Some time ago Jonas from Death World Adventures and I started a small project to paint some Warhammer Fantasy armies. The idea was to make it back and forth between our blogs, meaning that we would present a freshly painted unit roughly every second month. Like many such projects it all stalled after a few months due to various reasons.

However, a recent flurry of enthusiasm has overcome me and my little gaming group and thus, the Undead shall once again rise from their graves. This time we have opted for 4th ed. Warhammer Fantasy, which pleases me mightily as this is were most things miniatures related started for me back a long time ago.

Last time I was painting Undead, I managed to whip out a couple of chariots and 4 skeleton ogres. Now the chariots are still useful, but the ogres have to be relegated to “unit fillers” which is the compendious term describing something based on a larger than usual base in a regiment. The normal point of unit fillers is to break up the monotomy, and ease the job for the painter… however the few times I have made any, they have ended up taking considerably longer time than anything else!

So instead of rebooting “A Tale of Two Gaming Buddies” using a set armylist, and each month/bimonth painting something for that, I will instead approach things more organically. So from now on I will simply total whatever I paint and form a list this way. So from now on, whenever I paint any Undead, I will add them to the tally and include it in the posts… easy!

For this entry I have painted a unit of skeletons – the proverbial backbone of any Undead army worth looking at. This unit will stand 25 strong all in all. This is with the addition of a skeleton ogre. I added a wraith champion to give a bit of a punch. I never actually played a game with a wraith in a unit back then, as I only had one which I always used a unit on its own. But I remember them being fairly good at destroying the living, while not dying (more) themselves. Unlike skeletons, which I recall being pretty useless at almost everything.

The whole army will be tied together with the red, the bone and the black. Not very original, probably, but it makes me very happy. I did not go with goblin green bases on these, as I did not feel for it.

The banner is somewhat of an experiment carried over from my Chaos Space Marines. I print the banners first on a laser printer after piecing together interesting stuff from the internet. I then attempt to tie it together with the figures by washing and so on. I think it works reasonably well. I tried to tie the banner in to the strange German used in the Old World Empire, so it reads “Die Wahrheit ist tot” which translates into “the truth is dead”. I guess the thinking is that since these guys are also dead, they must be the truth.

I couldn’t really settle on a shield design so in the end I opted to paint multiple unique shields for the skellies. I don’t know how we’re supposed to imagine skeletons shield designs to arise. Perhaps the bored necromancer sits around trying his hand a shield painting between battles? Maybe he lets the wights or other semi-sentient champions do it for him? Anyway, after painting them and ranking up the figures I recalled why it is that painting nice shields in fantasy is such a moot point… they were indistinguishable in the regiment! Oh joy!

Lastly I have, long ago, purchased some movement trays. I mistakenly thought they were from warbases at first, but it turns out that they were actually from Terrain Warehouse. The company seems to still exists under the name Battle Zone and I highly recommend these trays.

Thanks so much for reading my blog, and if you have any comments and or quiestions, don’t hesitate to throw a comment my way.