The Vengeance of the Lichemaster (Part eight : Undead Reinforcements)

Some pics of the last miniatures I painted for this project. These few reinforcements for the army of the Lichemaster are the great classics of Undead army. They 're not part of the original scenario but they allow me to build an honorable army of 2000pts WHFB 3rd ed. These reinforcements also allow me to spicy the original scenario by introducing units with special rules, indeed, when I introduce novices to the 3rd ed rules with this scenario these additional troops arrive gradually on battlefields what allows to integrate slowly specials rules as : flight, Ethereal creatures, chariots, War machines, etc....

For the painting of the ethereal, I used an airbrush to apply colours them with purple, blue and turquoise blue. I simply hightlighted edges with turquoise blended with white. I haved Undead horses from foundry for the bones chariot, originals horses seemed to me slightly too dynamic for dead animals.To finish, I added some reinforcements to the human (monks) faction, they're going to need it to face their aggressors. I painted four new monks (link) and four new surviving villagers (link).

  

This message marks the end of this project, I began it on May 11th of this year. That took 6 months to paint two factions of the scenario (140 figurines) and to realize a gaming table (60 trees, 40 hedges and two buildings). Next step, the final battle report... Coming soon

 

The Vengeance of the Lichamaster (Part four : The Undead Characters)

For a long time I waited to paint these characters, they are the " Super Stars " of this scenario, it’s exciting and terrible to have to paint them, I hope you’ll enjoy  my work!

To begin, I replaced the original models of Krell and Ranlac, I think they are not tasty and not rather representative. I created my own figurine of Mikeal Jacsen. The original figurine is rather nice but as you will discover it , it’s not difficult to create your own model. Finally, to avoid confusion on the battfield, I added the name of the characters on their base and you can believe in me it’s very useful in this kind of scenario!

The Lichemaster: Here is the first avatar of the most fearsome necromancer in the Old World.

Krell Lord of the Undead : I chose a Champion of the Chaos of Jes Goodwin to represent this character. The posture and the size of this warrior are the reasons of this choice, my own Krell must be impressive. I simply replaced the original Axe by a two handed sword.

Mikeal Jacsen: Here, I used the very inspired tutoriel of Pil on the Oldhammer Forum to create my own Mikeal Jacsen. Just a simple skeleton and some green stuff, you will admit that the result is good! No? Link

Ranlac The Black : A lack of inspiration to replace this character, nevertheless, the posture and the sculptured shield are there to inspire a leader.

See you soon for the other factions.

The Vengeance of the Lichemaster (Part Tree : The Zombies)

Zombies are the third and last unit of Lichemaster in this scénario, most of them are sculptured by Kev Adams. Their positions of dislocated marionettes are very funny, they have a rather particular style … Hideous but funny creatures... Kev Adams 80’s.

To be honest, they are rather complex to paint. Before beginning the painting of a zombi, a preliminary examination of a few minutes is necessary to identify well the zones of flesh, wounds, bones, the torn clothes … I admit, I painted certain zones without knowing really what they represent.

The difficulty with zombies that they have various colors of skins, according to the state of decomposition of their body, here, I chose the grey, flesh and green tones. By grouping them in unit, it’s necessary to keep a cohesion. At a first level those are clothes and wounds which give the cohesion. Clothes are all of the same brown color. At a second level it’s glazes and the highlighting which connect models. Every zombie are treated with the same purple, blue and red glaze. Finally every zombie are treated with highlighting where I added the rotting flesh color.

That’s all for today, what’s next? Probably the Undead characters… Or Skaven… I still hesitate!!

The Vengeance of the Lichemaster ( Part two : The Skeletons)

The Lichemaster and its troops are rather popular in the OldSchool community, a simple search on Google allows to find many splendid photos of Undead armies. I’m going to try to personalized my horde and give it … The Lichemaster touch!


We begin with Skeletons, the technique the most used to paint the Skeletons consists to dry brush the bones with different colors of beige. It is simple to realize, fast and that gives a beautiful dusty effect. However, I find that figurines lose of their definitions and that erase details. I chose to paint my Skeletons by successive layers, 4 tones are enough to give a beautiful effect of volume to bones. For clothes, I chose to paint them in 3 colors of grey and to finish by washings to colorize them. Finally, concerning metals, I applied some washings to represent the oxidation (orange / chestnut). That gives a harmonious and detailed heap of bones and armors.

The Lichemaster touch :  There are few illustrations of Lichemaster, nevertheless, we always find there his strange icon. It’s a skull set in a mixture of bone, this element is perfect to give some personality to my army. I applied this element on many shields and obviously to the banners of units. I replaced the icon skull on banners by a small mixture of circular bone, this one is surrounded with grime representing vaguely the Chaos star. There is second one icon which I appreciate less, it is a skull stylized in a circle. It’s less symbolic that’s why I did not wish to exploit it.

My second unit consists of skeletons of Marauder Miniatures range and of skeletons sculptured by Roy Eastland. They are thicker than the others, they will be perfect to represent the personal guard of Krell. I replaced certain weapons by scythes of the skeletons Heroquest game, these blades are more massive and give a good impression of heavy weapon.

Finally for my last unit of riders, I added figurines Grenadier Miniatures range which have a taste of the 80s. They are very pleasant to paint and married well to the Citadel range.

That’s all for today, the next phase of this project will be dedicated to the zombies of Kev Adams.