Another Skeleton Warrior Unit Painted

Last week I managed to complete another skeleton warrior unit for the Analogue Painting Challenge.  As with the previous units, I'll be adding metal command figures in the near future.

I'm getting a little more consistent with the shading washes and I'm also finding that I'm getting the figures completed a lot quicker now.  I'm using Rotring Brown ink mixed with Chaos Black paint as the basis for the washes.

With this unit, I decided to add an extra highlight to the bronze on the shields. I prefer these to the shields on the previous unit so once the challenge is complete I'll go back and add highlights to the shields on the other unit to match them in with this one.

I've included a picture of the army below.  The unit on the left has the extra highlight on the shields, the one on the right doesn't.  Which do you prefer?

Next up will be a unit of skeleton cavalry with hand weapons and shields.

Army Progress

29 Skeleton Warriors with Hand Weapons, Shields, Musician and Standard Bearer @ 341 points.
29 Skeleton Warriors with Hand Weapons, Shields, Musician and Standard Bearer @ 341 points.
23 Grim Reapers with Scythe, Light Armour, Musician and Standard Bearer @ 350 points.
10 Skeleton Archers with Hand Weapon and Bow @ 120 points.
9 Death Riders with Hand Weapon , Lance and Shield @ 207 points.
9 Death Riders with Hand Weapon, Light Armour and Shield @ 207 points.

Total Rank & File =  1566 Points.

Old Citadel Paints

Whilst I was suffering from Flu last weekend I decided to use the time to sort through all my old Citadel paints and transfer them to dropper bottles.  Most of the opened ones were sadly unusable so ended up in the bin.  Luckily, I bought quite a few of the old box sets when the paints were changed over to the hexagonal pots in the 90's.  All of these paints were still in perfect condition and easily poured into the dropper bottles without any sign of lumps or residue, and GW claim the new paints are an improvement.

So, as you can see above I'm now the proud owner of a complete set of 1980's Citadel paints all safely stored in dropper bottles.  This was a real trip down memory lane as the smell of the paints took back thirty years to when I returned from the shops with the Colour and Monster paint sets, some brushes and a box of the Warhammer Fantasy Regiments.

I'm looking forward to using these on some old figures over the next few months.

Undead Army - Third Unit Completed

This weeks challenge entry was a unit of 26 skeleton warriors armed with hand weapons and shields.  As with the Grim Reapers the command element will be added later using metal figures.  I've also managed to paint 12 figures for the second unit so these should be finished next week.

I decided to go with a red and bronze aged look for the shields as these colours complement the bone of the skeletons quite nicely.  The red was a real pain as the coverage of the old 'Blood Red' paint is not very good.  In the end I mixed some Blood Red with White and painted the shields pink initially and then went over them again with the red. A wash of Rotring brown ink followed by Blood Red highlights completed the look I was after.

I need to try and get some consistency with the initial wash mix as it currently veers between black and dark brown.  I'll pay more attention to the mix on this going forwards as it would be good to get some consistency I think.

Finally a couple of pictures of the completed figures so far, they're already starting to look like an army.

Next up will be another unit of Skeleton Warriors.

Army Progress

29 Skeleton Warriors with Hand Weapons, Shields, Musician and Standard Bearer @ 341 points.
23 Skeleton Warriors with Hand Weapon, Light Armour, Shield, Musician and Standard Bearer @ 325 points.
23 Grim Reapers with Scythe, Light Armour, Musician and Standard Bearer @ 350 points.
10 Skeleton Archers with Hand Weapon and Bow @ 120 points.
9 Death Riders with Hand Weapon , Lance and Shield @ 207 points.
9 Death Riders with Hand Weapon, Light Armour and Shield @ 207 points.

Total Rank & File =  1550 Points.

Undead Army - First Units Painted

Its been a while since I posted on here.  In order to get back into painting I've been taking part in the Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge.  This is a friendly competition where everyone commits to painting a number of points worth of miniatures between early December and late March.  I've committed to painting 1,000 points split between 6mm Napoleonics and 28mm 'Oldhammer'.

I've just posted the following on my main blog - Comes Britanniae.  I'll add a more in depth update on this site over the next few days.  I'll also start to include army shots after each submission so that you can see how the army grows over time:


I always planned to paint a number of 28mm figures as part of the competition, I brought forward the start of these as I'm spending so much time away from home during the week and need something light to transport and relatively simple to paint.

I have a load of old Citadel figures and paints from the 1980's that I'd like to get painted over the next few years.  This started during the revival of Warhammer Fantasy 3rd edition or 'Oldhammer' as it's now been called.  I have hundreds of the plastic skeletons and had always wanted to paint up an undead army. I planned to start this a couple of years ago but never got much beyond designing an army and undercoating a few skeleton cavalry figures.

Given that the undead are light and do not need too many paints, I've decided to try and paint as many rank and file skeletons as I can before the competition ends.  I'm restricting myself to the original citadel paints for the figures as I still have all of these and they are still useable after nearly thirty years.  I will be using modern day tufts for the bases though as these are so nice compared to old static grass.

I started painting the skeletons a couple of weeks and submitted a couple of units to the Analogue Challenge last week.

I painted up 10 archers initially as I wanted a small number of figures to practice painting bone.  I like how these turned out.

Next up was 20 Grim Reapers, skeletons armed with two handed scythes.  I'm really pleased with the way the wooden handles turned out.

The bases consist of three different colored tufts highlighted with Miniature Paints Cream.  I chose these colours as I want the vegetation to look like it has had the life sucked out of it by the Undead forces as they advance.  I think this has worked out quite nicely.

I've really enjoyed painting these figures, it took me back to when I first started painting and had to experiment with paint mixes to get the colours I wanted as there weren't too many shades around initially.

I should be able to complete another skeleton unit before next Thursday, I have 14 figures already complete so only need another 12.

Undead Army

Now that I'm nearing completion of my first skeleton unit I thought it was time to sit down and work out a small Undead army that I can aim to paint over the next couple of months.  A couple of hours working through the WFB 3rd edition rule book and Warhammer Armies book has resulted in my first Oldhammer army list.

The only compulsory troops I have to take are 20 Skeleton Warriors and 10 Grim Reapers.  This didn't cause me any problems as my vision for the army was a horde of skeletal warriors sweeping all before them.  This type of horde army appeals to me as I used to collect the more expensive armies (Elves and Dwarfs) and had decided on an Undead army just before I stopped gaming.  The artwork by John Blanche (below) is really what inspired me to want to collect this army many year ago, I still love this painting:

I already have a couple of Skeleton Army boxed sets along with a number of assembled models, I'll be adding metal command figures to these units as and when I can get them on ebay for reasonable prices.  I can't believe how much these boxed sets go for nowadays, they cost me £10 back in the day and now seem to go for £50+ if they are complete and unused:

Army Selection

I spent quite a bit of time thinking about the strategy that I would need to employ in order to maximise the Undead's unique abilities.  Looking at the 'stat lines' reveals that most undead are pretty useless in combat, so a prolonged slugging match in the middle of the table would quickly leave me commanding a pile of bones.

However, on the plus side, Undead armies are virtually immune to psychological effects ( I guess if you're dead then you're not too concerned about dying) and, more importantly, they cause fear in their opponents.  This requires enemy regiments to pass a cool test in order to charge or fire missiles at my troops.  Also, enemy units that are charged by Undead must pass a cool test or rout immediately (that sweeping vision is coming back loud and clear).

Taking all this into account, my initial target is to have the following army fully painted by Halloween.

Characters

Given that Undead suffer from Instability, I want to include a strong set of characters to enhance and support the rank and file.  The army lists allow half of the total army points to be spent on characters with a minimum requirement of 1 Necromancer, Vampire or Liche.  Again this isn't a problem as I intended to include a couple of Necromancers to support and augment the abilities of the basic rank and file anyway.  I also plan to include a character model in every regiment (where allowed) to add hitting power in combat and help minimise the effects of instability.

Undead Heroes are quite expensive as magical weapons are compulsory for any Champion who is level 10 or above.  However, they do add some much needed combat punch to the rank and file so I chose a couple of well equipped Heroes to lead the units that I expect to be in the thick of the fighting.

I'm hoping that all these points spent on characters will help prevent the army falling apart with the demise of some of its Characters:

Magister Mortis (Level 20 Wizard) Hand Weapon and Undead Horse 250 points.

1 x Corpse Knight (Level 20 Hero) Galvorn Armour, Shield, Undead Horse and Magic Weapon with the Trance ability @ 219 points.

1 x Tomb Terror (Lvl 15 Hero) Galvorn Armour, shield and Sword with the Hellhoned Blade and Parasitic Blade magical abilities 195 points.

1 x Grave Fiend (Lvl 10 Hero) with Heavy Armour and a Scythe with the Enchanted Strike magical ability 95 points.

1 x Charnel Warrior (Lvl 5 Hero) with Light Armour, Shield and Hand Weapon 33 points.

1 x Charnel Warrior (Lvl 5 Hero) with Light Armour, Shield and Hand Weapon 33 points.

Character Total Points =  825 Points.

Rank and File

The core of my army will be the compulsory Skeletal Warriors and Grim Reapers formed into two large units with the aim of destroying enemy units with sheer weight of numbers.  Even Dwarves and Elves have to rout if pushed back in combat by skeletons!!

My first unit is a large block of 30 Skeleton Warriors arranged in five ranks of six figures with a full command of standard and musician to provide a huge +4 bonus in combat.  This unit will be led by the Tomb Terror equipped with Galvorn Armour, this keeps their basic movement at 4 as I want this unit to get into combat as quickly as possible.

In order to support this regiment I've included two smaller units of 24 models each, one of them will be the other compulsory unit of Grim Reapers with full command led by the Grave Fiend.  The other unit will be Skeleton Warriors led by the Charnel Warrior.

Skeleton Archers are pretty ineffective due to their low Ballistic Skill, however, I have included a small unit of 10 archers to provide some cover for these units as they advance into combat.

Brraaaiinnnssss!!! Zombies - I'll look to include a couple of large units of these in the future, probably, using a combination of the old metal models with some of the newer plastics thrown in.  I'd love to use just metal, but, the costs of these things on ebay would require me to take out another mortgage.

Death Riders are a must as far as I'm concerned.  Their ability to move through obstacles without penalty makes them perfect for my tactics (think 'sweeping'). I'll be including a couple of units of these led by Characters.  Their role will be to 'sweep' down the flanks and hit enemy units in the rear or flanks once my main battle line is engaged.  I'll also put the Necromancer into one of these units to give him maximum flexibility and to protect him from enemy missile fire.  The other unit will be led by the Corpse Knight.

Finally, there are the exotic troops such as Carrion, Skull Chuckers, Chariots  and the Plague Cart.  I haven't included any of these in the initial army list but will add them once I have a better understanding of the initial armies performance.

So the Rank and File for the initial units look like this:

29 Skeleton Warriors with Hand Weapons, Shields, Musician and Standard Bearer @ 341 points.
23 Skeleton Warriors with Hand Weapon, Light Armour, Shield, Musician and Standard Bearer @ 325 points.
23 Grim Reapers with Scythe, Light Armour, Musician and Standard Bearer @ 350 points.
10 Skeleton Archers with Hand Weapon and Bow @ 120 points.
9 Death Riders with Hand Weapon , Lance and Shield @ 207 points.
9 Death Riders with Hand Weapon, Light Armour and Shield @ 207 points.

Total Rank & File =  1550 Points.

Army Total = 2375 Points.

Apart from the metal command figures, I have all the figures (103 rank and file) I need for these units so will focus on getting these complete over the next couple of months.  I've started using a points system for my painting (based on the one that Phil Olley uses) which equates to 1 point per figure with cavalry counting as 2 figures.  Given that I have 100+ figures to paint then I will be aiming at 15 points per week so that the initial units plus their command figures can be done in time for Halloween (quite fitting don't you think).

I'll post regular updates, pictures and any lessons learned from painting these units over the coming months.

Appreciate any comments, tips, advice on this army.

Pile of Stuff Now Sorted

The summer is usually a quiet time at work for me so I've finally unpacked all my old Citadel stuff from the 80's. I didn't realise just how much stuff I'd collected and luckily saved over the years.

I'll get some photos over the next week or so of my painted figures (mainly Wood Elves with a few dwarfs and Dark Elves). I was also pleasantly surprised at how many pots of old Citadel paint were still usable after 25 years, these are the original ones that came in boxed sets (Colour, Monster, Creature, etc.). A lucky ebay swoop has filled in the gaps so that I now have a complete set of the original paints and will be using these to paint up the piles of lead and plastic figures I've found.

Another plus is all my old White Dwarf magazines, rule books and scenarios are still in perfect condition. White Dwarf's go from issue 1 right through to issue 180 so cover first, second and third edition of Warhammer along with Rogue Trader.

So the plan is to start painting up all those figures/armies I dreamed about twenty years ago but never got the time. I've decided to start with the undead as I have a couple of the Skeleton Army boxed sets along with a number of metal models. I'll be using WFB 3rd edition for organising all my armies as this was the one I played in my younger days.

I'll post regular updates as these figures/armies progress along with my experiences of using the old paints and inks.

Really looking forward to this project.

Back to the beginning......

We moved house recently after 15 years and whilst I was emptying the attic i came across a number of boxes that contained all my old Warhammer rules, figures, paints and White Dwarf magazines (the paints are still useable after 20+ years). These were all from 1980's and covered 1st, 2nd and 3rd editions of the rules, whilst I had many happy memories of playing these games I planned to sell the whole lot off once we got settled in the new house.

However, a couple of 'Oldhammer' blogs I found recently have rekindled my enthusiasm for these figures and rules (especially the third edition of Warhammer Fantasy Battle) and so I've decided to keep them all and start painting and collecting them again.

The spirit of Oldhammer is summed in the 'Oldhammer contract' over on the Realm of Zhu' blog:

The Oldhammer Contract

This is going to be the ethos that I'll be following with this project.

I'm still sorting through the figures and will post some pictures of them over the coming weeks. Initially this will be a sideline project whilst I complete a couple of others that I'm working on. Once these are complete though I'll switch more of my time to this project.

I'm really looking forward to getting back into Oldhammer and sharing the journey.