New painting - Elder Vampire

Heresy Miniatures: UNDEAD004: Vampire in Manbat form

Time to get some Heresy on board, as well!

This figure had lain on my figure drawer on a semi-finished stage for a while. I had originally based it on my regular humanoid base, which is about 21mm across, but although it did fit nicely, the pose of the figure was so front-heavy that it was constantly on the brink of toppling forward.

Then, as I was fiddling with the Ruins & Ratmen statistics for the Vampire Duellist, Valerie Dupuis, and thought that she would need a worthy opponent to hunt for in the ruined city. Thus was born the concept of Nemeses, arch-enemies of the Independent figures, that have a chance to spawn to the game if and when Independent models are fielded.

Now that I had an incentive to finish the miniature, it happened quickly. I knew I had to alter the pose a bit, and took an easy way out as I saw a suitably sized barrel in the bit box. With a bit of bending the figure accepted the new pose, and all I had to do was to paint the barrel and add some highlights to the figure.

I'm glad I found use for this figure. It's quite good-looking (Marcus from the Underworld series comes to mind), but unfortunately the wings make it a bit awkward as a game piece. With the elevated pose, that problem is somewhat alleviated, and the figure looks more imposing, to boot.