Hobby Update: Undead Revenant Wyrm

Over 5 years ago, my girlfriend (now wife) got me a NIB Mortis Engine for my birthday. I had painted up a handful of skeletons before, and had a small collection of generic undead, so I was not expecting this at all! I started hobbying it up soon thereafter, getting the gist of my conversion put together pretty quickly, but was never quite motivated enough to finish it up. All the recent work on my Undead inspired me to return to this centerpiece model though. This is definitely a counts-as model and I am not sure quite what I want to run it as. We'll get to that later...

Panoramic view, but a little poorly thought out and without the lightbox.

My old headcannon for my Undead were that they branched off from the same ancient empire as my Kingdoms of Men. This unnamed ancient and once-powerful empire of humans was shattered, and the lands of the plucky living humans shrank and shrank until they were but one of many players in Mantica. In conjunction with the shattering of the old empire, the dead arose from the ruins, and then my group turned nomadic, shambling around the lands and adding to their ranks in battle after battle. At the head of this rotting army was a vampire queen using magics and the spirits of her house guard to ride her own mausoleum into battle... 

Going along with that early fluff, my oldest undead go the same Purple and White color treatment as my Kingdoms of Men, which you can see in some of the 2nd Edition battle reports. I've since changed my mind on this, as it is more fun to paint more things more colors. So I have been touching things up and adding more color to the army, as well as adding the fog effect to my older units. 

The flying mausoleum was the core of my conversion here, so we're keeping that concept. The majority of the model (ghostly cavalry and steps) is from the Mortis Engine kit. The cavalry part has been painted and glued to the titanic base for years and years now, getting just an new off-white drybrush to add more of a gradient to the spirits. The building is from the old Garden of Morr WHFB terrain kit, with the railings of the stairs able to fit just in between the indented corner columns of the building. These proved to weak joins. I used super glue and green stuff to connect them, and then a few layers of PVA glue to strengthen things. I didn't have any at the time, but plastic cement probably would have been a better call for a stronger bond.

I used chunks of insulation foam to bulk out the additional ground that was being pulled along beneath the building, and random bone bits to continue the graveyard feel the bottom of the steps had. I don't think many people will look close, but I like the way it all turned out.

The detail on the underside was surprising!

Online, I have seen others have run this model as a very special regiment of cavalry, or as a Vampire on Undead Dragon. In line with the original fluff, I was leaning towards the latter, with these conversions, but there are more neat undead dragons out there these days than there wee a few years ago, so I am actually leaning towards running this as one of the Revenant titan options. 

As a DM for the last decade or so, I really like anti-paladins and death knights and so on. I have a small but growing collection of these evil-doers. Many of these have come from Reaper, with bendy plastic and large stands, but I found a suitable mini for this project in my bits box from an etsy order placed a few years back. He was cleaned and primed at the time, so he was painted up now and attached using PVA glue, just in case I want to change my mind down the road. (I figured the PVA bond would be weak enough to break without breaking the resin mini... we'll see if I ever need to test that.) For now, the new fluff is that pre-death, he was Master of The House or somesuch, duty-bound to guard the queen or her resting place. As it turned out, death was no release from his oath, so as a Revenant, he now guards the mausoleum and it's precious dirt as the nomadic force traverses the world of Pannithor. 

Currently, the Burrowing Wyrm is the cheaper of the two options, so it immediately appeals to me. It's slower, has two extra attacks and Strider. It only hits on a 4+, so Strider should definitely help the combats out. It seems like the better of the two options, but lacks Inspiring, which is a shame. I am not super-familiar with the Undead, but they seem hungry for hero slots (as well as brains), and it would have been nice to get a monster + inspiring combo here.

The flying option is a Revenant King, and gains Inspiring and Flying and Nimble and 3 extra inches of movement at the cost of those two attacks and Strider. Statistically, it should hit just barely harder than my flying General from the Kingdoms of Men. Additionally, it gets Lifeleech1, 2 extra Nerve, Fearless, 1 extra Unit Strength from being a titan. I have frequently discussed these "Heavy Fliers" in the blog; usually they are hard to use well. This one won't hit as hard as a typical heavy flyer, but is around 50 points cheaper than usual while not automatically paying for the breath attack. It could be worth exploring? It at least Inspires so it should be a bit easier to fit into lists...

This just missed an unexpected debut game for my Undead, so I am not sure when or how this will hit the table, but I am happy knowing I was able to finally get this done!