The raised dead

 

The Oldhammer Community is full of lovely people. I know I don't have to say that, you know it's true, but it's worth affirming. The number of people who are still (in these days of giant ebay prices) willing to give stuff away in the name of a good cause is such a great endorsement. Such a thing happened to me recently. I happened to mention in the course of one of my youtube videos that I'm hoping to put on a game at BOYL this year reproducing THAT table from the 3rd ed book:

Now, there are several people bringing models from their collections to do this. One thing I had failed to find, though, was a load of the skeleton army plastics that occupy so much of the battlefield. They're also the best plastics ever produced of course! Lo and behold a lovely gentleman passed me a box at Salute. Expecting a dozen or so skeletons I thanked him and put the box aside to open when I got home... it's busy at Salute. Imagine my surprise to find almost an entire skeleton army in the box, mostly fully assembled! What a gentleman. I reckon alongside some I had already and a proxy unit of 'other' skeletons that gets us well on the way.

Here they are, building rank on rank, with a handful of Alternative Armies recent releases supplementing them. The colour scheme is approximated from the photos in the book, along with the iconography.

I haven't done a banner for them yet as they'll have a 'temporary' banner for the game. After that they'll be used whenever Kemler raises fresh skellies for my undead host.

One of the (many) benefits of the skeleton army box sprues was 1 in 4 scythes. That means you can make that required unit of grim reapers from the 3rd ed armies list. 

There were seven skeleton horsemen along with the foot troops so I've painted those up at the same time. I already have quite a chunky unit of horsemen in the 'dead bretonnians' section of the army, but I wanted to round out this unit to 1o so I picked three of the least knightly-looking from the previous unit and repainted the blue and white into green and yellow. Kinda tempted to do a host more as I much prefer the yellow/green...

The raised dead

Warriors Combat Cards

Remember those Goblinoids Combat Cards I replicate years and years ago now? Well a couple of years back I thought I should have a crack at the Warriors deck, prompted by seeing how many of these figures are still available from Foundry, hence how easy it is to get them. Last year at BOYL I was asked if I'd run the Combat Cards game again in 2025, so I decided to take the plunge and get those greenskins someone to fight against. Warriors seemed the best fit as a) I already had Gladius and no idea what to do with him, b) I already mentioned many of them are still available, c) the statlines aren't crazy disproportionate to the orcs and goblins. So I set about collecting them. As it turned out that took me about a month, painting them took maybe 5 full days, so all-in-all a lot quicker than the Goblinoids! I didn't have this deck as a kid, so the nostalgia hit is not as strong, and frankly I don't think the paint jobs are as amazing as Fraser Gray and Kev Adams' work on the Goblinoids deck. That meant I wasn't so bothered with hitting it exactly right. General vibes are fine. It was really nice working on individual models again after a couple of years of intensive army painting. Definitely more enjoyable than cranking out Empire footsoldiers! I decided to start from a black undercoat as reading WDs of the era I imagined that would be what the team were doing. This is very different from my usual and I haven't done it since the not-greenskin orc army I painted. The main benefit being twofold- I can drybrush chainmail etc. straight from undercoat and then paint around it, no risk of overbrushing silver onto coloured areas. Shading (especially the black-lining that defines much of the painting of this era) is already taken care of by avoiding strips on the edge of each area. I was expecting to have to fight to get colours bright over a black undercoat, but it was surprisingly easy. I was also expecting not be able to se the details very well, that's why I usually prime grey. Also no problems there, with a Halfords matt black spray I could see just fine. I may adopt black undercoats again in the future.

This guy (despite still being available from Foundry) was purchased alongside some other barbarians from the collection of Paul Sawyer. I didn't think much of the transaction at the time (except "oh neat, I get some of Fat Bloke's toys!") but as he sadly passed away recently they have more significance now. I like to think they got a good home.

Here's one of those figures to be found in many ranges. I already had one in the Heroes for Dungeonquest set, but thought I should get another to save having to keep base continuity and to be able to paint the other like the Dungeonquest artwork.

Another from the late Paul Sawyer's lead pile.

This one I believed to be a conversion as I couldn't find him in the catalogues. Turns out he's a gamekeeper. Anyway, I got the variant Foundry still sell, snipped off the arms and added his crossbow, bear trap and staff. A pretty good approximation I think.

Again, I had one fro Dungeonquest but decided to get another. Not one of the ones Foundry sell currently, but I would be very surprised if they didn't have the mould somewhere.

This is a conversion as the one on the Combat Cards is an unreleased Marauder figure and I wasn't going to wait around for one one to crop up. I also don't like the original enough to pay 'unreleased' money for it. My version's a bit short, but I think he's in the ballpark.

The big rarity of the collection. This I guy I wasn't sure was even moulded at GW, but it turns out he was, he's just unrelease. As there's no similar figure in any of the catalogues I could find I sculpted this tribute from scratch.

Another Dungeonquest duplicate, except I'm pretty sure the one I have with my Dungeonquest set has an eye patch and this chap doesn't. He does, however, have a miscast bow. Not as long as it should be. Ah well.

Foundry sell this guy, and I have one in my barbarian army. Rather than repaint him I picked up another, this time original Citadel. I only noticed whilst painting that his quiver and sword project above his shoulder, whilst the one on the cards (and the one Foundry sell) have the quiver covered by his cloak and no sword. Guess this is the 'mould ripper' variation! 

This chap's shield is a little small. I thought I had the right one, but really needed the next size up.

Another from the Paul Sawyer horde. The shields turned away from the camera have all been painted with designs from the Armies book (high elf actually, but suitably Viking). 

Really struggled to get this guy. In the end I settled for one without his right hand and axe- seems a common ailment for this model! I scratchbuilt a replacement for him.

 

Warriors Combat Cards