Army Spotlight - Stirland Vampire Counts

Good evening and welcome to another Army Spotlight. Tonight we have our first Fantasy army being shown to use by one of our fantastic painters Shane. So without furthur ado ill pass over to him.

“Stirland is a comparatively rustic and poor province that bore much of the sorrows wrought in the wars against the Vampire Counts. Its soldiers, just like its citizens, are frequently impoverished and their weapons and armour are typically simple. In fact, many of the state troops from Stirland cannot afford to maintain their uniforms of green and yellow, and wear only a token gesture to their traditional uniform. The rural nature of Stirland, and the frequent jibes that are levelled against its occupants, should not be confused with weakness on the part of the Stirlanders - in battle they are as devoted and ferocious as any Empire soldiers can be.”
The above passage was what inspired me to start a vampire counts army. I decided that my vampire general would have been a nobleman in Stirland, who during the vampire count’s invasions managed to contract vampirism and has been keeping it a secret ever since, slowly converting minor nobles and building a force of shambling dead.
The core of the force will be a unit of skeletons armed with tower shields lead by one of my general’s fledgling vampires, displaying the colours of the Stirland army (This was another reason I chose Stirland as I’d had problems painting yellow before and wanted to work on my technique)


Below are the first 19 skeletons and their vampire leader.

The second core part of the force is to be a unit of twenty zombies converted from the empire infantry sprues, bretonian militia sprues and the zombie frames. This unit will represent the peasant militia being armed with farming equipment and mismatched uniforms.


The first few zombies are show below.

I started this project in a completely different way to my usual method of buying what I think looks good and ending up with an unusable army. This time I wrote a thousand point list and bought all of the parts I’d need in one go and intend to build it up in five hundred point lumps once the initial army is complete. (The list was compiled during 6th edition so the units are quite / very small and will be increased in the next five hundred points, it is also built to be more fluffy than competitive)


Heroes:

1 vampire (general) - walking death, lord of the dead - flayed hauberk, sword of battle

1 vampire - avatar of death (hw + shield), walking death - sword of striking

Core:

20 zombies

19 skeletons (will contain hero) with champ, standard

5 dire wolves

Special:

15 graveguard (will contain hero) with champ, standard

5 black knights


Once this army is complete I intend to increase the sizes of all of the infantry units then add a nice big unit of ghouls. These I am converting from the flagellant and ghoul boxes to look like depraved peasants. I’m unsure whether to use the Stirland colours on these or to paint them in dirty browns and earthy tones (Opinions more than welcome)

Thanks Shane. it looks like the start of a fantastic looking army keep it up armies like this only make the games we play look better. So what do you think do you have any comments or ideas?

Thanks

GrimJaw