Well, it just so happens that I am about to play a “MASSIVE MEGA BATTLE” as they say across the pond – or a “slightly larger game” as we tend to put it here. It is going to be the climax of the first part of our Khardon Island campaign and it will be 5,000 points per side. For this game I am supplying the rotten bodies and carcasses of the Undead horde. But, of course, I am also exploiting it in the keenest sense to get some of the stuff, that has been lingering unpainted in my cabinets for years, painted and ready for battle.

My regiment of Ghouls is a prime example of this. I have 31 of the blighters, and have probably had more than half of them for about 20 years. When I played 6th edition fantasy back in the early 2000s I did get some painting traction, but it never really amounted to a fully fledged unit. A couple of years ago on a particularly boring Tuesday (probably), while living in Sweden, I managed to paint 10 of them in a greenish scheme. The first one was painted in the proper style of layers and highlights… and the rest were drybrushed using the same colours. At 1.5 meters (5 feet) distance you can’t really tell the difference.

Well, I digress, but now many years later I have suddenly found the motivation to paint all of them. What spurred this motivation, I hear no one ask? Well, in fact it was a gift from a dear friend. Luck would have it that my fellow gaming buddy Jonas of Deathworld Adventures gave me an old White Dwarf. Number 175 to be exact. And when I was flicking through it, my eyes fell upon a painted Ghoul regiment. ‘That’s not half bad,’ I thought to myself. ‘Maybe I could even draw some inspiration from that,’ my head said to my brain. A few hours later (I have no sense of time) a whole 21 extra Ghouls had joined the Swedish Ghouls.

I realise that these are, quality wise, a far cry from some of my earlier endeavours, but I find that for Warhammer Fantasy regiments, less is more. Or, less is easier to make more. Or there is more if you make it less. I am still working on the catch phrase.

In the game I imagine that I will field them as two different regiments. A 20/21 strong unit, going for outnumbering, which will give the Ghouls (in Warhammer Renaissance) the Unbreakable trait. Another unit of 10, which will be going as skirmishers. This fits nicely with the Swedish Ghouls and the new batch.

The majority of the models are from Games Workshop’s HeroHammer era range of Ghouls, while a third or so are Black Tree Heavily-inspired-by-GW-HeroHammer-era sculpts. Maybe they were originally Harlequin miniatures. You never really know.

The next point on the menu is to finish a unit of 20 strong Graveguard and a Black Coach. Like the Ghouls the lack of battlefield need has kept me from painting these units. But now going for the slightly larger game, I am sure they will fit right in.