Spring cleaning: Zacharias the Everliving

Back in the early 2000’s I went to University and started playing Warhammer Fantasy Battles with the Vampire Counts. Back then Games Workshop had the Collector’s Guide series of books. These books listed (and had photos) of every model Games Workshop produced for a given faction. The Undead book was the biggest one in the range because the undead had been around for so long. I was on a mission to own one of every Vampire Count model in that book.  Without digging the book out of my loft, I’m fairly sure I ended up getting them all into my army except for Zacharias the Everliving.

Back then Zacharias was the big centre piece model of the Vampire Counts range. Every time I was about to buy the model I didn’t for two reasons. One was that for the cost of Zacharias I could buy another unit that I knew I would use a lot more of (e.g. 20 Graveguard or a large unit of Skeletons). The other was that at the time the idea of fielding a very powerful model that would have cost about half my points felt too gamey. In the end the model went out of production before I ever bought it.

Over a decade later Games Workshop started doing their small made to order runs of older models. When Zacharias was made available I decided to buy the model straight away.

I’ve been taking my time to build up the model and pin all the larger joints – not out of caution but rather because I find pinning to be a rather slow and difficult process. And this model really needs it.

For those of you who may be curious, this model was released in 2000 (according to the date sculpted underneath its foot). The sculptor decided that a top heavy metal model needed to be dancing on one foot with only its skeletal thin tail for extra support. Zacharias’ tome of Nagash is also being carried by a spirit which is held aloft on the end of a long thin wisp of magic with about a 2mm by 2mm contact area. I couldn’t even pin that directly. I had to pin through the wisp and into Zacharias’ back away from the actual joint.

There are some very large gaps on a lot of the joints so next up is using green stuff to fill them in (and hopefully make the joints a bit stronger too).

I’ve now fully assembled the dragon and used greenstuff to fill in around all the joints. Zacharias I will leave as a sub-assembly and he’s green stuffed too. I’ve prepared a base using sheet cork and a resin tree that was a free stretch goal from a kickstarter I backed last year.

The dragon is temporarily glued to another base for painting.

The undercoat was done with three sprays to achieve a zenith highlight as a base. First I used stormvermin fur, mainly focusing on the bottom of the model. Then I  sprayed the middle and top of the model with grey seer, keeping the can at a 45 degree angle. I finished with a light wraith bone spray from directly above.

I used contrast paints to provide base colours for almost the entire model. There are just a few metalics that have not been touched yet, and the base has not used contrast paints.

The zombie dragon was painted black templar all over, then I used wraithbone to repaint the bone and exposed flesh areas. Then the exposed flesh was painted blood angels red followed by another touch up with wraithbone. The bones and horns were then painted skeleton horde and the tongue volupus pink. Leather belts and ropes were painted wyldwood.

Zacharias’ robes were painted shyish purple. His skin was painted basilicanum grey. His book and staff orb were painted volupus pink. His staff and sandles were painted wyldwood. His scrolls were painted apothecary white and his spirit was painted gryph-hound orange.

The tree on the base has been painted nihilakh oxide and the raised areas of ground have had a thick layer of stirland battlemire applied.

The dragon has a few chains and a small piece of chain mail that appears to be there to hold its guts in. I wanted to go with a bronze colour to give the impression they are more ritualistic and part of the magic animating the dragon, rather than physically strong.

The bronze was base coated with screaming bell, then highlighted with hashut copper followed by sycorax bronze.

Zacharias is one of the oldest and most powerful beings in the Old World, so his metalics are gold. They were painted retributor armour and then highlighted auric armour gold.

The base was painted rhinox hide. The raised areas were drybrushed waaagh! flesh and then the lower areas were painted nurgle’s rot. This will tie the bases in to me existing swamp bases that I use for the rest of my Vampire Counts models. The tree was drybrushed with white scar to make the tree look ethereal.

I’ve been adding more highlights to the main colours. So far I’ve left the black alone as I think the contrast paint works well enough for black.

The bone was highlighted with ushabti bone followed by screaming skull. The exposed flesh was highlighted with evil sunz scarlet followed by wild rider red. The tongue, tome, and staff tip were highlighted with pink horror followed by emperor’s children. Zacharius’ robes were highlighted with genestealer purple. The spirit was highlighted with wild rider red followed by a 50:50 mix of wild rider red and screaming skull.

The dragon’s eye sockets were painted with screaming skulland then hexwraith flame.

The edge of the base got a layer of waaagh! flesh.

One of the things I noticed is that the orange contrast paints had started to rub off where I was handling Zacharias a lot. I also read tip in last month’s Whitedwarf that after applying contrast paints you should varnish the model to protect the paint. It seems contrast paints are more prone to rubbing off than other paints.

It was difficult to photograph this model. He’s quite big and the pose is awkward. Zacharias is practically falling off the dragon, so to picture him I have to angle the camera upwards and get very close.

To finish the model I had to glue the dragon on the the base, then use more stirland battlemire to build up around its foot. Once dry I drybrushed with waaagh! flesh to tie it in to the rest of the base.

There is actually very little contact between Zacharias and his dragon so he’s only really held in place by the glue on either end of his pin.