I've mixed manufacturers here. The third, fourth and sixth are Ral Parthas. I went back to the Southern Death Cult pack and plucked out the zombies. The rest are Splintered Light ghouls from the Greater Undead which could work reasonably well as zombies. The respective styles of both manufacturers is pretty apparent here.
I have to say that these battered undead have the best effort to reward ratio when painting. Green tinting over grey on the skin, brown on the scraps of cloth and some blood effect here and there.
I must say that I prefer the Ral Parthas to the Splintered Lights but your mileage may vary. The central figure is my absolute favourite. Look at him! Lurching forward, axe jammed in skull, gripping his precious handful of flesh.
"Hans... uh... are we the baddies?" - Guy wearing a skull as a mask.
I wanted to paint a little group of baddies so went a-digging through the stockpile. These are taken from Ral Partha's Southern Death Cult, a mix of robed cultists and undead. I pulled out all the models with skull masks for the project. Again, very solid sculpts, very detailed with an old-school 80s aesthetic. Exactly the style I like. The leader, on the far left, has a nice series of glyphs running along the seams of his cloak which reminded me of painting Teclis and Tyrion, back in the day.
The Cult of the Ice Heart are a group of ritualists obsessed with the destruction of the world as we know it. Their goal is to plunge the world into an eternal winter and earn the favour of some manner of eldritch elemental force. Despite the name, they can generally be found in temperate climates.
These actually flew straight off the painting table. After basing and washing, I used blue ink on the swords to give a magical effect which looks good but leaves me a bit nervous about messing with the glyphs on the blades as any paint applied is unlikely to blend well into the shading of the sword. The wash is too heavy but we'll come back to them at some future point. They'll certainly serve as they are.
