ECHOES OF IMPERIUM

The game features two undead ogres, massive beasts that can take out an unfortunate hero quite easily with their lumbering attacks. I liked the concept a lot as it was something I don’t think Games Workshop has explored before and the miniatures are quite nice. Their coats and headgear are clearly inspired by the uniforms worn by Kuban Cossacks and they include a nice reference to Radukar in the wolf heads they wear on their shoulders. All in all, they are not too covered in details and they actually look like walking corpses, can’t ask for much more than that.

But the main challenge was of course that Citadel had never made any zombie ogres as far as I could discover. While they have made some really nice ogres, for example the C ogres are legendary for a reason and the Marauder ogres are also outstanding. But no luck there and while it is always tempting to cut apart miniatures I felt that I just didn’t want to do it. The other issue was also that while the games original villain, Radukar, might have a company of ogres under his command Vlad von Carstein, the villain in my setting, had not included ogres in his armies. Looking through my collection of miniatures I discovered a banshee and a wight, the banshee by Aly Morrison and the wight by Gary Morley. The pair seemed like the kind of undead creatures that would have been a part of the Sylvanian forces and they were suitably over the top gaudy and gothic to fit the theme.

Kosargi the Nightguard, once a knight of the Drakenhof Templar order, he died long before the reign of Count von Carstein. But the grave couldn’t silence his call and he clawed his way back into the night to roam the lands as a mad spirit.

I like the miniature’s heavy structure and hilariously evil armour, just the kind of style you expect from an evil monster. The only modification I did was to remove two banana horns from his helmet and give it a fur trim. While researching the project I noticed that the colours of Sylvania were black and red (no surprise there), but as I have an ongoing Empire army project using those colours I felt it would be more fun to do an other scheme. I settled on yellow and brown as they are a striking pair and thematically feels close to the autumn and eventual death and decay.

When Kosargi lost his hideous spouse he gave his soul as an offering, which transformed her into a revenant.

The spouse is a banshee from the Circle of Blood campaign, a fifth edition campaign book with a stunning cover. The campaign books from the fifth edition were all pretty nice looking (I haven’t played any of them so can’t comment on quality), even if they lacked the humor of McDeath and the other earlier campaigns. She goes quite well with the Morley wights (eventually she was promoted to wight champion) and I didn’t see any point in trying to change her. Every time she has appeared in a game she has scared the crap out of the players, it’s that judging finger, so I am very happy with her. The pair of them tower over most of the other hostiles and most of the heroes, as is only suitable for such a power couple.