Grisly Ghouls from every tomb…

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The Hexwraiths/Black Knights kit contains a whopping 91 components - great news if you like converting miniatures. The riders are all separate components, so once you've finished building your Hexwraiths you've got plenty of spare bits to convert your Skeleton Warriors and Grave Guard. In terms of painting, both units offer up a variety of different painting styles. The Black Knights are the perfect unit to try out a bold and striking colour scheme - maybe your knights were once Bretonnian nobles and still retain their heraldry, or perhaps they are the resurrected remains of an Empire Knightly Order. The Hexwraiths, being the ghostly, otherworldly creatures that they are, are the perfect unit to try out a few different techniques, like object source lighting and glowing flames. In either case, you've got the opportunity to paint a really characterful and unique unit for your army.

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  So what do the Hexwraiths do? If you haven't read about them on their product page then these Ethereal creatures are one of the scariest things you can ever come face to face with (that includes the mother-in-law). Being Ethereal, they cannot be hurt by mundane weapons - an entire Empire gun line could open fire on them and hit nought but thin air. On top of that, they're also Fast Cavalry and have the ability to move straight through terrain and other units without taking damage or suffering a movement penalty. Ah yes, I almost forgot - they also carry a massive scythe which they use to decapitate their foes when they charge through them - marvellous!

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  The Black Knights, on the other hand, are the heavy cavalry of the Vampire Counts army list. They can be upgraded with barding for their steeds, giving them a 2+ armour save, and they can be equipped with lances to give them a little extra kick in combat. With a Strength of 6 on the charge, they can skewer a fair number of enemies and take a lot of punishment in return. Remember that they can benefit from Invocation of Nehek just like the rest of your army, meaning that those Black Knights that fall in combat, quickly rejoin the fight in your next turn.

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Okay, so that's the well-armoured knightly warriors of the Vampire Counts; now we get onto the gribbly monsters.

The Crypt Horrors are, to all intents and purposes, really big Crypt Ghouls, while the Vargheists are the definition of a Vampire gone wrong. Much like the Black Knights kit, there are plenty of spare parts in this box, including a selection of ugly bestial faces and six sets of arms - three with claws and three with wings so you can choose which unit to build. Personally it's a tough choice between the two - I've always been a big fan of Ghouls, so the Crypt Horrors would look great ambling along with them, but then huge messed up Vampires with wings are pretty cool, too. Perhaps a unit of each... (my wallet is going to be so empty this month).

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  Crypt Horrors are like ultra-Ghouls. Much like their smaller kin, they're not truly dead like the rest of the army, but tainted so heavily by Dark Magic that a casual observer really wouldn't be able to tell that they were still technically alive. Years of dining out at the local graveyard has really messed them up. They've got more attacks, a ridiculously high Toughness of 5, Regeneration and Poisoned Attacks. On top of that, they are also Monstrous Infantry, so they can stomp up and down on your opponent's unit when they've finished slicing and dicing them up. Essentially they are a very tough portable enemy blender.

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  Then there are the Vargheists. As a race, Vampires are pretty selfish and power hungry, and even a family unit like the Von Carsteins might end up going to war against each other. Vargheists are those Vampires that lost the family feud. As punishment they are buried alive (alivedead?) beneath the castles of Sylvania. Centuries of blood-lust erode their sanity, while exposure to warpstone-tainted water leaves their bodies changed forever. One of their main advantages for them is the Vampiric rule, which means they can always make march moves - not a nice prospect for enemy units, who will quickly find a unit of frenzied Vargheists landing behind them. Let the feast begin!

With Vampires flying all over the place and Skeletons crawling from the grave in anticipation of Saturday's release, we decided to have a look in our inbox to see what Vampire hobby we've got going on.

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  This unit of Blood Knights was sent to us by Deke Johnstone, the Manager of Games Workshop Liverpool in Sydney, Australia. We loved the solid red colour that Deke has achieved on them, and the freehand paintjob on the banner is particularly impressive.

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  The Blood Dragons are led into battle by Wallach, the Grand Master of Blood Keep. The model was converted using Ludwig Schwarzhelm as the base with parts from the Mordheim Vampire, Archaon's Sword arm and Corbulo's Grail.

Another great thing about the Vampire Counts is that they are also very easy to use in Storm of Magic battles - both as a full army, or as a Sorcerous Pact allied to another force. A 2000-point Empire army could, for example, field 500 points of Vampire Counts as a Sorcerous Pact. One Vampire Hero and a couple of boxes of Skeleton Warriors would make a great allied force. Or - and this could be really fun - a Necromancer with the Master of the Dead upgrade, which means you can raise your Skeleton unit above it's starting size - a very nasty surprise for your foes.

Using Vampire Counts as a full army in Storm of Magic is also pretty nasty. Necromancers and Vampires are both wizards, so any of them can stand on an Arcane Fulcrum. Personally I would stick the Necromancers on them - that way if something goes wrong (which it frequently does when magic is involved), your expensive Vampire won't get turned into a frog or teleported into another dimension. You can then use your Vampire to attack your opponent's Fulcrums and chop up their units. Don't forget, you also have access to all the normal monsters and creatures to boost up your force. We found these two on Flickr painted by Scott Edwards.

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  Scott: I painted the Chimera and Cockatrice to add to my Warriors of Chaos army when Storm of Magic came out. I'm a big fan of the Chimera because I can send it forwards knowing that it can deal with most things pretty easily and, if things do get a bit hairy, fly it away to safety on those nice big wings. I wanted to give the Chimera a similar colour scheme to the blue/purple one that Joe Tomaszewski painted for the 'Eavy Metal team, making it a lot brighter than the rest of my force, and reinforcing the magical aspect of it.

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  The Cockatrice was a nice contrast to the brute force of the Chimera. I tend to use the Cockatrice on the flanks of my army, using it to get rid of any pesky guns or cannons that will otherwise spoil my regiments before they can cause violence. It also has the awesome ability to turn things to stone, so while it may not match the Chimera for sheer combat carnage, it does have a very potent ranged attack, which is very useful in an army that doesn't usually have much to do in the shooting phase.