The Undeadish

[ZeroTwentythree]

I've been posting my recent project around some other fora, and just started poking around Carpe Noctem for some miniatures/modeling inspiration. I thought I would sign up for an account, post some of my own work, and maybe get some input & feedback.

I will try to keep this brief... I'm a long time WFB player, as well as many other games. But for various reasons, I'm mostly parting ways with WFB for the moment. My schedule is a bit screwy and it's hard to meet up with other people during regular daytime hours, so I'm going to give late-night solo gaming a try, in the form of a narrative campaign. I'm also on a tight budget, so that's going to limit my purchases. I'm working with a lot of figures I already had, plus picking up some odds & ends.

The theme & forces are Marienburg vs. the Undeadish. Marienburg will be an alternate-setting version of my existing WFB Marienburg army. Their opponents will be Undeadish. Mostly "animated dead" style undead, but also some allies/slaves/whatever, including some thrall like troops I've been referring to as the Undeadish. Not quite undead, they're alive but mystically enslaved.

So at the moment, what I have been working on are either the Animated Dead, which are pretty much ancient skeletal troops, and the Undeadish. The first figures completely painted & based are some generic skeletons and Undeadish infantry...

Still not certain what I want to do with my standards, so they're staying black for now.

I've also painted, but not based: Undeadish ogres, a giant and a witch.

On my work table: I've started painting some Undeadish cavalry, and also assembled some GW black knights, and a couple of characters.

Beyond that my plans are to work on more skeletal infantry. I've got a bunch of Mantic skeletons & revenants, which I will mix into the same units since the revenents don't look different/upgraded enough to fit my idea of a different unit type. I want to do some elite/armored skeletons too and have been indecisive about what to use for those. The two ideas at the top of my list -- and I will probably end up doing both as separate units -- are converted Warmachine Bane Thralls and converted Perry Miniatures foot knights. I also have a Colossal Skeleton from Reaper next to my table that I'd like to make a few changes to before painting.

 

[Adam_Barrow]

I've seen some of this on warseer. I really dig your black and white skin look. Proper spooky.

 

[ZeroTwentythree]

Thanks!

While digging around through old boxes, I came across this. I had intended to use it for my old Skaven army, but it will work just as well (better?) with the undead!

 

[Farmer7574]

Good job on doing the bones in different shades and nice work on the pale skin, they look kinda like white walkers in The Game of Thrones.

 

[Seneschal]

Very cool. I love those deadish warriors.

The rat could be used as a varghulf if it's the right size for the base.

 

[Miasma]

Really nicely painted units you have there, do you have anything else from Warlord Games that you'll be integrating into the army?

 

[ZeroTwentythree]

Thanks!

The Germans are a mix of Wargames Foundry and Crusader Miniatures. I still have 15-20 of the infantry left, unpainted, plus 16+ cavalry (started painting 8 of them.) Nothing from Warlord at the moment, though I plan on taking a look at their Germans if I end up expanding this part of the army. But first I'd like to really bulk up on a lot more skeletons.

 

[Miasma]

I thought that I recognised a few of the Germanic Tribesmen models in that unit, will have a look at Crusader Miniatures for my side project - Tileans (looking at the Macedonian Phalangites for my pikemen) How is the plastic to work with a marked difference from GW?

 

[Angie]

That looks very nice! I like the earthly tones. Do you have a specific gaming system in mind with basing these units?
I'm absolutely jealous of the Necromunda Caller rat you have there! It's an amazing model, looking forward to seeing it painted up!

 

[ZeroTwentythree]

Crusader is all metal (as is Foundry.) Quite different, and you have to supply your own spears. (I make mine out of florist's wire.) All of the figures I got were very cleanly cast, with minimal mold lines or none at all. I used to have a bunch of the Macedonians, and they were just as nice.

As far as the game system, I have a few I would like to try out. First on my list is Legions of Battle (also by Crusader Miniatures), but I've also found a Yahoo Group that has some fantasy add-on rules and army lists for Hail Caesar. I used to enjoy Warmaster, and Hail Caesar seems like a further evolution of a lot of the Warmaster concepts.

 

[Shadespyre]

Hi 023, nice to see your Undeadish appear here too... except that now when I adopt that look for my own zombies everyone will know where I stole it! :bowdown:

 

[ZeroTwentythree]

Haha. Imitation something something flattery. Doesn't bother me.


I stole a series of 5 & 10 minute breaks throughout the last few days to put some paint and a series of washes/glazes on the Caller's beast. This is a bit of a new technique to me -- I've been using it to an extent on all of the undead, but for decades I've been more of layering & blending style painter, and have stayed away from doing many washes. But I'm learning to love it!

However, I've got mixed feelings on how this particular figure turned out. It's not really a subject that should be too colorful, but also felt like it needed a bit more color than the washed out look of most of the rest of what I've done. Hopefully it doesn't look too out of place once the army is filled out.

While I was basing it up, I also finished the base on a previously painted Undeadish giant.

For reference, the giant is on a 50x50 base, the Caller's beast (I need a new name for it) is on a 50x100.

 

[Hellion Nox]

Stunning paint job you did there

 

[Theerteen]

I uncreatively join the major opinion, your paint theme looks very cool! The pale look is coming along great. Keep the pics coming, I'm curious to see some bigger monster stuff

 

[Farmer7574]

@ZeroTwentythree
Nice work on those two guys, looking forward to seeing more!

 

[ZeroTwentythree]

Earlier this week I received a box of Warmachine Bane Thralls. I've been looking for an option for some armored "elite" skeletal troops. I had been considering a few different ideas, and these were on the list but I kept resisting because I think the shoulder plates (pauldron?) look ridiculous, as do the bits of someone's iron fence they are wearing on their backs. The latter are easily left off. I had considered clipping the shoulders, too, as illustrated by my quick photoshoppery to test the idea...

So now that they're in my possession, I can see that the square "pads" on which the separate shoulder plates sit might look like decent, if someone bland, armor plates on their own, with the exception of the "champion" figure who is designed completely differently. I could just leave his on, as above. Honestly, though, I think the plates look less ridiculous in person.


Other observations about these figures.... they are sold as "plastic" but they are not polystyrene. Maybe a lightweight, hard resin? Not sure the shoulder plates will be nearly as easy to trim down & clean up as if they had been polystyrene. The detail seems OK on most of the figure, but the skulls look pretty disappointing. I was already on the fence a bit when I saw close-ups of the skulls in photos. In person they are even more caricatured with pretty soft looking detail. Looks like there will be a little cleanup, hopefully this plastic isn't too tough to work with.

I'll withhold final judgement until I've actually worked on & painted these, but at first unboxing I find them a little disappointing given the regular retail price.

 

[ZeroTwentythree]

After exploring the Oldhammer forum a bit more this week, I've started thinking about the idea of "remote gaming" as an alternative or supplement to solo gaming.

The concept would be that I would set up the battlefield, the figures, etc. and would play against a remote opponent by keeping a blog with updated photos of the table, use an online random number generator to get dice results, and would get instructions from my opponent that I would carry out on their behalf. This got me reconsidering Hail Caesar as the basis for a fantasy game, since the movement is somewhat loose, based on a verbal description, and partially dependent on dice. There would be little change from playing an in-person opponent other than me moving their figures for them.

So now I'm considering digging up an opponent and giving that a try.


Below is a pic of two older figures I finally based. The figure from the Confrontation range is quite a bit bigger, even when taking into account the larger base. But between that and his proportions, I think he might make a good partner for the old GW "Death Elemental" that I will be painting up sometime (hopefully) soon.

 

[Sessioni]

The skin tone is nice! Too bad I stopped playing with my Warriors of Chaos and sold most of them already, that skin tone would work perfectly with marauders (and rest of the chaos actually). That remote play sounds interesting, I guess it should work, the only problem is you cannot see your opponent's face when invocating the black knight unit again and again to the starting size and keep on rolling.

 

[Farmer7574]

@ZeroTwentythree Nice idea picking up those Bane Thralls, they'd make cool grave guard with great weapons or even a nice wight king. You're right on the faces though, they seem a bit cartoonish compared to GW's VC stuff. Concerning the pauldrons, I think you'd have to cut them down if you were to use them as rank-n-file troops. The look about 25+ mm wide :lol:

 

[ZeroTwentythree]

Haha!


I attempted to clean up and assembled one of the Bane Thralls, sans pauldrons. I set them up next to the figure so you can see how huge they are. They look like pieces from a segmented sewing thimble! You can see that the platforms on which the pauldrons are supposed to sit could look like more modest pauldrons on their own, if I dressed them up a little. So I might just try that.

I need to go back and spend some more time cleaning up mould lines, especially on the fingers. I can't say I am a fan of whatever this material is. It's like they used something that combines the worst qualities of lead/metal and polystyrene. Filing the stuff leaves a lot of texture and "fluff" that needs cleaned off, similar to styrene. Normally I use an knife on the styrene, which did seem to work better with this stuff. But it's a harder plastic/resin, so it doesn't cut/scrape as nicely. This one looked like it had a gate/tab/sprue/whatever on the collar that had been cleaned off, but left behind a pretty rough, chunky surface. That and the fingers were the worst parts to clean.

In spite of that, I still like the sculpting, aside from the head and pauldrons, and they are nice designs. You can see in the pic that they are much smaller than those old, monstrous Citadel skeletons. But they're bigger than just about anything. I think the Bane Thralls should fit well with the Mantic stuff, which is good since I have a big pile of their skeletons to work on eventually! In fact, I think I will also look into using some of the Mantic skeleton heads on these. If I can get my hands on some of the current GW skeleton heads, those might also fit.

 

[Farmer7574]

@ZeroTwentythree Is there any way you can remove the head and replace it with a GW one?

The shoulders don't look too bad, but their pose looks like it would make it hard to rank them up.

 

[ZeroTwentythree]

The heads are separate, so there is no problem replacing those.

As far as ranking up, I'm going to put just 2 or 3 on a 40x40 base, so they should be ok.

 

[ZeroTwentythree]

The Secret Weapon skulls arrived today. They look great! They're a decent size, well sculpted & cast. I just wish some of them had lower jaws. But I think I will still have plenty of use for them. Here's a pic next to an old, huge GW skull, and one of the Warmachine Bane Thrall skulls (has a peg on the bottom.) I think these will work as perfect replacements for the Bane Thralls!

http://www.secretweaponminiatures.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=47_55&products_id=230

 

[Farmer7574]

@ZeroTwentythree Those skulls look much better than the Warmachine one's. Good choice.

Those old GW skulls could nearly pass for Orcs' skulls :tongue:

 

[ZeroTwentythree]

Ha! Actually, I wish there were more non-human skeletons & skulls available.