Weak or strong, the Vampire Lord's enemies always fell in the end. And yet death was rarely where their misery stopped. Zombies and skeletons would be raised from their corpses, or their great heroes pulled forth from their graves as wights. Yet of those that fell, the ones with a greater will, a stronger mind, were most prized of all. The sorcerers, wizards and clerics of the defeated army could hold themselves in the monochrome expanse of the spirit realm for some time before fading to oblivion. It was these souls the Vampire Lord's necromancers sought, tearing them from that vast grey numbness and half back into the land of the living.
Straddling the veil between reality and the spirit realm leaves the souls drab and colourless, their semi-corporeal bodies drifting silently across the memory of what ground was. The Vampire Lord uses these wraiths as assassins, silently infiltrating foreign cities in the dead of night to cleave the life from key political or trade players.
Yet sometimes, when war was upon the land, the time for the subtleties of assassinations were past and the wraiths would gather upon the field of battle. Formed up into highly mobile shock units, they earned the name their enemies gave them: The Harvesters of Souls.
For my Wraith Troop I used a combination of old citadel Night Horror Wraiths from the 1980s, plus some lead Wraith Lords and Spectres from Black Tree Designs. I'd seen many effective looking 'glowing green' wraith units, but I wanted a more subdued, gothic look. I actually spray base coated in white, then painted on the black cloaks using a fairly thin mix of Abaddon Black which somewhat self-shaded thanks to the white undercoat, with a very light drybrush of White Scar. The bones were Nuln Oil over the sprayed white base coat, this time heavily drybrushed with White Scar. The grey scythe shafts were original 1980s citadel Elf Grey with Nuln Oil. Scythe blades were Zombicide (Army Painter) Gun Metal with Nuln Oil.
Tactically they are a flanking/support unit. In a troop size they are reasonably fragile if caught by a few enemies at once, although they can usually survive a stray hero or single average unit. The classic manoeuvre is to fly over the top of an enemy unit and use the Nimble to turn to face them, then get Surged into their rear by a Necromancer.
Straddling the veil between reality and the spirit realm leaves the souls drab and colourless, their semi-corporeal bodies drifting silently across the memory of what ground was. The Vampire Lord uses these wraiths as assassins, silently infiltrating foreign cities in the dead of night to cleave the life from key political or trade players.
Yet sometimes, when war was upon the land, the time for the subtleties of assassinations were past and the wraiths would gather upon the field of battle. Formed up into highly mobile shock units, they earned the name their enemies gave them: The Harvesters of Souls.
For my Wraith Troop I used a combination of old citadel Night Horror Wraiths from the 1980s, plus some lead Wraith Lords and Spectres from Black Tree Designs. I'd seen many effective looking 'glowing green' wraith units, but I wanted a more subdued, gothic look. I actually spray base coated in white, then painted on the black cloaks using a fairly thin mix of Abaddon Black which somewhat self-shaded thanks to the white undercoat, with a very light drybrush of White Scar. The bones were Nuln Oil over the sprayed white base coat, this time heavily drybrushed with White Scar. The grey scythe shafts were original 1980s citadel Elf Grey with Nuln Oil. Scythe blades were Zombicide (Army Painter) Gun Metal with Nuln Oil.
Tactically they are a flanking/support unit. In a troop size they are reasonably fragile if caught by a few enemies at once, although they can usually survive a stray hero or single average unit. The classic manoeuvre is to fly over the top of an enemy unit and use the Nimble to turn to face them, then get Surged into their rear by a Necromancer.
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