Undead artillery

 

For the Big Orange Book table recreation I am putting on at BOYL this year I require 5 skeleton bolt throwers and crew. I don't actually know what these bolt throwers are, I guess they could be historical? In any case I wasn't going to spend ages tracking them down when Alternative Armies produce a perfectly serviceable undead bolt thrower, and have just released a bunch of skeletons which work perfectly as crew. 

I built balsa wood stands for them and bent the bow arms to make them look a bit more similar to those in the picture. There's a nice lot of skully detail on these but I decided to just base coat and wash them to give the dark, nondescript look in the original photo.

The Alternative Armies weapon pack designed to go with the skeletons with open hands includes a bunch of spears. These work quite nicely in size and shape as a supply of fresh bolts.

Whilst I was at it I made this 'enhanced' skull chucker. The free see no, hear no, speak no skellies AA were giving away a few months ago all made me think they were going "oh no!" so I wanted to use them for something suitably dramatic. The idea being that the fourth crewman has been a bit close whilst the gun fires and has rather gone to pieces as a result. It's not quite as I imagined, I find myself a bit short on skeleton parts again! But it's quite fun nevertheless.

Undead artillery

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

Reign of the Lichemaster- Some characters of note

My final (for now) post of Lichemaster miniatures focuses of some named characters previously not included or with less-than-brilliant photos. The only newly painted piece here is where we shall start...

Kristoffe Earlee, vampiric necromancer lord, was the 2022 BOYL exclusive mini. As a Bob Olley sculpt he naturally divides opinion, but since my Lichemaster is a Bob Olley sculpt it seemed rude not to include him. The intention was to fit as many references to a late-lamented popular actor as possible. How many can you find?

I've shown Kemler himself before, but worth repeating with better lighting and a funky backdrop! As mentioned he's a slightly modified Essex miniature with (I think) a Reaper steed.

Some of the dead dwarves of Gimbrin's mine, including Gimbrin Finehelm himself and Bardak the Loremaster (a modified sculpt by Curtis Fell from an old Circle of Chaos Kickstarter).

The Bogie Bogles and former agitator Grimwald Calico, complete with bomb. The similarity in garb and poses between the Boney Bomber and model given for Calico in the scenario pack can't be accidental, surely? Yes, Corabell has a pet rat.

And finally, my three skull chuckers that don't really fit anywhere else.

Reign of the Lichemaster- Some characters of note

Reign of the Lichemaster: Dead Bretonnians

 

Duc Tancred II of Quenelles rushed to the relief of La Maisontaal... according to the rehash of the Citadel Journal scenario published in Warhammer Chronicles. Unfortunately he and his Bretonnian contingent were also soundly thrashed by the unstoppable might of the Lichemaster and now serve him in undeath. According to my research blue and white is the 'canon' colour scheme for Tancred's forces. Though the pegasus head I have not adopted, opting instead for a classic fleur de lys motif- defaced with Kemler's orange spider/crab mark.

Mostly Heartbreaker (from their Fantasy Armies Packs range) undead archers with a few RAFM and the Fenryll champion (displaced from Krell's chariot) make up the 'more armoured' archer unit. 

Mostly classic Citadel plastic skeletons with a few RAFM and some Mantic heads make up the 'unarmoured' archer unit. Lead by a Celtos (Brigade Models) miniature.

In death all are equal... and so the elite foot knights have been crammed into a unit alongside regular peasant levy. They have crowded together at the front at least!

Celtos (Brigade Models)

More Celtos

A couple of classic plastics with 5th ed skeleton ram heads, drum from an empire model and 'beater' from (I think) a 6th ed regiment set

Heartbreaker (two different ranges), Grenadier, RAFM and Dark Arts Studio

Classic Citadel

It feels like a Bretonnian force would include a fair number of men at arms with polearms so there are two large spear units. A very mixed unit of spearmen with some light armour and shields...

Mantic plastics. They were cheap so I thought I would check them out. Not a fan really, but they make ok rear rank troops for variation.

RAFM and Heartbreaker. I think these older Hearthbreaker sculpts are now available through North Star.

Hooray! More Celtos

And more Celtos

And yet more Celtos

...and just regular spear skellies. Yet more Celtos! Yes, I did score a job-lot of cheap Celtos skeletons... but I also love them very much and would have bought them new (but perhaps not so many!) had I not been able to pick up the bundle. They're mostly just bone and metal so can be really quick to paint, especially if you daub Modelmates Rust on instead of painting the metal as I have done. I did balance this out with quite a bit of highlighting though.

Some RAFM crept into the middle to bulk out the unit. Their stance is so wide that it was better to put 3 on a 40x40 base rather than try to fit them on 20mm squares!

And the chariots. I guess Bretonnians are not fabled for their chariots? But since these are made of bone they were probably raised by Kemler from some remains of giant oxen preserved in the La Maisontaal vaults and men at arms delegated to crew them. The first plastic kit I ever got was a skeleton chariot (long after the awesome Skeleton Horde box had been discontinued) and I remember it being such a pain to stick together. I love the kit, but even with years of practice it is still a pain to keep assembled and fell apart several times whilst painting! Not helped by the substitution of some metal parts it must be said. These were picked up in a lot of broken skeletons so have had some mending and alterations to get them back on the road.

Alternative Armies chariot driver. A RPE skull (I do love them so!) replaces a lost plastic head on the archer.

Machineries of Destruction steeds replace the plastics for variation. The two-headed, three-armed skeleton was like that in the job lot so I kept him.

Head plate from the Black Coach to add some variation to the plastic horse. Mix of Skeleton Horde and 5th ed plastics in the crew, but not too noticeable I think.

Last but not least, Tancred himself and his contingent of knights. Tancred is a Ral Partha rider but I didn't like his horse, I believe that's a Grenadier one he's riding? Could be wrong. He has an attendant wizard (probably Jade judging by the scythe?) and two champions. At some point I may do a Tancred on a pegasus as he is represented in the Warhammer Chronicles book, Grenadier have a half-decent one but it's not quite right... A project for the future, maybe. Between them these heroes will lead a unit of knights and one of mounted men at arms.

Citadel (and a Mantic) on lovely Essex (now available just as horses) and a RAFM steed

Citadel and RAFM (and Mantic) on Citadel, RAFM and Essex steeds

Classic Skeleton Horde undead horsemen joined by later Citadel riders on Esex and Citadel steeds

RAFM on RAFM and Essex steeds

One more to go next week!

Reign of the Lichemaster: Dead Bretonnians