Iannick's Death Riders, the Liche (...and a touch of Heresy) (259pts)

The Stirland battle line is in disarray. Experienced sergeants try to steady the lads in front of the unholy horde in front of them. The Empire army is about to lose all hopes of salvation. But then, on their flanks the men hear the reassuring sounds of hooves, cavalry galloping in their direction! Surely the sounds of the Knight Panthers reinforcements they've been promised! But as the fog disperses, the cheers of the living quickly turns into wailing screams of despair, for on their flank death appears, riding on ivory horses. Their bones contrasting with their dark and tattered red clothes, their barding corroded by hundreds of sleeping years, the death riders smash into the empire's flanks without uttering a word. The rusty spears enter the soft flesh of the infantrymen like a knife through butter, while the scythe of the leading wight chops heads left and right. 

So, how about a little heresy for April? Yes indeed, because I am about to do the unthinkable and enter a unit of Age of Sigmar figures into this holiest of Oldhammer temple. But I have to. You may recall me mentionning in a earliest post that last year, for my birthday, a few of my friends gave me the Hexwraith/BlackKnight boxset from GW. They are not into wargames/RPGs at all, so just went into Games Workshop and, after getting some guidance from a clerk (What is he into? No, we do not sell Napoleonics here. Oh, he likes Zombies?) got me what they thought I'd like. It was a really cool gesture and I can imagine just the courage it takes for 3 women to enter a GW store. My first idea was to paint them for my Chaos army, but rapidly I came to the (obvious) conclusion that I had to start an Undead army. Duh.

So I kinda had to paint them, right? And since they are the cause of this undead project, it just felt right to paint them for the OWAC. Also, they are actually cool figure and don't look out of place at all in an Oldhammer undead force. No, these are not Dwarf strippers or Fish Elves riding on flying sharks!*

Yeah, so did I mention they look cool? Because yes they do. Now, did I enjoy painting them? Not. At. All. and consequently they took bloody forever to paint! First, it has to be said I loathe painting cavalry. I just don't like it one bit. It's not the horses, it's the whole thing. I'm not a fan of painting one piece cavalry (I like to usually paint riders and horses separately) and these were especially grating, with extremely hard to reach spots, and at one point in time I despised them. 

Didn't help that I changed my mind and completely redid the armour (yeah that one's on me)...also didn't help that I broke a spear while painting them and had to change and glue a new arm (those spears are stupid fragile).

But here they are, and they do look good. It has to be said, I rather enjoy the look of the GW new undead's offerings. I'm really pleased with my rusted brownish armour look, and the colour scheme in general. It seems unique, even though red is often used for undead. 

I decided to use a Hexwraith as the regiment's leader, representing an undead champion, and it works really well. Obviously I'm still an Old School type of guy so I had to remove those weird and completely unnecessary balls of fire or whatever on top of the scythe and also the calice on his shoulder (you can't help yourself, hey GW?).

Obviously, I cannot end this month without at least one oldhammer figure, I do have a modicum of pride, so here's Nathum Crane, a Liche and the general of my undead army. 

I've always been a fan of Liches as ultimate evil vilain, ever since my early days of D&D (I lost a great wizard to one of them bastard in 1992). The immortal undead wizard, rotting in the depth of his dungeon, just speaks to me! They are now my go to guy when I *really* want to scare the living shit of my RPG players, and it works everytime! Plus there's no emo or sentimental vibe going on here, just pure malicious evil, which is not something than be said about his famous undead sibling, the Vampire!

It's a classic figure, and I'm sure everyone recognizes the Marauder Miniatures. He fits pretty well with his recent brothers, too.

Points stuff :

• 4x Death Riders, equipped with light armour and lances : 100pts
• Level 10 mounted Undead hero, equipped with horse barding : 69pts
• Nathum Crane, level 5 Liche : 90pts

Total : 259pts