Hordes of Vormond: lots of zombies on the cheap!

I am nearing the end of my Vampire Counts Army: the Hordes of Vormond. I have been extremely busy with it, from painting and modeling to magnetizing the entire army to actually playing games with it! Wow, that last one i had never expected but I played a 1200 point game last friday and really enjoyed it.

Anyway, first a quick shot of the fridge with the new fridge magnet:

I have added magnetic adhesive strips to the bottom of each movement tray so I can transport them safely on a steel baking sheet; the strips are strong as you can see. Here's a shot from above:


Now on to the title: the cheap zombies. As you know the Counts need a lot of zombies, as valid units to block advances of the enemy but also as free add ons using the Raise Dead Spells. If you use the normal spell you get 4 plus D3 but with a 25 pt upgrade you can get 9 plus D3, maximizing at 12. So you need a lot of zombies in reserve, regardless of you starting lineup.

There are two problems with modeling a lot of zombies:
1. GW zombies haven't been updated in a long time and look really out-of-date
2. Mantic has great zombies but they come in boxes of 30 for about 30 bucks, not too cheap if you want a lot of them
So I did this: I bought one box of 30 mantic zombies and built them, making them look good like this:

Then for the Raise Dead units (i am using two necromancers and they could raise dead TWICE in one turn if you buy the upgrade of 10 points) I used Apoxie Sculpt, built up some bases, added secret SCWH sand and stuck in a hand here, an arm there, a head with hand, a torso with head etc. In 10 minutes I had 10 zombies made.


When painted they look great and this way you can build 60 of them with a limited box of bitz. Painting will go quick and the end result will look great.

Here's that one, next to some more full bodied brethern.

I hope this is handy for the many Counts players. If you don't have Apoxie Sculpt, you can use green stuff, DAS clay or Spackle...it will all work!

Mike