White Dwarf Guides for building and painting an Undead Army

Hi All,

As usual I am all over the place and having trouble finding the focus I need to get things done. I think last time I mentioned that I would share some resources I found in White Dwarf that deal specifically with putting together an Undead army. I found those in #'s 142, 211 and 226 (Thanks, Rochie!). So let's tuck in, shall we?

Trying to give you a little more of the cover for reference.

So they made a pretty sweet army here, using most of the range from the time.

3000 points seems like the most fun size of army to collect. For me it seemed unattainable at the time. You can also see that it allows you more freedom with characters. Making 1000 point lists is very difficult in that regard. One thing I didn't notice mentioned in the article was that you can only have one unit of Skeletons armed with spears. Of course I have too many spear armed skeletons because I didn't pay attention to that when I was buying and assembling figures. :p

So all of these issues have guides for painting the iconic skeletons that should make up the bulk of your force.

All of these articles agree that you should prime white and then build up the skeletons with washes and dry brushing. This was the same advice that Blue and Airborne gave me when we were chatting about the OWAC 2.

Here the recipe for ink is 2 parts brown, 2 parts yellow, one part water.

It was probably unnecessary to give you this whole paragraph on dry brushing, I just didn't want anyone feeling that they had missed a vital point. I have no recollection of what Orc Brown looks like.

Interesting that they want to put brown ink in the mouth again before highlighting the teeth. I usually paint dark browns like Burnt Umber in the mouths of all my miniatures and then pick out the teeth with tans and bone like colors, even for humans.

I think their discussion of rusty armor and weapons is pretty good. I've used Charcoal Grey, Burnt Umber, Burnt Sienna and Burnt Orange for rusty metal. a little dry brushing with a metal and a brownish ink wash are also things I already do.

#211 seemed to be previewing the new Undead Army book. There were a lot of pictures of the newer figures, but the layout was split across pages so I thought it would look crap to show captures of it.

Two weeks!?

The book in question.

Perhaps a better step by step guide than the one in #142. Here they seem to add the step of painting Bleached bone over the White Primer (so the washes will stick, yeah right.) Then a 1:1 Brown:Black wash  in the recesses. Then any places that need further darkening, like eyes and mouth, with watered down black wash. They then say to paint all the raised areas again with Bleached Bone and then highlight by dry brushing a mix of Bleached Bone and Skull White. Weapons are the usual, paint a black base and then use metallics. They also used gold accents on the hilts for interest. A mix of Chestnut and Brown Wash was then put on the weapons.

This second page talks about painting the shields and finishing up basing etc. Pretty standard stuff.

This issue is debuting the new Skeleton Regiment.

 

Quite a few articles about the models, making an army and painting them.

I didn't realize these were designed by Aly Morrison, but I rarely payed attention to who the sculptors actually were.

I have yet to fully understand what the hell they did with points values once Herohammer got in full swing. Duke Harkon there is only about 50 points more expensive than a 5th Level Vampire in 3rd Ed.

This iteration of the painting guide seems the simplest, but relies on using all citadel products. We still spray prime White.

Now we paint the whole thing Bubonic Brown (new name for Orc Brown?) Then wash with Flesh wash. Maybe I finally have a use for mine. I used it once and essentially ruined a model with it because it was so dark and heavy. I expected a much lighter effect form a wash. You can read about it here. It looks like they use Bleached Bone to highlight again with a sort of modified dry brush that I would call a wet brush.

Thanks for looking and commenting. I'll be trying out several different techniques as I paint this army for OWAC 2.

Thanks to Airbornegrove for inspiring me to look back at old White Dwarfs for inspiration.