Tale of Only Two Gamers: Empire are here!

I finally sold enough Orcs & Goblins to get my Empire army ordered, at least the beginnings.  I put in this order to the Warstore on Monday and had a box full of goodies on my porch Thursday afternoon.  Awesome.

To get started with the army, I ordered 2 Battallion Boxes(40 State Troops, 20 Handgunners/Crossbowmen, 2  Cannons/Mortars, and 16 Knights(for sale).  I also ordered a Wizard box, a Hellblaster Volley Gun and the new Griffon model, which will be an Amber Wizard on Two Headed Griffon in bigger games.  I just had to have the Griffon, as it is awesome and huge.  I also bought the 8th edition rulebook, a couple army books I am missing from collection and some misc items(mostly Army Painter Tufts and a couple paints and magnets).

I have finalized my 500 pt list and will hopefully make some progress building some this weekend during our first "Monthly Game Day".  So here is the list:

Captain - 60 pts

Warrior Priest - 65 pts

Halberds x 25 with Full Command - 180 pts

Detachment - Handgunners x 10 - 90 pts

Mortar - 100 pts

495 pts

I know I should drop one character and get more dudes, but I purposefully did this so I could get this army together and painted a little quicker.  Our rule of having only painted models during "Tale of Only Two Gamers" will be a tough task if we want to play games this year, haha.  Our current plan is to play our first Fantasy games in August, so I really have to get cranking.  I have about 10-12 weeks, so I'm hoping to get 3-4 models per week painted, which will be tough when I throw in the fact they are all still on sprues.

And I have a small predicament.  I really want to build my Stir River Patrol themed army, easy enough, except I really want to build them as an Undead Stir River Patrol themed army.  I could then use the Core from my Empire army as the core of Skeletons for a Vampire Counts army(which I would really like to have).  This would save me cash for sure and be a cool theme I could carry through two armies.  I think with prices going up, we gamers will need to start coming up with ways to make our money go further, like building an Undead Empire army that doubles as a Vampire Counts army with only a few additional models needed.  So, this means I need to build and convert EVERY model and have painted in 10-12 weeks.  Like I said, tough, especially with 50 hour work weeks, wife, two children(ages 1 and 4), and a garden.

So, what do you think?  Should I just build an Empire army and forget about the VC, or go ahead and convert with Skellie bits(I have plenty of skellie and zombie bits) to make a dual-themed army?  I would love to know what you think about the Undead Empire idea and how you would go about converting these minis.