25 years ago I fell head over heels for the Warhammer fantasy battle and role play world. 

My main interest at the time was the RPG but soon I found the Undead army and I was sold… I had to have them!

However at that time I didn’t really have the money needed to build vast armies of Games Workshop figures, as I was not a very old boy. So mainly I just glared at all the nice figures in the store and bought only a few of them and never got even remotely  close to painting an actual army. 

I did manage to get a box of skeletons, a chariot, a ghost, a few wraiths, Isabella and Vlad von Carstein and our course a hooded necromancer which at the time came in a blister with a horse and both the rising and walking pose. 

Battles were fought mainly on the floor with plenty of toys substituting for the stuff we didn’t have.  I don’t recall a game ever bring concluded and mainly do recall games being movement for turn after turn… I think our ‘table’ was around 10′ x10’… 

All this taken together,  of course,  makes me a youngling in oldhammer terms and my original hobby was decidedly Middlehammer(tm). 

Since 1994 I’ve been collecting Undead as a pastime on and off.  The collection has grown to a point were a sizeable army can even be constructed.  Now,  25 years later,  it seems fitting to actually construct and paint said army. So together with Jonas from deathworldadventures.blogspot.com I am going to start a Tale Of Two Gaming Buddies. 

Jonas being my senior by a few years never played fantasy back in the day but I believe we both crossed paths with Warhammer Fantasy Role Play.  In that view,  we have opted to construct our armies for WFB 3rd edition which is the tabletop comrade of the role-playing game. I will be using plenty of 4th edition figures though. 

I am to let all the figures be from Games Workshop ranges that were around at the time but don’t be slammed if the odd new- oldhammer or Grenadier model sneaks in here or there.  I think there’s a lot of very interesting oldhammer styled material out there and I’m sure I would have gotten it back then too. 

So breathe in the nostalgia and follow me down the rabbit hole. The way we hope to make this going forwards is like a bit of ping and pong – I finish a unit and post it up and hand over the initiative to Jonas, who then has to paint and post next. There will be no deadlines or “every month”-kind of demands.

All the posts in this series on my blog and on Jonas blog will be labeled “ATOTGB” and all the posts will be linked at the end of each entry.

Furthermore, the armylist will be posted in each entry with finished units marked in bold and the yet to do units marked in normal type. 

My army will be led by fledgling necromancer, Ulrich Kemler,  descendant of infamous Lichemaster Heinrich Kemler.  In keeping with the WFRP background Ulrich is probably not very successful and isn’t even that powerful… but of course fuelled by the thought of revenge over some petty issue with a girl. 

Being an undead army perhaps a lot of background is not warranted. However,  I kind of like the idea that the units still have a bit of personality left in them. Be it through the champion or simply because the necromancer has chosen to give them some. So I’ll add slogans and so on to their descriptions. 

To facilitate the games Jonas had made a very nice template for units so we can make a small file with all our units and then quickly assemble armies from them. The idea is to post a unit card every time we post a finished unit on our blogs. 

I have opted to go with as many different units as possible instead of going heavy on one kind. Furthermore I will probably paint more than what is required for the 3rd edition army so that I may field it in 4th edition or 5th edition as well. Later editions have no interest to me.

Here I will simply give the list of units and further motivations and details will be given once I paint them up and photograph them.

1 Necromancer
1 Undead Hero
1 Undead Hero on Undead Horse

21 skeleton warriors, with hand weapon and shield + full command, 253 pts
20 skeleton warriors, with spear, shield and heavy armour + full command, 330 pts
20 skeleton archers, 240 pts
2 undead chariots, 88+108, 196 pts
2 skullchuckers, 85+85 = 170 pts
20 zombies+full command, 88 pts
21 ghouls, 168 pts
6 undead horsemen,  heavy armour, shield, lances + full command, 208 pts

1978 pts in total

This leaves me some 500 pts for characters for a total of around 2500 pts. Most games will be less than this, but I think it is nice to have a “side board” to pick from to vary the army a bit from game to game.

Other “must paints” I have and will paint at some point:

28 mummies, 2240 pts

1 ghost
1 Nagash, supreme lord of the Undead
1 Dieter Helsnicht on Manticore
1 zombie dragon