As a big fan of Warhammer Underworlds: Shadespire I was pleased with the news last year of a second Underworld location….the Nightvault. Not an entirely unique locale the Nightvault is deep within the heart of the Mirrored City, Shadespire. More importantly though…more warbands!

Released in 2018, along side the second edition of one of Games Workshop’s flagship titles, Age of Sigmar, the opposing factions of the core Nightvault box match that of the 2nd edition Age of Sigmar…The ghosts of the Nighthaunt vs Sigmar’s ghostbusting Sacrosanct Chamber.

Both of these factions are some of the most new player friendly models to paint. With crisp sculpting that lends themselves well to washes and shades the models were a joy paint.

I dug into the Nighthaunt faction first as they were the more interesting of the two. I was a big fan of TSR’s Ravenloft setting as presented during the second edition of Dungeons and Dragons, so I decided my ghosts would sort of pay tribute to some of my favorite Clyde Caldwell Ravenloft paintings of the era….mainly blues, blacks, and some white. Red is the trim color frequently associated with mascot Strahd, but I always liked the pop of the purple of the warlock character on the Ship of Terror piece, so purple it is.

For Sigmar’s boys, I went with a traditional gold, blue, white, and red. This faction isn’t really one I’m too interested in playing but they painted quickly, so knocked them out. Oh, as discussed in my Bloodskin post, I don’t like to paint faces if I don’t have to. Fortunately, I had some Stromcast helmets rolling around in my bitz box. Though not the same style, I think the final result works.

With these two warbands done my Underworlds collection continues to stay nearly completely painted. True, I currently don’t own every warband, but I also don’t have a lot of unpainted plastic. And that fact that Underworlds offers small, bite-sized samplings of the various Mortal Realms factions will keep me coming back for more.