Twenty Years Ago | Varney (Vampire Thrall & Undead Warband)

Christmas 2003 was where it all started, really.

I'd had Warhammer Fantasy Battle bits and bobs before, playing a handful of games with starter set materials or the Chaos Warriors I'd collected because a 3000 point army could be had for a hundred quid (if you spent a quarter of it on a Greater Daemon, and you didn't mind losing a lot). Then the vast majority of it had been car-booted under the auspice of grandparental authority and concern about examinations.1

This, though: this was the year that I had beer money. I'd just turned eighteen, started my first job as a weekend bartender, and didn't have many vices other than goth girls and Jaffa Cakes. And on a beer money budget, in 2004, things were possible. Like, say, slow-growing a Warhammer Fantasy Battle army.

I've been trying to work out why I made the choices I did. I thought it was the White Dwarf article on the Army of Sylvania that influenced me, but a quick fact check shows that came out in March of the following year, and Storm of Chaos must have taken place over that summer. The influence, in truth, was somewhat older.

I'd gotten into Mordheim on release, lured in by the early version shared in White Dwarf and the promise of Necromunda-with-swords that it offered. Like many of my enthusiasms, it didn't get far beyond the starter set, but I did lay my hands on a couple of other warbands. Possessed, which I'd badly mutilated trying to stick bows on the Brethren, and Undead.

I didn't have the latter-day Undead warband. with its fancy-ass metal Zombies derived from their pulse-having counterparts (and their contemporary metal Ghouls, possibly my favourite Citadel ghoul models). I had the original - the front row of metal figures, and a sprue of plastic Zombies I don't know if I was ever arsed to build.

What I was arsed to do, with the rumours of an upcoming Army of Sylvania army list and the presence of a Von Carstein Vampire in my collection already (and also, did I mention the goth girls? I was very much in my "popped collar and swoosh" stage of "fashion" at the time), was Mail Order a few more sprues to test the principle.2

I couldn't tell you which of my Skeleton Spearmen were the first, any more; this unit has fallen apart and been rebuilt more times than I dare to mention. I do recall matching up the Empire Halberdier limbs with the Skeleton hands and forearms so I had some front rank lads with spears down, and some rear rank lads with spears up or even shouldered.

I could tell you that these were probably the first Zombies I did, because they have the silliest poses I could manage with Empire Militia and Zombie Horde regiment sprues. The "Matrix Zombie" with the duelling pistols (he's doing a bullet time lean! he has a trenchcoat! it was 2003!) remains one of my favourites even though, objectively speaking, he's rather silly.

The green base rims are new, indulged in for the Meme after I fell in with the Facebook grogs.
I don't know if I like them, but the units are less of a big blob now.
The rest of the paint jobs are sixth form quality, banged out in a weekend by an eighteen year old
and never touched with a paintbrush again.
Stillman be praised.

I also, of course, put my first characters together. The Dregs are long gone, goodness alone knows where those models ended up, but the Vampire Thrall and Necromancer are still with me, integral parts of the collection.

We'll talk about the Skeletons later, when we move on to the second wave of Undead bits and pieces I collected. We'll come to the Necromancer later too, because he wouldn't really have an identity of his own until he had a peer group. But we can start where we should start: with a Vampire.

A few elements are new! The base and greatsword are both from the plastic Empire Captain,
and there is a cunningly concealed hole so that he can carry an Army Standard if I'm not fielding
my dedicated hero for that. Also, I eventually came back and crudely weathered all the travelling cloaks on my Vampires, just to add some visual depth and grub them up a bit.

Sir Francois Varnard was not, by blood, a native of Sylvania or even of the Empire. In life, he was a Questing Knight of far Bretonnia, his lance and duty set aside in search for revelation in dark places. No place darker, one might think, than the dingy woods and dreary crags of the heartland of the Vampire Counts - whispers there were that Mannfred the Last had returned, and rumours that a hero had already bearded him within his den and failed.

What false Knight could refuse such challenge?

Sir Francois never reached night-shrouded Drakenhof, never gazed upon its seven towers and baleful depths. Sir Francois never made it past Templehof, clinging darkly to the shores of its mere. The wrong castle; the wrong vampire; the wrong man, in the wrong time. Even his name has turned out false, mauled by the clumsy tongues of Sylvanian peasantry.

Varney the Vampire. Varney the Vulfborn. Varney the Vagabond. Call him what you may - his search for the Grail has fallen foul, but his search for glory goes ever on. Bounding ahead of the Army of the Order of the Grand Cross of Sylvania, its chief scout and saboteur has come to relish what he has become, the great error that has made the man a monster. The alternative would be madness, and Sir Varney is not mad. Not at all. Those charges into enemy lines are targeted attempts to break their artillery or headhunt their turbulent priests and interfering wizards. He doesn't want to die in the slightest.

 

1. I'd like it on record that I was a solid B student even though I spent most of those two years either playing or thinking about WFRP and V:tM. They didn't think to forbid me from role-playing games...

2. Ahh, Mail Order. One understands why GW stopped doing it - the bins full of unsaleable incomplete kits that had one popular part, the price of tin being what it is, the silly sods like me ringing up and trying to get them to cast Morbius the Liche from the 1993 catalogue... but it was really handy for trying out mass kitbashes without committing to a whole regiment off the bat.