Operation End Times no19 Nagash, Supreme Lord of the Undead

After about twenty hours of painting I've finished big daddy death himself.

I have to say that as amazing as Nagash looks he's a bitch to paint.  All the ghosts make him really springy, which is a real pain.  However I battled on and I'm quite pleased with the results.

Operation Endtime no9 Hexwraiths

This week I've been painting more wraiths, except this time they're on horses... ghostly horses.  They are the hexwraiths.  I think the hexwraith miniatures look awesome.

I've gone for the same look as the Mantic wraiths.  I was worried that the caparisons wouldn't come out too well due to all the flat areas where the green was might have dried all splotchy.  They came out fine so there wasn't any need to worry.

Tactics wise I'm not sure on  how to use these effectively.  They're ethereal and therefore hard to kill, but also undead so the die from combat resolution.  They're not great in a fight, are quite expensive points wise and have no command so they wont be winning too many combats against enemy infantry.  They can move through enemy units and damage them that way, but due to their limited number the damage will be minimal.  The best use I can think of for them is to hold up any monsters rampaging their way down the flank, or possibly running along the length of a night goblin battleline to make them discharge their fanatics and thus hopefully impeding their advance.

That's it for this installment, next time vargheists.

Operation End Times no7 Arkhan Mortarch of Sacrament

It's taken me a while but here he is.

Arkhan is a beautiful miniature to paint, although he does take a while.  I tried to stick with three main colours on him, dirty bone, metalic black and a spectral green.  I think the result is quite striking.  I'm actually thinking of repainting my Cryx for warmachine like that.

I had the opportunity to use him last week and he is awesome.  His ability to raise double the usual amount of troops from the lore of undeath is very powerful.  Not to mention he can fly so he can hunt warmachines, lone wizards or just move to you're opponents backfield to raise another army to trap his units between two armies.

Operation Endtime no6 Ghouls

I've got lots of ghouls in my army.  Ghouls from several different companies and in GW's case several different generations of ghouls.
First up are  the Heresy ghouls.

You've seen this lot before

And this guy who appears to have surgically removed a heart... with a cleaver.  He was hiding and didn't get done with the first lot.  The heresy ghouls are my favorite out of the lot.  They just look the most sinister.  The look like they could have been men once.

The Mantic Ghouls

The Mantic ghouls look very human aside from the big nails stuck in them.  These ghouls are plastic and very cheap.  Unfortunately they're all a bit samey.  There's not a whole lot of variation to them.  They're my least favorite, I'm just not overly fond of the sculpts.  They're also the least fun to paint.

The GW 90's ghoul

This one is an oldie.  These ghouls have the ultimate nostalgia kick for me.  I've had this fellow (and a few more like him) for over 15 years (yes its taken me that long to paint him).  I like to refer to these ghouls as the fat ghouls, they have big bellies after all.  They're some of the beefiest most powerful ghouls out there.

The Modern GW ghouls

These ghouls make up the most of my collection.  These are the scary ghouls.  They've got lots of bits (mainly bones and hooks) imbedded in their flesh like some sort of twisted jewelry, one of them even doesn't have any eyes and another is wearing a skeletal torso on its back.  These ghouls are also plastic, which is why I have them in abundance. 

Not pictured is the inbetween era GW ghouls, aka the skinny ghouls.  I didn't have any to hand.

Now what happens if I mix them all up

Even though the different ranges look quite distinct, when mixed together they look oddly unified in a very rag tag way.  So what's the best range of ghouls to use?  All of them.  Each range has its own elements that add to the unit and combined look pretty unique.

Now to start Arkhan.  This might take me a while.

Arkhan the Black, Mortarch of Sacrament

I finished building this fellow last night.

Arkhan the Black, mounted upon his dread abyssal Razarak the Doom of Traitors.  The end result is very impressive, unfortunately the build was quite fiddly.  I'm actually worried that the parts suspending him might snap as they are quite thin and there's only two of them.  He should be fine as long as I don't drop him from any great height, not that intend to.

I put a few more Renedra gravestones on his base fill in some of the gaps.  I even stuck a raven on one of them. 

I built the kit as Arkhan for several reasons.  First is he's a mini Nagash, and I liked the idea of the pair of them raising entire armies from the grave.  Sure Mannfred is most scary of the mortarchs, but Arkhan is more insidious.  The second reason is that if I wanted to run a large list with his most loyal lieutenants or play a game set earlier in the time line (I'm thinking of his battle with Sigmar) I could.  Thirdly I have a habit of running a Vampire Counts army with out any vampires and may do the same with an undead legion army.  And lastly I like Arkhan as a character more that Mannfred or Neferata.

I might have a crack at painting him after I finish the ghouls.   

Opperation End Times no1

I've decided to get a whole load of my undead legion painted in preparation of an undead vs chaos mega battle.  So I've decided to try and paint one unit a week until either they're all done or we fight the battle. I plan to update my progress on this every Thursday, the first unit is due next week..   My first unit of choice is my morghast archai.  Here's a taste of what's to come.

The Great Summoning Ritual Begins

I recently purchased the new Nagash model and now I've got the undead bug again.  I get the undead bug every few years where I add things to my Vampire Counts army.  But now I have the the opportunity to build an undead army like they were back in fourth edition when I started playing.

Nagash was one of my favorite characters back in the day.  My ten year old brain thought the mini looked awesome and I loved his background.  Too long has he been missing from the game but now he can finally take to the field with a stunning new model. 

I've added a dark eldar warrior for scale here.  Look at the size of him.  I'm not going to lie he was a bit tedious to assemble, but not the worse thing I've had to build.  He's going to need a little green stuff to smooth the joins in his ghosts and cloak.  I'm also thinking about adding some skeletons rising from the grave on the more empty areas of his base.