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I am starting a project that I need some help with, I want to make a themed or counts as zombie army. the reason for this is I play Blood Angels(vampiric tendencies), Space Wolves(werewolves at heart), Tyranid bugzilla list(made it during 4th edition when I could take those lovely Carnifexes) so as you can see I am missing zombies from the overarching theme.

I had thought of doing a vampire counts army in the past that didn’t work out so I have a box of skeleton warriors, a box of Grave Guard, and a box of zombies. The first option is making a Nurgle chaos space marine army using chaos marine bits and the zombie bits. The second option is making a counts as Necron army using the skeletons and grave guard converted with weapons from various races.

It does not have to be a competitive list as I will only play it against friends or take it as a for fun army to non competitive events. Really I am looking to make a really fun army to convert and paint. Any ideas would be welcome as I am not really sure how I want to proceed.

If you're looking for zombies, take the hordiest army: Imperial guard. Take some Cadians, add some Catachan arms parts, melt some of the heads with acetone.

Failing a full on conversion, there are plenty of companies that produce sci-fi zombies that would work quite well for your needs.

I'd go for IG personally. They're one of the few armies that you can get the model count to accurately reflect the horror that is a shambling horde.


That and kitbashing skeletons and zombies with Cadian parts would be pretty easy. With some green stuff, any IG infantry can be turned into a zombie fairly easily.

Join the zombie ork horde it may give me enough motivation to complete my army ahead of yours.

i had not thought of IG or Orks, i have some orks and have a friend that i can get some IG bits from. i could also use a bit from every army, undead eldar or dark eldar would be really fun.

Bit left field but Tyranids? Plenty of Hormagaunts (zombies) Genestealers (super zombies), are broodlords still HQ? A couple of Monsters (Tank, witch, smoker, boomer etc). In essence they are the only army who can pull off near pure CC. You could even use a few tyranid parts if you want T-Virus style monsters.

What would annoy me about Imp guard is all those shooting attacks, how do you explain the zombies all having guns? Also guard dont have a throw-away vaguely CC unit i.e. guys with laspistols and CC.

corpsesarefun wrote:Join the zombie ork horde it may give me enough motivation to complete my army ahead of yours.

Zomborks?


WWAAAAAAAbrainsGGGHHHHHH!

That would be quite amusing to play against.

I think Tyranids would be a great codex to use the, the instinctive behavior thing would work for zombies as well. I guess that I could use sorcerer types as the synapse, Broodlord and Tyranid prime as HQ kind of like necromancers controlling the horde. Though I would have fast type zombies(Walking dead/Dawn of the dead style) that would make it a really interesting army as well. and I could mix and match bits from various boxes zombie stormboys as Gargoyles(cause strapping a rocket to a zombie is the only way I can think of to make one fly). Ok I am seriously getting excited about this project


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You know what else might be fun would be to magnetize many of the models so I could mix and match arms and heads…ork heads sewn onto eldar bodies, oh this is going to be the most fun army I have ever done.

I had a start at some zombie nids not so long ago, and I loved the concept, so I can thoroughly urge you to go that way. My only issue was that I converted some bigger units to reflect the decay, but couldn't face doing the same to hordes of gaunts etc.

A counts as army would work much better in that regard, as you wouldnt be altering so many already damn fine looking (IMHO) models. Go for it!

So here is my plan so far, this will be a counts as army I will be using the Tyranid army book for rules since that is the easiest book for low toughness high model count close combat army. I will basically be raiding my bits box kit bashing and adding simplified models from pretty much every humanoid race in the 40k universe. Ill use fantasy undead and zombie bits as well as allot of green stuff for converting.

The story behind it will be at this early stage either that chaos/dark eldar or even a really crazy ork found a way to raise the dead of countless battlefields and are plundering recent battlegrounds for more soldier parts. Or I could use a storyline similar to the movie Virus(a rogue computer virus that infects machines to incorporate biological parts with machine parts) in fact that last one is even better someone gets the idea from Tyranids of using the technology and body parts from the dead to build an army.

I would say Chaos or IG

With Chaos you could take a couple plague marine squads and then load up on tons of lesser demons (zombies) Kinda like the marines are actually summoning the undead from right beneath your feet. You could even have some coming up out of the ground. Lesser Demons are also cheap, so you would have a lot of guys.

IG because you could get the numbers. I would do squads of Penal Legion, 2 out of 3 abilities are more combat oriented and if you put the priest (necromancers) with them they aren't horrible in cc.

Ultimately, Chaos would probably be more fluff driven since the zombie plague is well documented and even has an apoc data sheet. IG would ultimately end up shooting which is not very zombie like. Chaos would also be able to take some antitank and still have it fluff intact

I think IG would be good, but it depend what kind of 'zombie' do mean. The zombies in Land of the Dead could still use basic tools, and followed some of the instincts of their former life. Using they type of 'zombie' you could use the IG, who could still use their equipment.

You could also include some models from the other races as victims that got away after be infected, and subsequently turned into zombie and joined the horde.

Chaos Renegades........essentially its a IG army except when designed it almost appears as if someone watched Ghost Of Mars......its more like a good zombie 40k mix

check them out on forge worlds site

Oooh, so many ideas come to mind.
Depends on the style of zombies you want to do.
Romero, 28days, T-virus, voodoo, hedgehog...

Curse you! Plague Zombie/Nids: another army I'm all-but-commanded to make!

Nooooooo!

Thatguyoverthere wrote:I'd go for IG personally. They're one of the few armies that you can get the model count to accurately reflect the horror that is a shambling horde.


That and kitbashing skeletons and zombies with Cadian parts would be pretty easy. With some green stuff, any IG infantry can be turned into a zombie fairly easily.

I just took the direct approach and gave all skeletons Lasguns


Svog 227th Infantry Platoon


Veteran squad + Chimera

See more in my Thread, link in Sig

I did a few undead guardsmen up to use as conscripts in my renegade army. Essentially zombies with spare IG parts and some green stuff. Here is a WIP pic as they're not quite done yet:



Hope you have fun doing whatever you choose in the end

I have been giving a lot of thought to the zombie army and I am really excited about it. so here is the plan I have for it so far.
The army will be a counts as army and I will be using the Tyranid codex, now many others say I should use the imperial guard or chaos marine or even chaos daemons codex. my reasons for using the Tyranid codex is simple first off I will be doing resident evil style zombies the idea of the t-virus making zombies and even monstrous creatures appeals to me. the reason I am not going to use imperial guard or marines is that very rarely do you see a zombie horde using guns, it just doesn’t feel right.
So here are my ideas for counts as zombies so far:
HQ: Necromancer/technomancer=Tyranid Prime, flying necromancer=parasite of mortrex,
Elites: Necromancer/thecomancer Warrior=doom of Malan’tai/Zoanthrope, Bloated rotten zombie=venomthrope
Troops: basic zombie=hormagaunt, Spiting/pukeing zombie=Termagant, armored zombie=Genestealer, hulking zombie=melee Warrior, swarm or severed arms and heads=Ripper swarm.
Fast Attack: Flying Necromancer/technomancer=shrike, Burrowing or buried zombies=Ravener, zombies with rockets strapped to their back=Gargoyles, Bloated puss filled zombies=Spore mine clusters
Heavy Support: no idea for this yet
Now as you can see there are many things I have left out, these are mostly the monstrous creatures. I am not sure what if anything I will do about the MCs but I have enough of an idea to get started and have a good swarm.

I love the idea of a full zombie army. Its an idea i just may "borrow". Good luck with the project

A mass of writhing limbs and severed heads is an awesome idea for ripper bases! I have visions of evil dead movies. Sweet!

Heavy support: replace the heads on that new skaven thing with zombie heads.