Lord Blowfly among the unquiet dead

A place of the dead. But dry, sterile. His antennae twitched. In the sarcophagus. Not stench, not moisture, not flesh. But magic. A gift for his patron. He raised the axe aloft and struck the tomb, and again, and again, the stonework crumbling.

From the sarcophagus, dry bones. Dry bones shifting, becoming living bones. Living bones shrieking for vengence, grasping, clenching the magic sword, ready to strike.

At the moment, my table is full of unfinished/ barely begun painting for Bring Out Your Lead. But in the meantime, a small finished project: another month's entry for Jamie Loft's White Dwarf Monthly Painting Challenge. This month it was WD113, which features among its contents a taster of the Lost and the Damned.

I decided to paint the classic Citadel fly-headed Champion of Nurgle that I've had in my leadpile for a while (a better executed version of which appears on page 70 of that month's White Dwarf). I then placed Lord Blowfly in an encounter from the narrative generator on page 54: "The sarcophagus contains the bones of an undead Champion who immediately rises to engage those who desecrate his tomb." The undead champion is a Fenryll skeleton that came spare with a recent purchase for another project and who I hadn't been intending to paint, but now I'm rather pleased I did. No idea where the shattered sarcophagus comes from, I'm afraid; I inherited it with my father's collection.

Undead Centaur

Where the rivers run dry, where there is only drought and despair and the bones of our livestock... There it is said that on the driest days, the days without hope, the parched lands cough up their secrets and cough up their dead. Mysterious creatures - creatures who had been noble, wise even, in some long past life - rise stripped of flesh, rendered hideous and viscious by their restless sleep. It is a terrible place.

In Oldhammer's calendar, December is traditionally "Deadcember" and is a month for painting your undead. (Some might think I've quite enough of death in the last month, but anyway...) Now, I don't know if I'll get around to anything else specifically Undead related this month, so this is technically cheating, as it wasn't a project for Deadcember, but my November entry for Jamie Loft's Monthly White Dwarf Painting Challenge. Every month a WD is selected and the challenge is to paint a model that appears in it or is inspired by it. November's selection was WD119. I took inspiration from the Undead Centaur conversion by Andy Warwick on page 56 and went about creating my own skeleton centaur.

The human torso comes from a Reaper Warlord skeleton archer, the horse is a plastic 4th/5th ed skeleton steed. It's hard trying to work out how to make a mythological skeleton appear realistically dynamic. After extensive google image and ebay searching, the Reaper skelly seemed the best option, reaching for his quiver, although it involved a lot of cutting away.

Centaur anatomy is troubling at the best of times. What are they doing with both human and horse ribcages? How can they have so many limbs? Stripping the centaur back to the skeleton makes these questions of anatomy all the more baffling. But as long as you don't look too close, I think the unity of the conversion works. Just about. A fun project, although the posing and sticking together was nowhere near as simple as I thought it would be.

The Poison Dwarf and the children of stench

The Poison Dwarf, champion of Nurgle, and the children of stench gather at a local hostelry, pre-loading in advance of a weekend of carnage on the Wirheal.
"Eh, is it just me, or is there something a bit... funny about this beer."
"Yes?" The Poison Dwarf smiled maniacally beneath his oversized helmet.
"It tastes a bit... er..."
"Yessss?"
"I can't quite put my finger on it... it's a bit..."
"DISEASED? Bwahahahahaha!" The Poison Dwarf roared with laughter.
"Er, well I was just going to say it tasted a bit yeasty. But now you mention it, it does have a strange green colour to it. And it stinks like a sewer. But at least it's completely taken my mind off that whacking great axe lodged in my head."



The first painting I've got done since January, these were actually started back when I had my gaming slump, back in March. Springinsfeld suggested figures I don't care about too much... Whiskey Priest suggesting picking a figure for its own sake... and the one suggested getting wasted. Well, I combined those strategies. First, I cut up an old chaos warrior (you know the one, that plastic one that came in the painting set) and made it a dwarf and slapped paint on it. Then, dubbing him "The Poison Dwarf" I rolled up a chaos warband that he could lead... rolled 5 chaos dwarves and 5 beastmen, which led me to choose a model I've wanted to paint for its own sake for a long time (the dwarf with the tentacle arm and his face in his torso) and a load of crude swamp-beastmen types I could paint drunk. One of whom is a Grenadier zombie with a headswap.. the head in question being a Necromunda Ripperjack. Don't drink and convert, folks! Anyway, I enjoyed getting started with each of these but then enthuasiasm waned.

Until Gauntlet, the annual Deeside Warriors show, rapidly approached, and we decided to have some chaos warbands games, rampaging over Albion and despoiling what we could, following on from 2014's game The Forgotten Goddess. So I finally painted up my nurgle warband... some close up shots here.

Apart from the C38 slugman, and the aforementioned Ripperjack where the head of a Grenadier zombie used to be, who can identify the other 3? I've not got a clue!




See, this is my problem, I can only paint when I have a deadline. And to add massively to the stress, this happened while we were moving house. And with me having agreed to be GM, I had to paint up some NPCs and terrain for the scenarios we were going to play at Gauntlet. Luckily, my wife and son were on hand to help, and together they made a trio of amazing barrows for the warbands to do battle over... and to house the (Night Horror Range) Barrow Wights.


Some battle reports from the games will follow soon. Thanks to Thantsants and VanLoon for a great day's gaming, I'm only sorry that Warlord Paul couldn't make it.

The Final Journey

Throughout every day of your life, a man has been standing behind you. His arm hovers over your shoulder. He presses a blade against your throat.

When as a newborn baby you were cradled in your mother's arms, he was there, holding the blade onto your chubby little neck.

When you first touched the one you love, he was there with you, the metal touching your naked skin with the tenderest of intimacy.

At the hour of your greatest triumph, he was there. At your lowest moment, he was there.

He is there now, waiting, arm held still, cold steel resting on your throat. Call him your friend. Call him your deadly enemy. He does not care. Cajole him. Joke with him. Scream at him. He does not care. And one day, he will pull the blade across your neck.





With an hour to spare, my Deadcember contribution. Rab over at the Geekly Digest instituted Deadcember as a celebration of the undead, and although I've watched with interest I had little motivation to take part. Undead are useful for scenarios, but skellies and the like are not something that I have much interest in painting unless I need some for a specific game. But then while doing some lead archaeology a couple of days ago I found the perfect combination of minis and decided I just had to paint them up. A dying warrior from Prince August; a Citadel C18 Night Horror Wraith with Scythe; a Citadel DS3 graveyard tombstone; and a Grenadier boatman over the River Styx - combined to tell the story of the final journey we must all undertake. And presented here for your edification at the death of one year and the birth of another...