The Danse Macabre

Following a recent conversation at the club about how it would be great to relive our youth and play a "Terror of the Lichemaster" campaign using Midgard we discussed how we could start again on some long discarded fantasy armies.

But 28mm lead figures are going to take up so much space so we looked at some of the 10mm figures on offer. A few of the chaps are already collecting Wargames Atlantic Fantasy, but chum Paul mentioned Forest Dragon. Looking at what was available I was blown away with the quality of the sculpts so placed my first order.

All the figures are 3D prints from the Forest Dragon range printed by MGS, and I must say they are bloody gorgeous figures that makes painting them a joy.

First up a quartet of characters to lead the Danse.

Three Necromancers and a mounted Wight, an avatar of Death himself!

Excuse the extreme close ups, showing every botched brush-stroke and missed line, but the detail on these chaps is insane at 10mm!

The figures themselves are painted in the main using Vallejo Model colours and Army Painter Soft Tone, but for the raw magic I used Citadel Contrast Warp Lightning

For the Wight I added a couple of figures from the Raised Skeletons set to the base. For an idea of the scale, these bases are 25mm in diameter.

Talking of the insane amount of detail on these figures, if you look closely, a skeletal hand is breaking ground from the grave at the Necromancers feet!

After painting these four I then added a terrifying winged Vampyre stood atop crumbling masonry.

Now onto the troops, starting with a unit of heavy hitting Skeleton Knights.

Because this range is designed for making Warmaster armies, the cavalry are printed two to a base, one at the front and one at the back, I managed to separate out enough of them to be able to make this "wild charge" vignette.

A couple of the Raised Skeletons set were also added to the base for scenic effect.

Moving on from the mounted heavy hitters to some solid fighty foot in the form of a unit of Wights. 

Hopefully, these stout warriors will form the core of my line and act as a bodyguard for my Necromancer.

Four units of Skeleton warriors form the core of the force.

For this unit I used a lot of the Raised Dead models in this unit, making the Front ranks and middle of the second rank look like upstanding spearmen, while the remainder of the unit rises from the ground to form on them  

I stuck with a red, black and white scheme (Vallejo Black Red, Black Grey and Stone Grey) for the core of the force, but for the auxiliary troops I went more down and dirty, some-what of a theme for my year this far.

A unit of ghosts, I debated with myself as having entirely ghostly grey, but went for grey robes then skulls, limbs and weapons painted normally. 

A shambling horde of Zombies - two units - in muted tones, the weapons were also painted from a rusty base.

Another unit of Zombies to shuffle along leaving a trail of discarded body parts in their wake. 

For the cheapest unit in the force, the Zombies are probably the most effort to paint of them all.

Two units of Vampire Bats to harry the foe from above

Finally, three units of Dire Wolves to rove ahead of the army and hopefully pick off any enemy skirmishers that may be an annoyance.

Again the detail is insane, not only do they have festering wounds on them, the ribs are poking through!

Although I already have more than enough for a good sized Midgard game panted, I'll be adding more units to the collection, and I'm already looking to pull the trigger on an Empire force to complement them!