Vampire Counts: New Recruits

A new blog needs some new material, much like my fledgling Vampire Counts Army, so here comes some new recruits for the undead horde! 

It's been about 2 years overall since I've painted anything Warhammer related, and I decided to get back into the hobby by buying some new stuff for my Vampire Counts Army. The first thing I painted was the new Cairn Wraith seen above, just to get the feel of the paints again. This was my first time using the new washes as well. Devlan Mud put straight on over a basecoat of Dheneb Stone looks great for skeletons. You don't even really need to highlight it if you apply the Devlan Mud evenly. I haven't a clue how this guy plays in the game, I just bought it because it looks like such a good model. If I get another one I think I'll try to paint him to look ethereal.

I also got the new Banshee model, but since it's not photographing quite right for me, or fully painted, you'll have to do with this image for it right now. I'll update when it's finished.

The other new recruits for the vamps is a unit of 10 rank and file skeletons to bulk out the other 10 I already have. As you can see from the photos below the main colour I chose for the army is Hawk Turquoise, which is actually the only colour on these models which is still at the basecoat stage of painting. Other than those parts needing a few ghostly looking highlights, and their bases to be, well, based, these models are done. 

Whenever I start a new army I try to think up a uniform colour scheme to make painting easier, so here's the scheme that I've thought of for these:

• All Skeleton units get gold helmets with plain silver swords. Both of these will of course look old and worn out since these guys died hundreds of years ago. Any chainmail gets painted like the swords, any scraps of cloth will be turquoise and all their belts will be Scorched brown with Bestial Brown highlights.
• My Grave Guard units will be fairly similar, except their more ornate weapons have gold handles or silver handles with turquoise gems inside them depending on the model. Their armour will be mostly gold too. They have two layered skirt-type things as well, and one of these will be turquoise while the other will be black.
• Zombies, for the most part, will have either green or blue skin, and will have rusted weapons covered in blood. I'll post some pics of these as soon as I have a unit of them finished.

These show the ornate and quite old looking gold which I hope to have as a solid theme going through the whole army. It should hopefully offset the overall cold look of the turquoise/bone/silver colour scheme of these undead units.