The Zombie Legion

EDIT: The index for everything in the legion can be found HERE.

Finally, the Zombie Legion is finished! 8 units, each 50-wound-strong, for 400 wounds total - with more than half of them composed of multibase fillers. This project spans almost 5 years, with most of the work done during the last year - and you can find here representatives of almost all of the old WFB factions, with some bits from Age of Sigmar too. I consider it now my most impressive project, much bigger than my another excessively large project, Nagash.

The idea for this project came to me when I saw a crazy collection done by Mad 'At on Carpe Noctem forum, where he mixed all kinds of bits in his zombie horde, full of fillers - that inspired me to try something similar. I started with filling up my 65 basic zombies up to 100 - and then I thought, why not go for 200? I had my head still full of ideas! Then 300. Then 350. And finally 400. At that point, I started to run out of ideas and decided that it's a good point to stop - being able to build a 40x40cm square full of zombies. Last weeks were especially tough, as I had to finish them before April. All that intensive work took a toll on me and now it's difficult to stop thinking "I need to paint zombies!"... Also, worth noting, while I didn't have to push my painting skills to the limit on this project, I really learned to paint much more time-effectively, especially on rank-and-file troops like these.

I set them all in a good configuration, numbered them all, together with their places on the tray and now I'll have to think, how am I going to move them from Berlin to Warsaw without damaging them. After that, I think I'll take a short break (but I still have photos of zombie-batches to last me at least two months) - and then I'll go back to another project I started a long time ago - Vaclav the Red, the Dragonrider. Maybe some smaller minis will come in the meantime too.

HERE you can find an index of all entries relating to this gargantuan project, all the batches and WIPs, with some statistics too!

Von Greifen vampires gathered much power in Varsavia through the years and their armies managed to deal with all the intruders thus far - with vampires as the commanders and the common troops composed of Hautfell's skeletons, Gudvanger's monsters and wight soldiers. This alliance of vampires, necromancers, varsavian wights and the denizens of the Black Bog relied greatly on their mutual support. Still, the tensions between them just kept growing, with every faction trying to gain the upper hand by amassing larger forces or subverting the others. Constantin noticed then - that he and his vampires would be severely outnumbered if they were to face the others in open combat. While other troops had better equipment, discipline or skill, all they had were pitiful, rotting zombies, with their numbers being their only strong point. But rather than futilely seeking other options, Constantin decided to just use what he has, only much, much more - because there's a quality to quantity too. Walking corpses don't need elaborate rituals or strong magic to sustain - amassing them would be time-consuming, but not difficult. That project soon turned into a weird hunt for uncommon corpses to add them to the collection - which grew and grew into really immense size. If they can't beat their opponents in a straight fight, they will just drown them with bodies!

By the very nature of this zombie mass, it's really difficult to make sense of all of this, so there will be more photos. First, some close-ups.

And pictures of the sub-regiments themselves.

Zombie Legion - Mummified Drake

Part of the Zombie Legion

This time, a mummified drake. The miniature came originally from Fenryll Miniatures. I bought it cheaply on eBay to be used as a zombie filler - though I had to repose him quite a bit to fit neatly on a 40x80 base. Thankfully that is really easy with resin. The wings also had to go - they were rather small and awkward - and it still looks fine without them. I wanted to make its skin dark brown, kinda like real life mummies, but in the end, he turned out a bit flat and bland. If I had to paint him again, I would do some more striking colors underneath those bandages, that would create some interesting contrast. But well, for now, he'll have to do as he is.

Drakes - despite being weaker, smaller and wingless cousins of real dragons - are still the most dangerous predators in Varsavian wilderness. Similarly to giant wolves, those reptiles are deified to some extent amongst the local folk - they are believed to bring prosperity and good harvest. Because of that, every time one of them is found dead - not a common occurrence - people gather its remains, mummify them and store them in makeshift sarcophagi near their villages to keep its positive influence for ages to come. When Constantin found one of those tombs, he quickly raised the impressive beast and added it to his minions. Disliking such superstitions, the vampire left the villagers to fight for their own prosperity, rather than hope for a dead lizard to grant it to them freely. Not that it would help in such a place as Varsavia, sitting between undead, bandits, barbarian hordes and other monsters.

Zombie Legion - Brutes

Part of the Zombie Legion

The unpainted conversions can be seen HERE and HERE.

Even more zombie fillers - this time, the Brutes - big guys standing alone on 40x40mm bases. It started with a Bloodstoker miniature from the Age of Sigmar starter box - which I converted to look like a fat, zombified cossack. He was fun and for a long time he was a stand-alone part of the horde - only much later I decided to use some orc and ogre bits that were lying around to make more of those, each one with some bloody torture/execution theme. In the end, I built four of them.

Being so close to chaos wastes, children in Kislev are born with mutations more often than in the Empire. Lacking the presence of inquisition, boyars tolerate the milder examples of such corruption. Many such children, while much less smart, grow to be bigger than their peers and have a natural affinity for violence - and they work often as executioners, thugs or bodyguards. Those brutes are naturally welcome in any army too - and that includes undead armies of von Greifen vampires. Being large, stocky and intimidating, they make perfect zombies - and they can continue their grisly executioner work to reinforce the terror factor of the undead horde.

The first pair - a headhunter and a breaking wheel carrier. First one is made out of orc parts with the torso sculpted out of greenstuff - I really liked the idea of a huge guy with a really small head. It was also a good excuse to use up some of my large collection of head bits. The second one is holding a breaking wheel - I always wanted to do something like this. Unfortunately, I couldn't find a good bit to be used as this, so I sculpted the wheel myself and then placed a poor zombie on top. Both of them will add some vertical elements to the horde - I hope they'll look good when surrounded by their unit companions.

Another two are the beforementioned cossack and a guy with a cage. The second one was quite complicated to build and paint - I had to glue the captured soldier to only half of the cage, paint him, close the cage, paint the cage, glue the cage to the zombie's back and then sculpt the rope - which then had to be painted of course. Still, he turned out quite fine, especially his funny face - and the prisoner was an opportunity to paint a human with a healthy skin tone - not something I do very often! The cossack/bloodstoker was much more straightforward.

Zombie Legion - Giant Spiders

Part of the Zombie Legion

The unpainted conversions can be seen HERE.

Once I bought some cheap giant spiders from the Battle of the Skull Pass set when I was looking for some inspiration to get more diversity in my zombie legion. Unfortunately, they were all identical, static and boring - so I hacked their legs away and setting them in new positions - I saw many people doing that on the internet. The process was tedious, not easy at all with all the pins, so I build only 4 of them - out of 10 that I had overall - but I think that many of them will suffice in the horde.

All of them got at least a bit of gloss varnish on their bodies to make them look slicker and properly arthropod-like. Their blood is also green or transparent here to push that alien look a little bit further - it was a great opportunity to try out that trick with glue mixed with paint to make it look all sticky and disgusting. That and water effects mixed with green paint.

First spiders shown here were based on the most characteristic ones one can outside here in central/eastern europe - a Wasp Spider (called a Tiger Spider in Poland) and a Cross Spider (called a Teutonic Spider in Poland). The yellow one looks especially striking amongst all the other zombies in the unit - I will show that later when the whole horde will be done.

Forests of the Old World are teeming with giant spiders and Varsavia is no different - and they are also a good stock to use in undead armies. Raising them as undead proved to be slightly more difficult than it is with usual vertebrates, though - but Constantin eventually managed to do it after some experiments. Still, the process is somewhat faulty - spiders still try to hunt from time to time and their most common victims are other members of the horde. Vampires deem it an acceptable drawback, for they can crawl walls superbly and are perfect for terrifying their living opponents in battle.

And the second two spiders are just vaguely brown/yellowish - I tried imitating other spiders found here, but I didn't find more really characteristic ones so they turned out pretty generic in the end. Now I think that I should have build a long legs spider - that would really stand out!

Zombie Legion - Trolls

Part of the Zombie Legion

Another batch of zombies - trolls this time.

The one in the middle was sculpted and painted much earlier than the other two - in July 2016 to be precise. I wanted to have a zombie troll in my army, but I didn't have much troll parts other than some arms and heads from the GW River Trolls set - so I had to work with exactly that. Besides those two arms, the top half of the head, the ribcage and the branches - it's all sculpted. Back then it was probably my biggest sculpting project - thankfully decaying zombies are pretty forgiving and it was easy enough. You can see the pictures of it unpainted HERE. While I was at it, I added branches and some fungi on it to make it a Forest Troll - which fits my theme pretty nicely.

Other two are recent stuff. One on the left is an Undead Troll from Reaper Miniatures and I gave it a big nose and much larger ears to make it resemble a Stone Troll from the WFB universe. The one on the right is a Zombie Snow Troll from Frostgrave and it isn't converted at all. Both of them are metal and pretty heavy - bases needed more magnets than usual to make them stick to the tray. You can see them unpainted HERE.

Many kinds of trolls can be found in Varsavia. Local ones take characteristics from their environment and are easily recognizable by branches, moss or bark covering their bodies. Orcish incursions can bring stone and river trolls, and roaming black trolls always come down from the mountains in search of food here. Vampires need to deal with them rather regularly. Thankfully, despite their regenerative abilities, they can still be killed and raised as zombies - and they rot much slower too! Their stupidity legendary, they are also probably the only creatures in the world that get actually smarter after becoming mindless undead.

Zombie Legion - Chaos Gorebeast

Part of the Zombie Legion

I once bought some bits from the Chaos Chariot set to get those horses - and the sprues came with a whole gorebeast included. It was an easy decision to turn it into a zombie and add it to my horde. I mangled the beast's armor, added some exposed gore and stuck some spears into it's back - also to offset the front-heavy composition of the miniature. The color scheme was switched a few times before I finally chose this one with the light skin. Adding weathering on both steel and copper was pretty interesting - one with rust, another with verdigris - it makes for a nice contrast, I'll have to try to use it more in future projects.

The unpainted conversion can be seen HERE.

During one of the clashes with chaos marauders, von Greifen faced a chariot drawn by a gorebeast - ferocious and stubborn beast smashing its way through the undead forces. Surely, it made the chariot more dangerous than one drawn by horses, but it was also much less smart and it was easy to bait the vehicle into the forest. The chariot with its crew got quickly smashed on trees and roots, but the gorebeast kept charging. It was found dead, days later, many kilometers into the woods - after having fought with goblins, villagers, militia from Kislev, local wildlife and probably many others. Constantin knew that as a raised corpse it wouldn’t be just as effective as alive, but he was willing to settle for something close enough - even a fraction of that destructive power would be useful in his legion.

Zombie Legion - The Oldest

Part of the Zombie Legion

My collection of all the old Cursed Company miniatures that I managed to hunt down on eBay. I painted them around August 2017, but I never made good photos of them, they got lost in the whole horde of zombies - so I am fixing my mistake right now! I got the champion, the dwarf, the orc and the saurus without their shields, so I had to get them some replacements from my bitz box. The lizardman got also a more modern weapon to fit his shield better and the orc got a pauldron to make him a bit bulkier - not much converting, but still.

Forced members of Constantin's zombie hordes come and go very quickly - but there are a tiny few of such ‘recruits’ that accompany the vampire much, much longer than any other raised dead. Through all the years and battles their flesh managed to rot off their bones, but they still hold their gear and follow the horde loyally as always. This group is called either 'the oldest' or 'the luckiest' amongst the vampires. At this point, their master has grown fond of them and always tries to raise them back, should any of them fall during an encounter - that diverse bunch has become a prized element of his gruesome collection of undead.