I wanted to show of some of the miniatures I’m working on right now. I find myself working on a zillion different armies at once for some reason, while I used to play just 1 army for years.
I’ve purchased a box of Privateer Press’ Skinwalkers. Ever since I first saw them I knew I had to have them someday. Here’s my progress on the first one:
I intend to use these as Dragon Ogres in my WoC army. I have had some (in my humble opinion) awesome ideas for a feral/wolf themed Khorne army in my head for ages. This is the first step in realising said army.
At the same time, I’m painting up some undead. Using Mantic’s cheap-o, yet excellent miniatures.
The colour scheme is shamelessly stolen from a plog I saw on Warseer. I normally never use green or yellow and it normally wouldn’t be my first choice of colours for skeletons at all, but it’s fun to do something different. They’re speed-painted and the bases aren’t finished yet. I also need to redefine the yellow on some of them.
I’m using combined bases to give me a bit more freedom with positioning of the models. This allows me to disrupt the ranks a bit and create a more ramshackle horde of undead. I intend to have more elite units (Grave Guards/Revenants) look more organised.
A small word on mantic’s models. When seeing pictures of the skeletons on the web, I’ve had mixed feelings about these models, but once I was building and later painting them I started to appreciate them more and more. They simply have a different vibe from GW’s skeletons. Mantic’s skeletons give me more of a “classic” Dungeons&Dragons skeletal warrior. They’re well detailed, fun to paint, very quick to assemble and have a lot of character. Oh, and they’re about a third of the price of GW skeletons or so Good stuff.
Next in line: Mantic Revenants used as Grave Guard.
I still need to give them some weapons and maybe reposition a head or two.
I tried to give these a slightly more organised feel compared to my skeletons. Their ranks are more closed and they even manage to form sort of a shield wall.
Here they are in horde formation.
I’m thinking of using them 30 strong and in horde formation. I’ll probably play them as having Great Weapons, which unfortunately wasn’t an option with the models.
I’ve cramped them together quite a bit to get the tightly-knit look. Here I placed 4 models on 3 bases:
They’re all just blue-tacked to the bases, so nothing is set in stone.
As for the models themselves, these were the models I was most sceptical about before buying my Undead army box. There’s 3 reasons for this: A) I want to field them using great weapons, and that’s not possible with mantics. B) Some models just look wonky, but this is solved by cutting off and repositioning some heads. C) The gothic look of the GW Wights/Grave Guard with the bat-wings and all is just awesome. I’ve considered putting GW heads on these guys…
However, while building these guys, I started to appreciate them more and more just like with the skeletons. I think the unit will look great with all the shields facing forwards and I can already imagine all the yellow plumes on their helmets. They should make the unit stand out on the battlefield and make them look like an elite unit.
First five Grave Guard have been basecoated, which means they’re practically done.
I’ve already started on the remaining 5 I have primed. When I get those done, I’ll have the first two ranks finished already. That’s half the unit! I’ve never painted units this fast before…
I’ve also had my first game with Vampire Counts yesterday playing vs. our fellow CDO-member, furrie. We mocked up our 1500 point lists on the fly and it produced pretty simple, yet fun armies. In the end I obliterated furrie and won by an immensely large margin: 1007 victory points vs. 1017 ;p Yeah, a 10 point difference.
Things I’ve learned from the battle:
1) I gotta take the Master of the Dead upgrade (=raise skeletons beyond starting amount) on a Necromancer if he intends to be around Skeleton units. I didn’t do so, because I have no spare skeletons.
2) Units need to be alive long enough to to receive reinforcements through Invocation of Nehek.
3) Skeletons hit like a wet noodle. Especially when facing beastmen who have their toughness buffed through the lore of Beasts…
It was actually very refreshing to play with Vampire Counts. It’s quite unlike any other army I’ve played. I’m looking forward to see what Spirit Hosts and other annoyance units can do.
Righty! I finished painting my first 10 Grave Guard!.. or have I?
Apart from needing to touch up the yellow… I’m not so sure I’m happy with them. They look fine I suppose, but I’m not sure they stand out from regular skeletons enough.
I think I might give the armour a black wash, possibly in combination with a metal drybrush to make the armour look more, well, black.
Well, I have darkened the armour with a watered down badab black + chaos black mix and drybrushed a bit after doing so. Here’s the result alongside one of my skeleton bases for comparison:
It’s an improvement, but I’m still not sure if it’s enough to make the difference obvious enough. Maybe the Revenants should’ve had armoured legs as well…
I am now considering changing their shields by making them black and using an old shield emblem painted in bone colour:
Your graveguard are much improved now! Personally I would leave the shields as they are but add a device to each, maybe the skull& crossbones to make them stand out as more elite.
I was afraid the shields would be too “busy” if I left the green/yellow pattern when adding an emblem so I did a quick photoshop… My photoshop-fu isn’t the strongest, but I made a mock-up of both options.
Hmm… maybe your idea isn’t so bad, Vulc! Not bad at all. My photoshop skills aren’t helping the second option though. When painting, I imagine doing them black with a silver edge-highlight along the edges.
I need more opinions!
For completeness sake, here’s the banner I intend to use on the Grave Guard.
Imo the skulls & crossbows are much too big for the shields you use!
If you really want the icons use bigger shields - personally I would skip the icons and just use normal shields, perhaps others like the ones Bassman suggests!
Thanks for the responses guys. Before buying the Revenants I considered buying Games Workshop Grave Guard heads and possibly shields to spice the models up. I’m quite fond of the look the GW Grave Guard have, especially their old metal characters (Plastic one’s poses are a bit boring). Replacing the shields would require some messy work with the dremel, but it should be doable. I did the same for my mantic chaos dwarves. It’s a bit of a shame to be doing so when the models are currently “done” though.
Anyways… since the models are starting to give me headaches now and I don’t want to break the nice painting-spree I was in, I figure it’s best to let the models rest for now. Maybe I’ll just paint the rest up in the same way later and simply use them as either Grave Guard or Skeletons depending on my gaming needs.
I’ve now put the brush to one of my Revenant cavalry instead. I’ll try to put up a picture soonish.
Work has started on my first Black Knight/ Revenant Cavalry. I want to keep these true to their name, so black armour it is. I’m going to invest a little more effort in these compared to the skeletons and regular revenants.
He proved to be hard to photograph right. These pictures seem to come pretty close to reality however:
I’ve muted the green cloth down a bit by adding some Khaki and Bleached bone for the highlights. The horse itself may prove to be a little tricky to paint. It shows bone, torn skin and exposed muscle tissue. I’m considering going with muted grey tones for the skin. I think I need to be careful about adding to many colours, but at the same time have to be weary of making the horse a blob of black and grey. We’ll see!
P.S. Note how the cavalry has bigger shields than the footslogging revenants.
My Grave Guard need glowing fel green blades! I’ve been wanting to do an army with lots of black and bright green glowing elements for ages. I can’t believe I never realised before that my green undead might be a nice opportunity!
Okay so, I’ve never done anything like this before, but here’s the result of 20-30min of painting:
There’s two things I want to change. Firstly, I’m not happy with the blade itself. I think it needs to be more of one bright green with sharp edge highlights.
Secondly, the glow works best when there’s a high contrast with the rest of the model, so everything but the weapon needs to be pretty dark.
I’ve also considered that a cold blue would be a great spot colour in a mainly green army, but I’m going for green blades for now.
Good stuff.
