Week 21: Skeletons and the World cup

OK; lets face facts. i'm not going to get a lot of painting completed between now and the end of Englands participation in the 2010 World Cup. At the moment it looks as if that might come to pass sooner than later...

Over the last weekend I have managed to watch 12 solid hours of football and another two hours of motor racing Ouch.

In between I have managed to finish my final skeleton figures. This makes a total of 52 Skeletons, which allows for 30 starting figures and 22 allowance for increase by casting. I recon that should do.

As is normal (for me anyway) I have grouped some of the figures onto combined bases to make setting up easier. I have opted with ten figures to have 1 three wide base, 2 two wide and three single figures.

I have stuck with the same colour scheme as the remainder of the army. Hopefully this will pay dividends in time.

WIP: The last few skeleton infantry

The weather in Devon, England has been baking hot this past week. This has had a very bad effect on my willingness to spend evenings sat in a hot stuffy room painting and making figures. Therefore little in teh way of progress to report. All I have managed is to construct 10 skeletons.

These chaps (when painted) will expand my skeleton horde to 52 figures. That exceeds what I need for my lists and should be sufficient to keep me going for a bit.

Now the weather has broken and the rain has returned, progress should quicken up a bit.

Week 20: Mantic Games skeletons

Mantic Games were kind enough to send my wargaming club a selection of sprues for our fun and delight. Included within these sprues were two skeleton sprues. I'm currently working on a Vampire counts list (or two) so it seemed too good an opportunity to pass up. Partly because it will give me some variety, partly because it will let me know what I think of their range but mostly because they are free figures!

I opted to just try the single sprue, I figured that if I grabbed more than that I might get lynched by the other members of my club.

The sprue has enough components for 10 figures. We received another skeleton sprue and half of that sprue was identical to this but the other half appeared to offer command choices. The first thing I noted was that the majority of the figures upper torsos already have the arms, weapons, shields and heads attached, so the ability to vary the poses appeared limited. The poses themselves look good and dynamic and make a nice change from the GW bending over look. The only major gripe that I would have is that the skeleton heads look a little odd. The GW figures have loads of skulls left over so this can easily be solved with simple head swaps.

I found the moulding itself to be generally good with no misalignment of casting and very little flash. The plastic is soft in comparison with GW, which makes the figures a little bendy and the details are not very recessed, so greater care is required when undercoating so as to avoid losing the detail. However, all said; the assembly was very simple with less work required than is normally required of GW.

The figures come with their own 20mm basing system, but I opted to place onto GW bases to help them fit into the look of my GW skeletons. I didn't remove the plastic base, so this makes them stand a couple of mm higher than they otherwise would.

The (mostly) finished models are presented below:

I have not painted anything on the shields because I could not think what to put there. Maybe something will come to me.

I have also taken some comparison shots to see just how they compare with my GW skeletons;

As you can see, they are a tad taller, but as explained above that is my fault. Generally I think they fit in very well. The figures are of a good quality offer enough variety and are quite easy to paint. Their big advantage is that they are cheaper! I think I still prefer GW, but the difference is not as great as I expected.

Last of all I have included a couple of photos of a mixed unit of GW and Mantic figures to see if I could get away with it. I think I can.

Week 11: Creaky old bones

Another week and another pile of old bones;

I have elected to construct a number of these chaps in pairs of two to help add or remove them from the unit.

I am aware that there is no logic in the rest of this paragraph, but here goes. I couldn't give the skeletons a wind instrument because I couldn't see how they could blow it without any lungs. Yes I know that they have no muscles to move their limbs and have no eyes to see with or ears to hear with; but having no lungs felt a move too far...

I said there was no logic in it...

That now takes my number of skeletons to 32. More needed!

Week 8:A bigger pile of bones

Completed the unit of skeletons this week. Well I say completed, I need to add a emblem and some words to the standard bearer. No idea what to do yet, so I thought I would leave it on the shelf and see what comes to me.

Quite fun to make and paint and has given me the chance to raid my bits box, which is getting a bit packed. For my own records when I come back to paint more skeletons the paint recipe is scorched brown - Bestial Brown - Snakebite Leather - Bleached bone. Many mixed layers between each one.

Next week I think its time to get back to the puppies (Chaos warhounds).

Week 7: A pile of bones

Week 7 has come and gone and all I have to show for it is a small pile of bones. Nicely piled in skeleton form of course, but just a pile of bones non-the-less. I have decided to try and stay away from red colour schemes because I have seen too many red skeleton units. Besides I quite like the green colour as a contrast to the yellow (ish) bones colour.

I found these to be some of the most fun figures to assemble because I just tipped out my bits box and had a play. Two of the chaps above have armour from cold one riders. I wanted the bones to maintain the same dirty look of the ghoul units and I thought it important for them to look as if they had spent some time buried in the ground. 

I had some fun trying to reproduce a rusty look. I hope it worked. The base above is four wide and may help make casualty removal easier. It includes bits from dryad, ghoul and chaos marauder sprues. Hopefully it adds a bit of fun to the unit.