Recently Finished Ghouls

For my B-day, I received an EBay gift certificate, which was promptly spent on Ghouls. Why did I wait so long? Because the pics I had seen of 'eavy Metal painted ghouls were... erm.. to put it bluntly, fugly. But taking my courage (and free money) in hand, I ordered them anyway based on the results from my last fugly model experiment which were Dire Hamsters.. err *Wolves*. Those turned out well thus the Ghouls went under the paintbrush.

I'm actually pretty pleased with the result considering the limits that I had imposed upon myself. These are Core units, thus do not deserve too much attention. I limited myself to a maximum of one highlight, one shade, and 3 colors. I didn't want to spend too much time on them either so I gave myself a time budget of max 1 hour per model.

3:40 hours of work later (forgot to count assembly time), this is the result:



Not counting the time spent on the Corpse Cart, I'm quite satisfied with the 10 Ghouls since I spent only 22 minutes on each.

Digging up some reinforcements

Finally received my most recent shipment of minis.

In this shipment was the Black Coach, and Skeletons.



Now the Black Coach is a model that I fell in love with the second I saw it. It is *the* reason that I started collecting a Vampire Counts army. It's an amazing model that just needs two Bretonnian horses to finish off. Looking at the pieces, I estimate that it will take me about as much time to paint this model as it did the Corpse Cart.



The new GW skeletons are very nice looking as well, without the huge heads of previous models (I'm looking at you Bretonnian Archers). They seem to be a little on the flimsy side tho, so I'm not sure how well they will take to the road.

MIA from the shipment was a box of Grave Guard to finish off my current unit. Apparently they are backordered at GC Minis. Will have to hunt down a box locally.

Pics Forthcoming.

Vampires like cheese, except this one.

Vampire counts have been included in what has been dubbed "The dirty three" armies together with Demons of Chaos and Dark Elves. Apparently if you play Vampire Counts in WHFB you're one of "those" players and opponents give you the hairy eyeball.

Striving to keep the lactose out of my army I've come up with some composition rules of my own.

• Use the Jean-style 1/2/3 3/6/9 general composition guideline.
• No unit is to be worth more than 300 points
• Frontline units need to be at least 200 points
• Keep character points to a maximum of 40%, but closer to 30% to avoid HeroHammer labels.
• Not use the Drakenhof Banner
  

Here's an army list that should be fun to use, and more importantly fun to play against.

• Isabella DeLaCroix: Vampire Lord with Wizard L3, Master of the dark arts, forbidden lore, lord of the dead, skull staff, crown of commandment
• Lazarus Mock: Wight King Battle Standard Bearer with Sword of Kings, Gem of Blood riding a barded skeletal steed
  
• Cornelius Barlow: Necromancer: Extra Spell, Black Periapt, Dispel Scroll, riding a Corpse Cart with Balefire
  

And the Army of the Bloodied Cross (Fighting units, and Bunker units)

• 25x Skeletons with Full Command, War Banner
  
• 10x Skeletons with Champion
  
• 10x Ghouls with Ghast
  
• 5x Dire Wolves
  
• 3x Spirit Hosts
  
• 18x Grave Guard with Full Command, Banner of the Barrows
  
• 5x Black Knights with Barding, Full Command, Banner of the Dead Legion
  
• 5x Fell Bats
• The Black Coach

For a total of 2244 points (37% Characters), 8PD, 5DD plus a dispel scroll. This army has a little bit of everything and thus should keep me and my opponent on his toes.

Terrain Options

I've been mulling over some ideas for 4-6 pieces of VC themed terrain. I don't want to build a castle or anything like that, limiting the size of a single terrain piece to a maximum dimension of 8".

The quick ideas are:

• A mansion of some kind. Maybe a tower due to size limits
• A cemetary or crypt (a forest of headstones?)
• A burial mound
• A swamp or bog

I have forest and rivers and hills (oh my!). I just want to have something a bit more characterful. If you have any other ideas let me know.

Final models ordered

It's been a long time coming, but the final models for the Vampire Counts army I have been putting together for the past 2ish years have been ordered.

The army will be (when the shipment arrives) 83 models strong consisting of:

• Skeletons (of course)
• Zombies (absolutely)
• Ghouls
• Grave Guard
• Dire Wolves
• Fell Bats
• Black Knights
• Black Coach
• Corpse Cart

I'm very happy to say that most of these models were purchased *before* GW decided to raise the prices of their plastics to metal levels since most of this army *is* plastic. Only the characters are metal, and those are Reaper models.

I *do* have some painting work cut out for me, since only about 1000 points of core models are painted. This should be an enjoyable journey tho, since I seem to have move past the "competitive list" stage and just plan to have fun.