Merijn's League of Legendary Liche's

Fair warning, brevity is not my thing. With that out of the way... hark back to the early 90s. Halcyon days before the advent of the internet lifted the shroud of mystery from this world. On the first day of high school I befriended a British boy, far away from his misty island home. He introduced me to many wonderful things from his home. Terry Pratchett, The Young Ones, Black Adder, discovering what you enjoy is a wonderful feeling.

Most importantly, he introduced me to a world filled with all the creatures I'd spend my childhood reading about in novels and mythology. A world filled with adventures, horror and surprisingly... a fair bit of humour.

I became a scholar of this world. I devoured his archive of White Dwarf magazines, I delved into his big brother's army books. I poured over miniature catalogues memorising creatures. At some point I was sure I knew more of the geography of the Old World than my own country.

And we played, gods did we play. We didn't have any money so those early days were filled with pieces of cereal box cardboard with grids drawn on them. As paper routes started to bring in money, command groups were purchased to identify our cardboard grids. Golden summers that led to a lifetime of wargaming.

Breakfast of armies.

Alright, enough wandering down memory lane. These days time is short and frankly, warhammer isn't what it used to be. Happily, that just means many of my projects are nostalgia projects. Which is how I found the oldhammer challenge.

What do I want to do for this challenge? An undead army firmly founded in the colorful and somewhat humorous style of 4th edition warhammer. The League of Legendary Liches is an undead army planned around those wonderful old characters. I like to think of it as an uneasy alliance of liche's where each thinks himself greater than his companions save for perhaps their ageless leader. Since this challenge aims for a 1000 points total, most of the liches will just be generic unit leaders for the purposes of this challenge.

Tempted to go all in and do the goblin green bases too.

So who do we have? Let's start with the head honcho. The big cheese. Lord of the liches, the deacon of the deceased, the big daddy of death. Ignatio de la Vega is the first amongst equals in the League. Though the other liches are forced to admit that Ignatio's power outstrips any of them,  he is easily the most disliked liche in the League. Obsessed with retaining what little is left of his humanity, Ignatio insists on entertaining an insufferable sense of humour. Many a sacrifice bled out their life blood forced to suffer through Ignatio's trying to cheer them up with terrible puns.

Tremble before the undad.

Ignatio uses the absolutely gorgeous Dread King on his throne miniature from the Catacombs of Terror Warhammer Quest expansion. I might build him a little levitating piece of graveyard earth to make sense of his throne appearing on the battlefield.

Accompanying Ignatio to the battlefield is a unit of wights. In the 4th edition, wights were 3 wound models closer to a unit of heroes than battle line infantry, making them a whopping 37 points each. Which is just as well because I'm using the Catacombs of Terror tomb guards for this unit and it was difficult enough to scape up 10 of these lads over the past few years. Now I just need to remember where I stored these lads, so no picture yet.

First of the lesser liches is Harold of Beeckerhoven. Harold grew up listening to the stories of Dieter von Helsnicht's assault on Beeckerhoven. Secretly idolising this master of death, Harold spend years delving into necromantic lore. Even after transforming himself into a liche, Harold's romantic notions about necromancy and a misplaced sense of showmanship persisted. His flamboyant costumes and theatrical gestures are a constant source of embarassment for his fellow liche's.

Cracking resculpt of an old classic.

Harold's miniature technically isn't oldhammer. It's a resculpt of the old Hero Quest sorcerer by James Sheriff. The sorcerer's 80s cartoon outfit and dramatic pose is just too good to pass up.

We are legion Literally, so many of these nightmare legion guys.

His abilities are not quite as impressive as his showmanship though so Harold is accompanied by a modest Nightmare Legion worth of skeletons since I still had a bucket of these guys in the attic.

Lastly, we have Meraldus, the cantankerous old liche. The frivolity of Ignatio's jokes and Harold's antics is a never ending source of irritation to Meraldus. Never the less, he can't deny the effectiveness of their combined horde.

Meraldus, love this classic.

Meraldus is represented by a 4e classic, Heinrich Kemmler, the liche lord. Just like Harold, he's accompanied by a Nightmare Legion worth of skeletons.

To round things out, I ordered some Mirliton skeleton horsemen. I'm still looking for some suitable bat swarms. Preferably big silly individual bats so if you have any tips on that front, I'd love to hear.

Newly bought but the base says 1988, that counts right?