"Men of the Empire talk in whispers of a creature said to be ageless that is a master of the darkest of magics forbidden by the Colleges. Little is ever seen of this solitary part-man and few who do live to tell. But the news is that he has now an accomplice, an apprentice necromancer, whether a wizard turned to the dark arts or a foul clone of his master we do not know. And with him is a legion of the once dead, newly arisen. Be bold of heart and take faith in Sigmar, because we fight for our very souls."

My Vampire Counts army is led by Count Morgul the Dread, a Necrarch Vampire Lord. He is accompanied variously by a Thrall, a Necromancer and a Wight Banner Bearer. Plus of course hordes of beautiful skeletons and other dread creatures of the night!

The army has seen action in the Bristol region Conflict tournament in 2002, where I scored three draws. To read all about these and other battles, see my Battle Reports.

I now have photos of the entire army. See the Warhammer Undead Gallery.

As I write this (in December 2006), the army is sitting in storage. I hope to go back to it sometime and play some more games. I am looking forward to when Games Workshop update the army, in particular I want to see new models for Black Knights.

"Arise, my loyal warriors, arise from your long slumber. Once more we go to battle to further the glory of Nehekhara, in death as in life. Take up the standards, blow the trumpets, harness the horses and make ready the mighty host."

I always originally wanted an all skeleton army rather than a gothic vampire army, so when Tomb Kings was released, I bought the book and set about creating a Barrow Kings variant on my Vampire Counts army. I even started converting chariots pulled by Dire Wolves! However, in time I have had to rationalise my armies and this was one of the inevitable casualties. I still have a unit of skeleton cavalry (not Black Knights) built and undercoated, awaiting the next Vampire Counts list in case I can use them.

Oh, what a lamentable history this army has! Oh my!

I started creating a Lizardmen army from the fifth(?) edition Warhammer box which came with plastic Lizardmen and Bretonnians. I thought they were great. However, raising a Warhammer army takes a lot of time and effort, not to mention a lot of money. My main interest has always been Warhammer 40,000, so the Lizardmen was an occasional project which took years to progress.

When Games Workshop announced the imminent release of the next version of Warhammer, I put the army on hold. Eventually they re-released the army book but I was shocked to find that not only did they obsolete a lot of my troops choices, but also replaced virtually the entire model range. I was upset for a while and thought about abandoning the army, but I realised that I still liked it, that many of my models were better than the new ones, and I had a plan to make a couple of select purchases (including obscure eBay purchases) and refurbish the half-finished army.

So, I took a half-finished, one generation old army and refurbished it into...a half-finished, contemporary new army! In fact, now it was looking pretty good. I converted, built, based and undercoated the entire army, and had the Slaan and a few others painted up. So what happened?

Well, I moved to Spain, put the army in storage, and then Games Workshop released the NEXT version of the Warhammer rules! And so it sits in storage, next to the Vampire Counts (swapping stories about what might have been).

The army consists of the following:

• Slaan Mage Priest, with attendant skink (and snakes in the grass)
• Regiment of Saurus Temple Guard with halberd (all converted)
• Regiment of Saurus warriors with spear (old plastics with brass spears)
• Regiment of Saurus warriors with hand weapon (old plastics)
• Saurus champion
• Skink Shaman
• Unit of three Kroxigor
• Three Terradons with Skink riders
• Two Salamanders and Skink crew
• Stegadon with howdah and Skink crew
• Three swarm bases of serpents and lizards

"For My Liege, My King and The Lady!"

My newest Warhammer army WAS Bretonnian, inspired by the release of the Warhammer Armies book and the new range of models (especially Pegasus knights, I have to say). Unusually for me, I planned the army list & created a background text in one go, then bought all the models I needed in one go (although I had a number of the older models in my collection already). I then assembled and undercoated as much of the entire army as I could stomach in one go.

If you can do it, this really is the best way to build an army. There are many advantages. The main advantage is consistency. All models will be compatible (you bought them at the same time), they will be based the same and painted the same. If you build an army unit by unit, in my experience I find that my sixth unit is looking very different from my first. And I just can't seem to quite match the colour or basing texture or whatever. It also seems to work out much quicker and easier to keep the motivation up. It may be tedious to undercoat the entire army, but you know that when you finished you will never have to do that stage again. You get a real feeling of progress. Anyway, in this case my project came unstuck for really external reasons. Again, it was a casualty of the move to Spain. Worse is that I handed it over to someone to sell on my behalf and I haven't heard from them since.

The background and army list was worked out in some detail, including the design of the heraldry and named characters. It's all here for anyone that is interested and maybe creating their own Bretonnian army:

• Read the Bretonnian Army List
• Read the Bretonnian Army Background