my current standards from time to time. This would mean not painting new things and not moving forward, so I never actually did it. An opportunity showed itself when I found a Chaos Lord horse cheaply on ebay - it has a similar style to the Chaos Knights that I used last time, so it was perfect. Besides, I love that model. I decided to kitbash on it a leader for that unit, allowing me to try doing another take on a chaos-based-vampire.

In the end, the kitbash ended looking very similar to the original Lord - he is made mostly out of Skullcrusher bits, with a head from the Terrogheist kit, a big hammer and a shield and a cloak (which will be on the next installment of Sculpting Tips). After starting with Instagram I also found tons of cool kitbashing inspiration - and that's why he has so many little details hanging around, I love that style. It's still quite reserved, though - I will try doing something much more cluttered in the future.

Zombie Legion - Miscellaneous

Part of the Zombie Legion

Almost exactly a year ago, on March the 25th 2018, after a crazy and difficult modelling journey, I posted the finished Zombie Legion. It seems fitting to post today the last of the zombie sub-batches, which I kept churning out during this year - and finally close this project. Here come the miscellaneous zombies, the ones that couldn't fit in any other group that I did, the dregs of the dregs, the last ones. This means that I won't be boring you readers with those old projects, now everything should be new and fresh.

You could always find some sub-groups or themes in Constantin's zombie legion, but at the end of the day, it’s still a chaotic, everchanging mass of reanimated bodies - some things just find themselves there without any great reason. Despite that, or maybe because of it, they fit with the rest just fine.

First is the filler with the Terrorgheist head, probably the most humorous part of the whole horde. The idea came to me when I got an additional TG head in a bought collection of bits - and where else could I excercise some non-seriousness if not with the zombies? Setting them up in this position was a bit challenging, but I think it all worked out rather good, considering those zombies have wonky anatomy either way.

And the remaining singular zombies. Some of them are more interesting than others, like the headless flagellant, the armless one or the only undead greenskin. The rest are just the most common zombies that can be built from the old set - but those are needed too for real diversity after all.

And that's it folks, the Legion is done. And for all the zombie fans, I'll be back with a giant and a dragon in the future - there are always more zombies to be built after all.

Zombie Legion - Two Creeps

Part of the Zombie Legion

A small update today - the penultimate sub-part of the legion, the two creeps. I separated them from the rest because they don't really fit anywhere else and are still too distinctive to lump them together with the 'miscellaneous' group. They are from Reaper Miniatures and are known there as Dreg Devourer and Slinker. I bought them when I was looking for more bodies to fill space with - they are good sculpts and fit the rest of my undead pretty well.

One night, two mortal humans approached the vampires in Varsavia. They told the story how they have been traveling between the villages and towns, exploiting them, cheating and stealing. Now, they found about the undead rulers in the land and they wanted to offer their services, as guides or spies - hoping for protection in exchange. The small one was even trying to concoct some sort of agreement, which just reeked of loopholes and precise wording for them to use later. Constantin killed them, raised them as zombies and only then answered that he didn’t need any more help in that matter - not from such nasty human dregs as them and especially not from someone trying to cheat and manipulate him.

Zombie Legion - Forest Treasures

Part of the Zombie Legion

Yet another batch of old zombies to show, this time under a vague description of heavy containers / scenery pieces that zombies stand on or try to move. It was mostly a way to use some of the larger bits that I had laying around and without any good use for them - making them probably the most classical 'fillers' that I have in the legion.

People in Kislev say sometimes, that Varsavia is a perfect place to lose something. By means natural and unnatural, people, armies and whole cities can disappear without a trace. Remains of those can be then found much later, their original purpose already forgotten. Using his zombies’ eyes, Constantin patrols Varsavia for those lost treasures, because sometimes they can be really valuable. If not, they can be used as vantage points - or at least as a curiosity for Eshnuu, who really likes to deduct how some of those artifacts end up in Varsavian forests.

First is an ogre Leadbelcher Cannon that I made as an abandoned scenery piece in the middle of the forest. Adding various sorts of weathering to it was quite interesting. It was also dubbed once as 'zombies with guns'.

Next comes a dwarven wagon, next scenery piece left in the forest - taken from the Battle for the Skull Pass set. I decided to try out some water effects resin at least once in the legion, so I prepared a shallow hole in the base, filed off some of the wagon's wheel and submerged it in some sickly green 'water' - with a ghoulish zombie on top. A mini-diorama, I guess.

And the last one, two zombies dragging a treasure chest, because who said undead couldn't be used as menial labor? This piece is meant to be used in the legion together with the Stegadon. The monster's tail sticks out a little further than the base and it was difficult to find a zombie that would fit behind the monster without it looking weird - so I placed a small chest on the ground with two zombies beside it. Now the tail doesn't interfere with anything. Besides, I could use that rather cool-looking chest.

Zombie Legion - Skaven

Part of the Zombie Legion

Some zombie batches are still left to post - this time, some Skaven. I didn't have any spare ratmen bodies in my bits collection, so these were all bought specifically to be used in the Legion - mostly for a bit of diversity and completionism. Being non-humans, it was difficult to zombify them, as I couldn't just change some bits around, so their conversions are rather simple.

The wolf-rat was bought near the end of the whole project, when I was looking through ebay for some last miniatures to fill some space - and someone was selling it cheaply. It's not only an interesting piece by itself, but it's also a Forge World model used as a lowly zombie filler - another thing to take off my bucket list, I guess!

Ratmen crawl underneath all the Old World and they sometimes resurface even in such forgotten places as Varsavia. Their clashes with the vampires are not very common, but their soldiers, as frail as they are, make it into the zombies’ ranks too. Once skaven launched a more organized attack, bringing with them strange rat-wolves - beasts specializing in forest combat. Sorin's Vilks countered them quite effectively and brought them down with numbers - since then, one of such creatures accompanies the zombie horde.

Zombie Legion - The Order of the Lady's Tears

Part of the Zombie Legion

Back to the zombies! I am not posting this next batch because I don't have anything else to post, but rather that I want to be done with them at last!

The whole idea about those guys started with the one holding a scroll here. He was supposed to be a champion of one of the units and I was trying to come up with an idea to make him more interesting. Putting up a pointy hood with bleeding eyes seemed good enough. Then, when I was expanding the horde and I needed even more bodies, I started covering their heads with such hoods to keep the theme. It was especially useful on some bretonnian bodies, as those robes and coats are more difficult to damage and zombify than Free Company bodies, for example. Then I came up with a backstory for them, how they were blindly hunting undead, heretics and witches, not really bothering with trials. Not only it gave my horde some asshole victims but it also made one of them perfect to accompany the Pain Tree.

The tree idea came to me when I noticed that I have those cages from the Giant kit and I was wondering what to do with them - and then I decided to just hang them on a single tree, also using one of those hanged zombie torsos really as a hanged zombie torso. The twins, on the other hand, were an interesting way to use two extremely similar Flagellant bodies and two multi-ended whips I bought some time ago.

After finishing the horde I kinda regretted that I didn't get that Frostgrave Cultists box to really make a lot of them. Maybe I'll build and paint them as living humans - they would make good villains for my vampires.

When von Greifens still lived in Bretonnia, white hooded cultists with red emblems were their common enemy. The local nobles, not wanting to engage personally in the vampire-hunt, founded a group called ‘The Order of the Lady’s Tears’. It was composed mostly of younger peasants - desperate ones who couldn’t hope to inherit the land. In exchange for every found and/or executed vampire, undead, witch, etc. they were recompensated with money. They still had to pay all the taxes and undead weren’t as easy to be found, so they soon started hunting just about anyone disagreeing with them, forcing confessions, burning people - all to get their enterprise going forward. Vampire activity actually waned because of their hunts, so the nobles didn’t care about a few burned peasants. After moving to Varsavia, von Greifens were happy to run away from those thugs, but they were coming after them still with every small Bretonnian crusade that found itself in the land. They make zombies just as good as anyone else.

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:

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.

Zombie Legion - Cavalry

Part of the Zombie Legion

I really love cavalry miniatures and of course I couldn't skip on them in the Zombie Legion. The problem was that they usually go on 25x50mm bases and I had to stick them on 20x40mm ones - they have some difficulties fitting in, but with right neighbours they manage all right. You can see the unpainted versions of most of them HERE.

Most zombies walk by themselves, because it is usually tricky to make both the rider and the beast move in unison - but sometimes, an exception is made - even if such zombies can barely stay on their mounts, not to mention fighting. Still, Constantin loves to mock his defeated enemies, so if his forces manage to slay a high-ranking officer, a noble, or a member of an elite unit, he raises his corpse and puts it on a horse as a vile parody. Bretonnians - his most hated enemy - make this especially difficult. Knights will never suffer anyone of them be raised in such a manner, so they always bring their fallen comrades back with them or - should he really be raised - he’s hunted down with extreme prejudice. To express their disdain properly, vampires had to ‘build’ their own knight - out of random bodies, wooden scrap and farm tools. After some time Constantin decided that this solution was even better than having a real undead knight.

First is the Empire officer with his untypical vertical orientation. He is converted slightly - I took away his head, put an eye in the crow's beak, sculpted some guts hanging out from the horse's belly and added a gash in its eye socket. When it came to painting, I had an idea to make him really nice and glossy, using black and gold (inspired by Nilfgard colors from the Witcher franchise) and then cover him rather thickly with dust and mud and see how it'll turn out. In the end, I think I overdid the mud a bit, the glossy parts are really subtle - but at least he still fits with his colleagues.

And the the rest - a winged hussar, a rusted knight, bretonnian knight mockup and an acrobat. The first one is a greenstuffed kitbash mounted on a metal horse with some rather straightforward painting.

The second one is quite a veteran of the legion, built and painted for the first expansion to the unit - but he didn't have any cavalry friends back then. I always wanted to have a limp corpse being carried on a horse in my army and a really, really rusted knight too - so he counts here for both. The rust is different than most of the legion, I painted him before I started using pigments for rust.

The third one started as am attempt to kitbash an undead Bretonnian knight. While doing that, I noticed that I either don't have good bits to do it, or making them out of greenstuff would take too much time. That's why I started using much more 'rural' accesories, to create some sort of a mockup my Vampires could build up. Then came the backstory explanation for it and it all worked out fine in the end. To bring the idea further, I painted him in washed-out, natural colors, something a peasant would use, not like those colorful nobles.

And the last one came to be when I was trying to mount a ghoul model on a skeleton horse. I couldn't fit it there nicely, no matter how I tried but I noticed I could make it simply stand on its spine, like an acrobat. Seeing how zombies can be made more humorous than your usual undead, I just ran with it.

Zombie Legion - Torn parts

Part of the Zombie Legion.

This batch was brought together rather accidentally, it was only after building the whole horde when I noticed that they kinda fit a common theme. The first one was the ogre, I had a lot of ogre bits laying around after assembling my Crypt Horrors and I wanted to use them somehow. With a head and two hands it was relatively easy to sculpt just the torso with some guts spilling out. The spine was taken from a skeletal horse model, you can see the unpainted conversion HERE.

The parts of a giant was my attempt at using all the extra parts from the Giant box. There are so many additional body parts there, it would be a waste to not use them somehow. It was just a matter of sculpting some additional flesh to show that the part in question was indeed torn or cut off. Even though there are giant hands in the kit, the hand crawling here comes from the Beastmen Ghorgon kit - I bought the spare bits from someone on ebay mostly just to get that limb and make it crawl together with my zombies. Its position was perfect for my needs, I just needed to sculpt the torn stump and insert a toothpick and a bone from the Crypt Horrors kit there. You can find the unpainted versions of the head and the hand in the WIP post HERE.

It’s no difference for a necromancer whether the raises whole bodies or only parts of them - even a single hand can crawl if it’s instilled with dark magic - it just isn’t worth it most of the times. Unless one finds a giant or an ogre - that’s something else. Of course it would be ideal to raise such behemoths whole, but Constantin doesn’t complain when he happens upon just some torn pieces. A crawling giant’s hand can still crush a grown man and an ogre ripped in two will still messily devour anything unlucky to be caught by it.

Zombie Legion - Command Groups

Part of the Zombie Legion

More zombies while I am meticulously painting all the individual scales on the dragon...

Now, these were fun! Ever since the very beginning I have been trying to assign one command group to every zombie unit. Champion included, even if zombies cannot have champions in 8th edition WFB. Not only those groups made them look more organized, which I like, but they were also very good from the hobby standpoint - lots of converting, freehands, creating more interesting dudes than just your usual wound markers.

Constantin likes his horde somehow organized, at least slightly resembling real military units. He achieves this by giving each section a command group, with his family banner, a musician and a single zombie dressed like an officer. Surprisingly, this somehow improves their performance on the battlefield. It is unknown, if it’s because of the residual memories in each walking corpse are making them fight better under one command, or because it makes vampires and necromancers easier to focus their magic better when they can recognize each unit on the battlefield. No matter what it is, Constantin keeps the command groups gladly, replacing them after each battle as soon as possible.

First, the champions and the musicians. For this purpose, a champion was basically any zombie that is sticking its weapon into the air - and I actually ended with more of them than 8, so I had to choose some favorites. Musicians were also fun to build - I have so many leftover instruments laying around, I could do twice the amount needed - and every one was a cool modeling opportunity. Like that half of a zombie sitting on a carriage - I was really running out of legs so I got creative with some balsawood.

And the standard bearers - with their height, I couldn't fit them on one picture with the rest. As with the musicians, I could use a lot of my spare banners thanks to them - and they were also a freehand opportunity too! I tried painting my usual von Greifen coat of arms in many different colors and styles. It would be good to mention here that the ghoul with a bretonnian helmet, holding an axe, that's something I copied from one creative take on the Flesh-Eater Courts, done by the user Dez in the Dark Age of Sigmar thread on TGA community HERE.

Zombie Legion - Elves

Part of the Zombie Legion.

The Dragon is taking a lot of time to paint, so I'll be showing some zombies in the meantime. This time, some elves.

I had some elf miniatures laying around, but I was never really fond of using them as zombies. They are all very clean, many of them with cloaks, robes - and the minis themselves, with their elves proportions, don't look very good if mixed with parts from the zombie kit. All of that makes it quite difficult to turn them into undead. Despite all that I added a small amount of them to the legion - even if it's only to have representatives of every race in the horde. Still, I think they turned out pretty ok - I especially like 'Lokhir Fellheart lite', the one with a standard crammed into his torso - and the wood elf with a bloody face. The High Elf one is from the old Cursed Company set, no converting needed - you can see other miniatures from that set in my collection, you can find them HERE.

Elves don't show up in Varsavia very often but Constantin can still boast about having few members of the elder race in his rotten legion. Some of those were parts of the Druichii slave raids, some were scouts operating in the Old World and some even fell from the sky after one of their aerial battles. Unfortunately, after being raised they don't retain their legendary skill or agility, so those zombies are just weak and frail versions of the human ones - with them it's probably more about collector's value than anything else.

And the second picture, an undead dark elf mistress whipping her zombie sub. The idea came to me when I was looking for usable bits in my Dark Elf Dragon box. There are two body options there, a male lord and a female sorceress. I wanted to place either one of them on a log and look silly, but I didn't know which one should I take - the sorceress won in the end because giving her a whip was an excuse to add someone being whipped in front of her, cheaply taking even more area using only 1 model more. That and the lord could be used for some vampire conversion later on, maybe. I added some trees to the bases, sculpted half a head for her, a new back for him, painted them - and a small BDSM action in the middle of the rotting horde was done. You can see the unpainted version HERE.

Zombie Legion - Varsavian Warriors

Part of the Zombie Legion. You can see the WIP post with the unpainted conversions HERE.

When I was in the last stages of gathering zombies for the legion, I came up to a point where I just didn't have enough bodies to fill all the bases. I have already bought all the GW sets that I found useful for that so I had to look for something else, possibly a big set of plastic infantry. Mantic didn't have anything interesting (and I really dislike their zombies) but then I remembered that there are some cool sets for Frostgrave! Cultists from that game could fit perfectly with my creepy cultists, but they weren't selling them in my shop - so I got Barbarians instead. Those guys looking as they do, it was an obvious choice to turn them into some kind of pre-Christian Slavic warriors. I mixed them a bit with some chaos marauder bits, added pointy helmets and some mustaches - and they were ready to go. Well, that and zombifying them too. I almost regretted zombifying them, because they could be also a very cool unit as living warriors.

The most obvious choice when painting them was to go with white clothes with red patterns on the edges - a combination that still lives in the Slavic folklore. But that would make them too uniform - and I wanted them to represent not one coherent unit, but various warriors took from various villages. So I added some dark and light browns, together with black + yellow patterns scheme that I use on my wights - they are supposed to be their descendants after all. Adding all that variation to them made them a bit too chaotic in my opinion, though. Still, they are in an even more messy mass of zombies, so they do their job fine.

Varsavia is officially a part of Kislev and its soldiers are defending its borders, but the people deep in the forests live on their own, following the old ways. There are many dozens of holds and villages scattered across the land, each one with their own chieftains, warriors and beliefs. Their technology is not as advanced as that of Kislev, but they are a hardy folk with marauder blood flowing in their veins with perfect knowledge of forest warfare - and they managed to survive all the years in this dangerous part of the Old World using only that. Their numerous clashes - some of them instigated by the vampires themselves, to keep the herd from uniting - are a fertile source of good bodies that can be raised and used in undead armies.

And again as separate warriors:

Zombie Legion - Beasts

Part of the Zombie Legion.

I am traveling right now, so for two weeks, I'll be posting some unpublished zombie batches, this time - beasts!

Most of them were painted and ready in October 2016, but then I added a boar to my collection and I didn't want to post them separately - and after the boar got painted I made a batch out of all of them. The small wolf was laying around my bitz box since forever, the boar was taken from under an orc rider I will probably never paint and the rest of them were bought specifically to be parts of the legion. They were really fun to convert and paint, certainly different that yet another human zombie.

Varsavia is full of dangerous wildlife and Constantin regularly adds animals to his zombie units. Wolves and boars are common here and they retain their ferociousness even after death - especially the so-called wolf-gods which can be twice as large as a horse. Those monstrous beasts are much prized by the vampires - if they manage to find and kill one first, that is. Besides them, battles fought with outside invaders bring truly an outlandish menagerie - elvish lions, lizards from the far west and other bizarre creatures are ready to be taken into an undead horde by a skilled enough practitioner of necromancy.

Gatzek

A Wolfbomination from the Zombicide game turned into a vampire monster, to be used in the game as an alternative Varghulf - you can see the conversion process HERE. He will be my second Varghulf, the first one can be seen HERE.

It was nice to finally paint a monster that wasn't a part of the Zombie Legion. I didn't have to rush everything, I could take my time and really enjoy the painting process, trying out things I've read about during this last year. Even the color scheme was already decided - light bluish skin and dark, reddish wings and fur - to fit together well with my other Varghulf. First, I painted its skin, wetblending light blue and dark blue paint to create areas of light and shadow - and then I kept adding many layers of glazes, both light and dark, to strengthen the contrasts and bring out the details. It was probably the first time when I really tried to think about zenithal light instead of just raised areas and recesses. When the skin was done I did the same with the red parts. After that, I added some subtle dark red glazes in the shaded areas to make the contrast between that and the cold highlights even stronger.

In the end, I think that he turned out pretty well and I enjoyed painting him. I like monsters of this size and the limited amount of colors also made things a bit less chaotic - especially after all those zombies! I'm thinking of doing some more alternative Varghulfs later, maybe this time scratchbuilt instead of converted.

Also, as I said in the WIP post, the word I used to name it, Gatzek (spelled in Gacek in Polish) is a Polish name for a family of bats - and also a kinda silly colloquial term for bats in general.

One of the most useful beasts used by von Greifens is the so-called Fledermaus - a vampire turned into an animalistic monster by their father, Laurentin. When a Necrarch scholar Eshnuu joined the brothers in Varsavia, he quickly became interested in replicating the process. Together with Lucan, they started catching - and if necessary - creating vampires to be turned. The experiments weren’t easy and many ‘applicants’ perished messily in the process. Only one of them survived - its past already forgotten, it began its new unlife as a muscle-bound bat-like monster with a distended jaw full of sharp teeth. Its mind broken and wiped, it is driven solely by its neverending, horrific hunger - with only commands of obedience burned into its brain keeping it at bay. Lucan named it ‘Gatzek’ - using a local, colloquial term for a bat - similarly to how Constantin calls his monstrous pet 'Fledermaus'. Only while Constantin says it with some kind of affection, for Lucan it's only a joke - he won't spare any feelings for mere weapons.

Gatzek - WIP

EDIT: The finished model can be seen HERE.

Okay, it's time for something that's not zombies! I took a short break to play Total War Warhammer 2, but it didn't stick - I went back to the hobby table rather quickly. Still used to the speed and amount of work that the zombie legion needed, I have about 5 or 6 different projects going on right now - and today I will share with you one that's presentable enough at this point. The word I used to name it, Gatzek (spelled in Gacek in Polish) is a Polish name for a family of bats - and also a kinda silly colloquial term for bats in general.

Some time ago I bought a Wolfbomination miniature from the Zombicide game (I didn't take a photo of the unconverted mini, so I am using one from the official website of the game):

I always wanted to have some werewolves in my army and this one looked good enough to be used, probably as an alternative Varghulf. Then it lingered on my shelf and in the meantime, I decided that I wanted to get some Skin Wolves from Forge Wold at some point. Now that Wolfbomination won't fit those (even less from a fluff perspective) so I started thinking how to use this miniature differently. The obvious way was to make it a vampiric monster, to make it really look like another Varghulf. I even had some extra Vargheist bits laying around, so that was actually doable!

I decided to give it a Vargheist head with a creepily long and wide jaw full of teeth - so I removed the wolf head, added the vampiric one and build some base for the lower jaw out of milliput. At this point I also I noticed that the Wolfbomination's arms were actually compatible with one set of Vargheist wings - so I glued those too. You can see that stage of the conversion below. Looking at it then I also thought that it definitely could use some more mass - especially on those tiny legs.

I rolled tiny, pointy teeth out of greenstuff first and then I set them in the creature's gums later. When I was doing Flying Horrors last year, I used needles for teeth and that turned out a bit artificial - greenstuffed teeth look much more varied and natural. While I was at it, I also made it's claws on the left hand longer - I envision them to be magically retractable, like vampires in Witcher have them. Then it was just a case of sculpting some additional muscles on the back, legs and one of the arms. Well, that and changing the tail too, of course.

Below you can see the finished conversion - he will make a fine companion to my other Varghulf, the Fledermaus. I also sculpted a fallen tree on the base, it will create a good framing composition together with the wings.

Zombie Legion - Chaos Worshippers

Part of the Zombie Legion

Another army that I was collecting in the past were Chaos Warriors. I sold most of them a long time ago, but I still had some leftover bits - which naturally got used while building the horde. I also bought some additional bits to bring some variation - that's why you can see some bodies taken from 40K chaos cultists too - thankfully it's not difficult to make them fantasy-friendly.

There are some favourites of mine in this batch too: the Techno Viking in the first row, on the right, the Chaos Warrior on the second picture, for which I sculpted the chest and guts, the guy without hands you can see on the bottom right and one that got a blood eagle on the bottom left. Those were fun to build and paint - and I'm somehow surprised that in the end, I have so few of those barbarians...

Chaos incursions from the neighboring wastes are commonplace in Kislev and Varsavia is no different in that regard - von Greifens are facing marauders and other servants of the Dark Gods probably most often. Sometimes it’s just some bands lost in the woods, sometimes beastmen hordes and sometimes a big raid with armored warriors, chariots and cavalry. Each of those clashes is a trying experience, but they leave undead recruits in the zombie hordes. They are a hardy stock, don’t crumble or rot as easily, so they are appreciated by vampires.

Zombie Legion - Bretonnian Peasants

Part of the Zombie Legion

My another collection that is still waiting to be finished are the Bretonnians. I got into that army because I really wanted to design and paint all kinds of different heraldic symbols, creating a big, happy, colorful mess. Then I moved to collect undead - a pursuit that proved to be much interesting in the long run - but my love for those dirty peasant and shiny knights remained still. So when I had to get some more bodies for the horde, buying some men-at-arms was a perfect solution. With their big shields, they were also a perfect occasion to paint some coat-of-arms. Every single one of those emblems is taken from a chart I prepared long time ago when I was planning my collection of knights. This will make for a nice connection between two armies when/if I'll get to paint the Bretonnians someday...

I hoped that they would bring some color into the horde, but I severely overestimated them in that regard - they make only about 5% of the whole horde - so they don't change that much. If I was to turn back time and do it once again, I would buy more peasants. But I am not doing that and they'll have to do as they are. That's good too because I was running out of ideas how to make them into interesting zombies that would also look bretonnian enough.

Zombies drawn from Bretonnian peasant levies are a common sight in the horde - ever since the conflict with the knights from a long time ago. Their colorful uniforms bring some variation to the undead mass - and that’s about the only thing that makes them useful - malnourished peasants from Bretonnia make bad soldiers even when alive. Still, Constantin likes to collect their coat-of-arms not only as a grim memento of past battles, but also to mock the hated knights that keep trying to hunt the vampires down.

And pictures of the single zombies from that unit:

Zombie Legion - Mercenaries

Part of the Zombie Legion

When I was building my zombies, sometimes I would add small parts from other kits to make it all a little bit more interesting. Soon I dubbed those guys with looted equipment 'mercenaries' and they grew into being another theme in my horde. I also started to think how to make them more distinct than giving them a random bretonnian helmet. That's when I started using more bits taken from other armies, even buying some things specifically to be used for this purpose. It's mostly shields in the end. I also added here some guys that look more professional than your usual random zombies.

Mercenaries are a common sight in Varsavia - if not helping some quarreling boyars or fending off barbarians coming from the wastes, they hunt the undead in the forests too. Von Greifens started facing bands of them after their presence in Varsavia was exposed to the provincial rulers. One of those groups was especially memorable because they were all equipped with gear looted from all over the world - bretonnian helmets, elven swords, dwarven axes, chaos shields, etc. Those sellswords were quite a rag-tag bunch, but they were all experienced fighters too and proved to be quite a challenge for the vampires. Eventually, they were routed and their fallen comrades got ‘looted’ the same way they were looting their equipment.