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.

Blood Bowl Converted Players

Okay, now it's time for something completely different - some Blood Bowl miniatures!

I bought the box with the main game rather spontaneously about a year ago - and it was lying on the shelf, gathering dust ever since. Only recently the motivation came to me to actually take it all out and paint those dudes to play the game properly. I wanted to get over it quickly, not wanting to invest too much time on any non-undead miniatures... but then an idea came to me. As I was putting the human team together, I found a helmet from an Empire cavalryman lying around and I saw that changing their generic helmets into those over-the-top ones with ridiculously large plumes would be quite cool. Then I noticed that I don't have enough Empire helmets - but I certainly have enough of the bretonnian ones - even better! I cut the standard heads off and put the bretonnian ones in. I could do some more converting on them, but I also wanted to finish them quickly - this seemed like a good middle ground. You can see the human team below, I hope they look ridiculous enough (I still need to come up with a name for the teams).

EDIT: Finished, painted team can be found HERE.

When I converted the human team I remembered that I also bought the big guys for both teams - the ogre and the troll. The greenskin team and that troll don't need any conversions, but I still needed to do something with that ogre to make is somehow chivalrous. So I cut off the top of his head, gave him a cool crest with some cloth addition, added some shields as greaves and adorned that gutplate with some fleur-de-lys.

I know that Bretonnia traditionally didn't use any mercenaries in their armies, but I like to think of my bretonnians as cynical a-holes for which the nobility and chivalry is only a facade. Wanting to get some edge on the field, they found an ogre willing to play for them, quickly made him a knight to bypass the 'no mercenaries' rule and called it a day. That also explains why his conversion is rather simple.

EDIT: Painted one can be seen HERE.

Last but not least - the single orc player that I converted, he will be the captain of the team. He got a helmeted Black Orc head and I gave him a bear trap in his hand - which seemed like a proper Blood Bowl fun implement. I converted him because I was really disappointed with Black Orcs Blockers - how can you have them in the game and not give them those cool iconic helmets? Thankfully I had some spare heads so one orc will be parading on the field like a proper boss. The other one will keep his standard head to make this one stand out more.

EDIT: He, together with his team, can be found painted HERE.

Berthild & Erentraud Hautfell

Two old banshee miniatures from Games Workshop. I have been seeing those on eBay for a long time now and only recently it came to me that those two are actually really good sculpts and I want to get them - I already have one miniature I use as a banshee, but it definitely won't hurt to have more!

As you can see on that old banshee of mine, I always painted my ghosts rather uniformly greenish - which has a great advantage of being really quick and easy to do. Then I saw these ones and I decided to try something similar - a gradient going from dark on the bottom to light white on the face. It involved quite a bit of wetblending, glazing and refining, but I think that it turned out all right in the end. It creates a much stronger illusion of them being etheral and those glowing faces are pretty spooky too.

I bought recently some old spirit hosts too - those that look like bedsheet ghosts - I'll try this gradient scheme on them too. EDIT: They are painted now and can be seen HERE.

Back when Alexander Hautfell was still a normal citizen of the empire, he was the black sheep in the family. His parents were making sure that it would be his older sisters that would inherit the family wealth and influence and not the vengeful, twisted wizard acolyte that Alexander was. His eldest sister, Berthild, was a rare woman officer rapidly advancing in the imperial army and the second sister, Erentraud, was a woman full of charm and grace with a promising future on the imperial court. Ready for anything to further his own position, Alexander began spinning a cruel web of plots to destroy his sisters’ position and inherit the family fortune. After everything was said and done, Erentraud, Berthild and their parents died as broken shells of their former selves and Alexander lost all the shreds of humanity he still had. Because of the powerful emotional connection and their undeserved fates, it was easy for Hautfell to summon the ghosts of his sisters as very powerful banshees. While they are magically bound to be obedient, those tortured spirits are just waiting for someone stronger to break the spell so they could rip Alexander’s body and soul to shreds.

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.