Skellies Part 3 - finished barrow

 Finished the barrow… scruffy clumps of grass for the mound, did try my usual flowers, but in the slope it looked weird being at 90 degrees to the slope - so it’s not quite as good soil as anywhere else, but a bit better than the marsh. Speaking of, the dead grass I used on the marsh is mixed in a bit, especially at the stone tops. Interior skulls from the GW skulls set. Interior bones picked out of the Krautcover Grimdark mix (they are a bit long, but cut in irregular halves they look fine).

Skellies Part 2 - the barrow

 So, I had a thick (5cm) lump of insulation foam, but it wasn’t really enough to do anything suitably useful, maybe a stand alone hill, but of course the Bronze Age-y-ness of the Oathmark undead meant a long barrow…

Of course, me being me and not wanting to have a sizeable bit of unplayable terrain, I wanted an interior…

Thankfully, for some reason, I had a hot wire cutter still in its packaging (the model shop in town closed about twenty years ago) and it was just wide enough so cutting out the interior wasn’t horrendous. Straight vertical edges were though. After a bit of fiddly trimming, the interior walls were lined with 5mm foam cut into slabs and textured with a rock. Larger stones (and the roof) were done with 20mm blue foam - I swear the black foam takes imprints from the rock better than the blue. The slab motif continued to the exterior. Much evening out was done with sandpaper and air dry clay (budget meant limiting myself to what I had available).

The bits cut out of the interior will eventually become smaller closed off barrows.

Skellies Part 1

 So, as I slowly work towards getting enough together for Five Leagues I needed more adversaries than just goblins. With the number of plastic ranges nowadays, skeletons/undead seemed like a plan. 

I picked up a sprue of Wargames Atlantic skeletons and a sprue of Oathmark skeletons to plan. I knew GW would be too large as I have some Nightgaunt sprues from one of those part work jobs, so no dice. I did however have a sprue of armoured skellies I bought years ago (2005 on the sprue anc now on eBay if anyone wants it) and inexplicably have a single sprue from the original GW Skeleton Horde (from 1986!). Looking at these arrayed some were obviously not useful - as my collection is tending toward 28mm and matches historicals rather than the current vogue for 32mm heroics. The WA skeletons were very chunky boys, with oddly smaller arms. The GW2005 were too big by far. But the Oathmark and the GW1986 were spot on and of course compared perfectly to the rest of my stuff. So I picked up a couple more sprues and kept a casual eye on eBay for the GW1986.

Now I didn’t fancy depuddling the Oathmark lot, so basing meant them all being on slight hillocks. But enough of the standard boys. This post is about the GW1986 and kitbashing them with the Oathmark, because Oathmark leaves you with lots of options…

The horn (a long standing gag for skeletons) and arm were from the WA set and matches closely enough to the Oathmark arms. I’m not a huge fan of the Oathmark helmets, they are perfect for the theme of Bronze Age undead, but I just think one of the first things someone will lose upon death is the headgear (yes my French Napoleonic undead still have their shakos, don’t judge). Luckily, Oathmark have plenty of options… but not quite enough bare heads to go around. Then I realised (for some reason) the GW skulls sprue are more or less identical to the Oathmark heads. I’m sure Northstar could probably spot the difference but the only ones I can tell apart are the ones with the separate jaws that I used, so works for me…

You have to remove the ball shoulder joints and I drilled in very minor divots to take the spare Oathmark arms, so the shoulders might not be 100% anatomically correct but work. The GW1986 arms were good enough for their time, but big and clunky so not really useful. Similarly the old heads were a little oversized as well. But the bodies mixed well enough with the Oathmark bits. 

(I had to use the GW1986 scythe though)

A bit of greenstuff adds some (very) rough approximations of the armour. I ran out of shields, ArmchairGeneral over on LAF kindly donated some metal Sea Peoples shields that would more match the Oathmark shields, but testing them I got concerned about the weight on that small weld joint at the shoulder, rooting around I found the buckler shields from the WA Conquistador set, a bit different stylistically but work for the sword unit.

So, with some fun kitbashing (and stripping of some bargain eBay GW1986’s) I have more than enough for Five Leagues and even extra for a Dragon Rampant force: 6x bowmen, 12x spearmen, 6x swordsmen and 3x character types. 

I’m happy.

3D printed ruins

So, the end of last month was my birthday and I got a load of Amazon vouchers. Aside from the inevitable DVDs or books, although never my preferred gaming store, it’s sometimes worth a look. I’ve had some 3D printed barricades from Amazon before - painted for my stalled MC-1 project (not sure if I’ve ever shared them anywhere), but they’re decent for the price, as are these ruins which easily fill a gap in my terrain options.

Are they perfect? No. Could I make my own? Maybe, but I’m not replicating those pillars and arches over and over again. So these are decent. Layer lines are an issue close up, but they will look fine on the tabletop.

This large single piece is one set, the puddle base adds a bit of rubble, but the layer lines are a bit more obvious when you’re looking at higgledy piggledy blocks. So that was pimped with some texture paste initially and then with some Grimdark scatter from Krautcover (via Bad Squiddo). I used the dead static grass I’d used on the marshland to give a decayed “all is not well here” feel…

The vines were added to hide a frankly lazy bit of 3D sculpting present here and in one of the other pieces I got, where two elements form the corner and the arches bleed into each other. If QP3D should ever read this, you really should clean that up. You manage it on the T and X walls, but not on the L shaped walls.

So, the second set was a set of four, a straight and the aforementioned X, T and L walls. These are the same to all intents and purposes. Aside from the bleeding arch, the only real flaw is the straight isn’t very stable and the joy for me of these was the minimal basing. One nudge of the table and that will topple, so I added my own puddle base, tried to replicate the one on the large L and it’s nice and sturdy now.

As said before, the L has that bleed, so vines again.

And completely absent from the T and X.

And finally, a look at the tops. The sculpts had a kind of broken  mortar effect, which is a little visible in places, but the tops got hit with Grimdark cover and the dead grass. Quite happy with the final pieces.

As I said, available from Amazon or their own website (https://qp3dwargames.co.uk/) where these appear to be part of a nice pseudo Osgiliath range.

More vampires…

And a couple more vampires, this time from the official North Star range and evocative of the Fearless Vampire Killers. They match well enough with the Oldman Vlad. She is a beast though in metal, so many magnets for storage to keep her in place.

 

Vampires of great age…

A couple of ancient vampires for Silver Bayonet.

First off, a board game piece I got off eBay, I forget the game. Obviously based on Francis Ford Coppola’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula, I didn’t notice until I was painting the face that mini was lacking a defined nose. Rather than add a greenstuff nose midpaint, I remembered my folklore and painted it as a missing nose and open nostrils, as suspected vampires would be buried face down so the nose would rot first and prevent them walking unnoticed amongst the living.

And a lovely mini from Statuesque Miniatures (sadly no longer on their website) of an alien Egyptian god with definite fangs. I forget which novel I read had the origins of vampires going back to Ancient Egypt (I think it was part of the Supping With Panthers series), but this fits perfectly. The figure has some wonderful delicately sculpted hieroglyphics on his chest, thigh, forearms and spine - and they were a bugger to make pop, I was really happy with the strange skin tone, but had real difficulty making the glyphs stand out. The spine especially just wouldn’t pop and after too many attempts, I realised I was loosing the detail. I could try and strip the whole mini or just admit a lost cause and filled what remained of the spine glyphs with liquid g/s. Annoying, but it worked better than the crappy painted glyphs I’d inflicted on it.

They are both tall miniatures, the alien god because he’s an alien god and old man Oldman because he’s a 32mm game piece. The towering alien god works as is of course, and in my head I imagine Vlad hovering slightly as he does his dark bidding.

 

 

Silver Bayonet vampire…

And the vampire hussar Madame La Nuit from Black Pyramid Gaming (who also do lots of useful Napoleonic horror characters). Not a very colourful figure as I went with the uniform for the Deaths Head Hussars, but a fun figure if you can handle the braid and lace.

 

Silver Bayonet ghoul

A 3D print from Etsy, it’s sold as a vampire and I was going to use it as such, but realised the feral nature of the mini lent itself more to the ghoul. The broken plinth is from the Renedra graveyard sprue and just gave it a bit of height.

 

Size Comparisons

 Ok, so I do love the Bloody Miniatures range. Lovely sculpts. But... I’m torn on the size. They work with some figures, not so much with others... they make Angel Blake look more childlike which I like, but she’s nude which is wrong on sooo many levels. The old woman is minute and looks odd, but the blacksmith just looks stout and solid. The bishop looks small, but he did against the Mantic ghouls anyway. The Cardinal is shortish, but not terribly so... but the Warlord cavalry men are tiny, even against a Warlord plastic infantry (which is the witch hunter base figure.

Decisions, decisions... sigh...

Meats back on the menu boys!

A dead cow from Warlord... not much to say about this to be honest. Nice model, done with contrast paints in various layers and blended... mainly Darkoath Flesh, Apothecary White and Gulliman Flesh. Hooves in an off white.

Revenants (well zombies but hey...)

OK, so finally got a photo session and so here are the zombies from a while back... not sure my camera is at it's best anymore, it doesn't remember the date or settings when it's turned off... but hey, better pics than I've been managing....

So... Mantic zombies with a variety of g/s to just 17thC them up a bit...

base figures with a bit of g/s to vary clothing and poses a wee bit...

and as an equal opportunities necromancer some lady corpses... g/s for boobs, although one has a boob ripped off as I couldn't get them even. She also has a missing hand, as it seemed unlikely that so many would be carrying around a fresh hand for snacking, so lopped off and a bit of wire for bone and g/s for flesh...