A Runesmith Walks Into a Graveyard

Back again with some more Border Campaigns updates! This time around with a character each for my Dwarf and Vampire Counts armies, and some troop reinforcements for the latter. I decided to paint a couple of character models to break up all the infantry I’ve been painting lately, and settled on a Runesmith for my Dwarfs and a Necromancer for my Vampire Counts.

First up let’s cover the dwarf as the rest of this post is firmly focused on the undead!

This Runesmith model is a classic one, and one of the first Warhammer models I ever bought. I’ve made a few attempts at painting him over the years, but like most of my early models he’s ended up in a box and battered! He gets a fresh paint job for this campaign and it’s nice to see him finished after all these years. What a cool model and a joy to paint.

At the same time as the Runesmith I painted this necromancer model (I like painting more than one model at once so I have something to do during drying times!). This is one of the first modern plastic characters to come out if memory serves, maybe alongside the 7th edition release?

Great model as well, although much more modern looking. I had fun painting him too, especially the eyes. He’s ended up with a bit of a crazy look which is spot on for a necromancer I think!

Following on from the necromancer are a horde of Skeletons (rather appropriate!). I didn’t paint all these in the last week, that would be a bit much, but I did finish painting them after having not touched them for a good 4-5 years!

You’ll notice that these are on round bases unlike every other model I’ve show for this army so far. These were at one time on square bases, Vampire Counts being one of my Main armies during the 8th edition of the game. When the Old World blew up and Age of Sigmar was born I rebased these skeletons onto round bases to suit the game (well 20 of them at any rate, I built 20 more straight onto round bases at a later date!). I couldn’t face rebasing them a second time, and with the recent announcement that 20mm based infantry are moving up to 25mm bases in the new edition of the game I decided that I could just rank them up as is and make trays to have them neatly arranged.

As I said above, while I didn’t fully paint these in the last week, I did do some painting to finish them. The 20 skeletons that were added during the Age of Sigmar era were done so for a tournament and I did not have time in the lead up of that event to fully highlight them to match the original twenty. This week I finished those 20, highlighting them to match the originals and I repainted the bases on all 4o to match this latest incarnation of my vampire counts.

The trays you see them on I designed in Tinkercad (great for these simple jobs!) and printed on my 3d printer. I also designed and printed a second set of trays.

This second set is for 20mm square bases, taking them up to the same frontage as 25mm base infantry, so they’ll match my skeletons. You’ll notice the big slot in one of the bases, and if you read my The Living Dead! post you’ll know what that’s for!

Zombies!

After I decided to not rebase my skeletons, I wanted my zombies to match them so made them a set of trays to match so the army would look somewhat cohesive. The round bases do stand out somewhat, but I think it’s not too bad and the two units look like they belong together. I’m keen to get impressions on this so feel free to let me know what you think in the comments.

That’s it for this update, I’ve also been working on some terrain for the campaign, but I’ll show that at a later date when it’s all done!