Maciek's undead: Return of the necromancer (890 points)

Leader month

As the last entry for this challenge, I give you the Necromancer and his evil lieutenants - a wight battle standard bearer, a vampire count and a vampire wannabe. The necromantic quartet is poised to rampage through the Empire and lead the undead legions in unrelenting onslaught against the living.

The Necromancer - is among the first Warhammer figures I acquired during a school-trip to the UK in mid-90s. I attempted to paint him before but results were never to my liking. I'm happy to finally give him justice after ~25 years. The classic styling choice for the undead is the funerary black & "liche purple" colour scheme, but it did not really pop. So I settled for a much more striking black and red. True to the Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay (WFRP) description, as necromancers progress in the black arts, they slowly take on corpse-like appearance - hence the alabaster skin, yellowish nails and circles under the eyes.

The Vampire - it is an old Heresy model which nails all the classic elements of a vampire look from the old Dracula movies - the dramatic cloak, imperious grimace, dominant pose and sleek clothing. As tribute to Bela Lugosi or Christopher Lee's depictions of Dracula, I painted him wearing all black with red lined cape and a white shirt underneath (not visible on the photo).

The wight battle standard bearer - I added him the roster later, as I wanted an opportunity to pour more WFRP soul into the army. My first post for this OWAC referred to the Lichemaster art as inspiration. My last entry has to reference another great WFRP cover art - the Restless Dead.

I always found this depiction of endless legions of skeletons inspiring, so that banner had to find a place in my army. Well, at least my interpretation of it :-)
 

      

Vampire wannabe / undead hero - This model was originally a hideous case of chainmail bikini vampire. I never had the heart to paint her, until I sculpted her a full chainmail shirt. I cannot sculpt well and her armour still looks really silly, but it is exactly that which triggered inspiration for the paint theme. What do you associate with ridiculous armours, strong desire to look "really evil", affinity for undead and literally wearing corpse-paint? Black metal!

Technically, she's still alive, but the darkness within leads her to join the legions of the undead.  With that corpse paint, she will fit well with the undead hordes and make a perfect dreg for the undead warband in Mordheim.

The acounting stuff:

The Necromancer (level 25): 340

The Vampire (level 5): 330

Wight battle standard bearer (level 15 undead hero): 135  (85-50)

Black metal warrioress (level 15 undead hero) 85

Total: 890 points

Overall, it was a fun month, I appreciate being able to spend more time on quality than on quantities of troops. Also a good opportunity to train different shades of black ;-) I cannot believe OWAC IV is now over and I actually made it to the end! I will try to use the momentum to finish off the few remaining undead models and if I can, will include them in the concluding post by end of July.

Cheers, Maciek