The Danse Macabre moves on to a new venue

 

The Analogue Hobbies painting challenge is over for another year. That music may have stopped but my brushes kept going with more additions to the undead force that I'm building for Midgard.

Five new Vampires join the court to add to the Nosferatu painted earlier.

Firstly, this Her Ladyship mounted on a Winged Horror. In Midgard terms this would be a Hero with the Beastmaster trait mounted on a Flying Beast Monstrosity

The gravestones are from Cromarty Forge.

It's very impressive, but I doubt she'll see any action in any of our regular club games, it would only be fair to warn an opponent in advance.

This Vampire is another lovely figure, although my plan of a blood red cloak does rather ruin the effect of the blood dripping from his left hand!. It's the time of year you need to be careful when varnishing outside, looks like something got stuck on his collar!

Another model of Her Ladyship, this time mounted on a Zombie horse.

The third vampire wears the skin of a slain beast, not sure why but I thought that strawberry blonde woudl suit him.

A third version of Her Ladyship, this time on foot walking over what appears to be the door of the crypt she just emerged from.  

A unit of Vampire Knights in the quest to slake their thirst for blood.

Now I have these, the skeleton knights that were my heavy hitters in the previous game will be downgraded to support them. 

A pair of Überwald Blacks to transport the Vampires to their next destination.

I painted the horses zombie rather than skeletal.

You can never have enough brainless zombies, so I've added a third unit.

The undead lack any light infantry troops to skirmish ahead and cover rough ground, so I added a couple of units of Ghouls to the mix.

I'm not keen on how these turned out, some of the "I'd like a green tinge to the flesh" has come out as green flesh.

Cromarty Forge do lovely Gothic church and graveyard so I bought the STL files and a chum printed them off for me.

The church did not print out so well at the first attempt so I bodged a load of green-stuff into the bad bits to make the ivy you see on this wall.

One of the gargoyles also did not come out, but that painted up as appropriate wear and tear.

The churchyard is lovely with three mausoleums and lots of graves.

The moss effects are from "Dirty Down" and I think adds to the overall look. The railings and gates are done in raw iron to give a aged effect.

Not sure if the gates are keeping Her Ladyship out or have failed in their task of keeping her in!

I thought I'd do some themed mighty deeds for our games, so a pack of Greenstuff World skulls were purchased and given a wash of soft tone.

I also made a killing zone template, in theme with the force it's a dilapidated graveyard. 

This is pretty much all the undead done - 23 units and 16 characters. I can likely field more than enough for our club games of Midgard that are usually at about 300-400pts with plenty of alternate options available. 

The Danse Macabre goes on

I was determined to get a few more units added to the Midgard undead army I've been working on this week before Challenge XVI ended.

Five more characters make it over the line in the form of a mounted Skeleton champion and four Banshees.

I'm not sure if I'll ever have a requirement for four Banshees, but here we are.

The grave stones are from Cromarty Forge.

Another unit of Skeleton Knights joins the Danse.

I broke the scythe of the base while adding the static grass! I've set it aside somewhere to stick back on, but it's in such a safe place I have no idea where it is!

Finally, a couple more units of Skeleton Warriors.

This makes six units of skeleton warriors, a good solid core for an undead army.

 It's not been all painting though. yesterday evening I managed to take the Undead out to the club for a game against Midgard author, James Morris so we could give some new abilities a spin out. I had ~300pts of Undead from what I'd already painted against his newly painted Orcs of a similar size.

As I mentioned both armies were newly painted so one of us was going to do terribly, I'll drop the suspense, it was me :D 

First game my Necromancer double ravened a risk to heroes test in a combat he had no right to be in and my army reputation crumbled with him. 

Second game I tactically decided to put him behind the front line where he would less susceptible to getting thumped. A unit of Warg riders took a shot at him and inflicted five hits from six dice, the army fought on  bravely, but with so much reputation gone, the writing was on the wall.

Stars of the show were the Skeleton Knights led by the Vampire, he can take a turn as general next time!