WIP: Reaper Brass Bull

Brass Bull
Reaper
#77256
Bob Olley
2015

A cool Khalkotaur for my undead Classical Greek army. The Khalkotauroi were two large bulls created for King Aeetes of Colchis (modern day Georgia) by the god Hephaestus. Originally, the Khalkotauroi were described as living bulls with bronze hooves and bronze mouths, out of which they breathed fire. Over the years, they've been depicted as fully bronze animated constructs or even clockwork-like machines.

When the hero Jason travelled to Colchis in search of the golden fleece, King Aeetes told him that if he could yoke the Khalkotauroi and plow a field, he could have the golden fleece - thinking the task impossible. But Aeetes' daughter Medea, who had fallen in love with the hero, gave him a magic ointment that would make him immune to the fiery breath of the Khalkotauroi. Jason successfully yoked the bulls and plowed the fields with dragon's teeth, creating a harvest of spartoi - who have now joined the ranks of the undead army!

Dead simple to paint. Black primer over the Reaper bonesium, then a coat of Scale Color Decayed Metal (bronze) and then a wash of GW's Nihilakh Oxide.

Viserion We Hardly Knew Ye

RIP Viserion: Season 1, Episode 10 - Season 7, Episode 6

Fuck Yeah!

Reaper miniatures Bones IV Kickstarter. Skeletal chimera. Skeletal manticore. Skeletal owlbear.

No company has ever produced an undead manticore! Great scott! So full of win!

New Dragons Coming Online

Well, Reaper's new Kickstarter. Bones IV, is up today. Over $623,000 on the first day. Insane.  And now, I have to kick in some more of my hard earned cash because of this lovely model. A new zombie dragon sculpted by Julie Guthrie:

  

That is looking mighty sweet. Hopefully, there're a good deal more skellies in the Kickstarter as well.

Soon I'm expecting delivery of this amazing sculpt by Tim Prow for Fenris Miniatures. The green has been languishing for years until Fenris finally brought it to life with its successful Rise of the Draugr Kickstarter.

The next models haven't been sculpted yet, but I'm eagerly awaiting them based on the concept art. A zombie dragon, and two undead wyverns (Shrieking Horror and Court of the Damned). All part of TMS miniatures' successful Vampire Covenant Kickstarter in June. They did a pretty good job at translating the concept art to actual model for their Undying Dynasties Indiegogo, so I'm hoping these will turn out as good. I like the way the Court of the Damned model (a 9th Age analog for GW's Mortis Engine) incorporates the wyvern as the motor for the war machine.

We Few. We Infernal Few. We Band of Demons.

As has been noted before, 30 plus years of collecting has left me with more skeleton models than I could ever hope to field in any one game. Unfortunately, games are rare these days with me traveling the world over. But in the ever renewed hope that I may actually have to field a bunch of these figures on the tabletop at some point, I've started an organization scheme that divides my Legion into smaller specific armies. For example, I have my 5th century BCE Classical Greeks - which I've just about put the finishing touches on. I also have my 1st century CE Imperial Romans, my 15th century CE Sengokku period Japanese (samurai) army. I have a New Kingdom Egyptian army (Tomb Kings...duh). I have probably about three Medieval European fantasy armies. I also have my 17th century CE pirate army (probably the least useful to me). With those wonderful Mierce Miniatures Jutes now coming online I think I have enough for a small Dark Age Anglo-Saxon army - well at least a brigade. Plus I have a brigade's worth of demi-humans (orcs, dwarves, halflings, skaven, lizardmen, elves) - although not enough of each. I probably have almost a brigade worth of undead orcs. Elves I can't even field a unit without some conversions.

The latest army I have been putting together is my undead Chaos Army. Granted the line between regular Chaos and undead is sometimes a little iffy to begin with. A lot of chaos models can do double duty. But I have been able to put together, without "counts as" models from Chaos and just a few conversions, a large Chaos army that is specifically undead.

Chaos armies are interesting because they are comprised of a lot of different elements - each of which could have an army based around them on their own; beastmen, chaos warriors, and the element we will be looking at today...demons.

Demons are a staple of Chaos forces, and in at least my experience, generally classified into two types; Greater Demons and Minor Demons. Greater Demons are the large, super powerful, super dangerous creatures who represent the actual fallen angels and lead the armies of chaos across the battlefield. Then there are the Minor Demons who, while still very dangerous to know are less powerful than their masters and usually fight in recognizable units.

Minor Demons

Right now I count 23 Minor Demons in my Chaos Army, just short of the 24 needed for two bands of 12. Mounted on skirmish trays and fighting in a war band formation, these "minor" divinities are the rock solid elite troops of Chaos. Expensive points-wise in Piquet, they are six slot creatures that have extraordinary abilities like "flight", "toughness", and "cause terror" balanced by "formed troops" (so they can fight as a unit) and "weapons skill" (so they can use weapons).

First up is the beautiful, if somewhat diminutive "Judgement" from CMON sculpted by Pedro Fernandez. This is a really detailed and well proportioned sculpt, although it can look a little dainty next to more robust figures.

 Judgement

Dark Sword Miniatures "Death Knight with Scythe" sculpted by Dave Summers.

 DSM7527 Death Knight with Scythe

The following are not produced as demons, but rather conversions. I don't like to field conversions much, as I like to play figures as they're advertised. But I saw these figures which had been converted to act as winged reapers for the 9th Age project and thought that I had rarely seen a simple head swap work so well. They're Mantic Elohi (angels) with the heads swapped with GW Vampire Count Armored Skeleton skulls. They look pretty sweet.

Greater Demons

Shrek 5: The Undying

Sometimes, there are weird gaps in the world of the undead when it comes to miniatures. Things you think you'd see plenty of, but for one reason or another are not really produced. Until just recently, one of those things was an undead hydra - which is rather inexplicable.

Another is undead ogres. This is kind of weird since ogres are such a common fantasy race. Trolls and Giants, yes. Ogres? Not so much. For years the only real undead ogres were the following two from the German company DSA. (You can get them through Ral Partha Europe now.)

19304 Undead Ogre with Axe

19305 Undead Ogre with Club

Also, there was this two-headed zombie ettin from Lance & Laser, now sold by Armorcast.

LL21606 Two-Headed Undead Aberrant

But now, thankfully, we are starting to get a few more representatives of Ogre-kind. Like this model from Krakon Games.

Slanga, Parthaloin Fallen Hero

And this zombie ogre from Reaper. In affordable Bonesium!!!

77284 Zombie Ogre

And here's a little something from the recent Trough & Tankard "March of the Dead" Kickstarter by Phillip Hynes. I'm not sure why Phillip is not full time sculpting for the majors. 

1. His sculpts are outstanding. I've rarely seen better work when it comes to horses or drapery
2. He's amazingly fast. He bangs out a figure in like a day!

Trough & Tankard Zombie Ogre

Then we have this model. It's an ogre(ish?) model for 4Ground's upcoming Legends of the Fabled Realms Kickstarter. They're making a lot of cool undead (Druggoi) that also include a sweet undead dwarf and two "guard" that frankly, I think are undead elves.

And from Warploque Miniatures, we have a specialty figure, a zombie pirate ogre! Undead pirates are a big thing. I'm not really sure why. Haven't we tired of those movies already?

Undead Ogre Crewman

WIP Undead Classical Greek Army - Mage, Peltasts, Cavalry and Creatures

Some more work on the undead 5th century BCE greeks. The first set of pictures is of my main magic user for the army, Hekate, the Greek goddess of witchcraft and necromancy (and crossroads...). Hekate is traditionally portrayed as possessing a single body, with three faces, or as a triple-bodied figure. She also is usually depicted carrying two torches and is accompanied by one or more dogs. The figure itself is a simple conversion. It was originally a prepainted D&D miniature; the "Skull Lord" (Demonweb #27). I'd been looking for a magic user for my Greek army and when I saw this triple faced figure I immediately thought "Hekate"! The prepaint is ok, good enough that I won't redo it for the moment. One of the hands was already in an open position so that was easy. The other held a staff made of bone, but it was easy to snip off. I just glued into place two torches from Ristul's Extraordinary Market. I then just plopped down two extra skeletal dogs that I had hanging around from the old Grenadier Fantasy Lords #157 "Undead Scouting Party".

The second set of photos is of a unit of peltasts. Peltasts were lightly armed and armored missile infantry that would skirmish in front of the phalanx. Troops are based for the game Piquet: Scramasax. Light infantry/skirmishers are usually based with four stands, two figures to a stand for a total of eight models to a unit. Here we have two groups, one is a set of skeleton satyrs with bows (taxotai) from Mythic Articulations. Mythic Articulations has produced (at my behest!) a few of their larger models in 32mm format which can be found at their Etsy shop. The other group is a set of regular human psiloi (javelineers) with pelta (the small crescent shield that gives peltast their name). I built them from the Games Workshop Vampire Counts Skeleton Regiment boxed set. I snipped off the spears from the plastic skeletons and replaced them with some javelins from Magister Millitum. Additionally, the pelta were from Magister Millitum as well. I still have to do a bunch of painting for these figs.

The next set of photos are of my unit of light Thessalian cavalry. Greek armies from this period did not emphasize cavalry, with the exception of the Thebans, but frequently Greek city states would hire mercenaries for this purpose. The figures are Eureka's Skeletal Horse and Rider w/Ancient Greek Weapons (100SKL06a). They're primed with a bleached bone primer and then dipped in Armory's Strong Tone Quickshade. Unfortunately, although Greek cavalry did use spears, they did *not* use hoplons, so I'll eventually have to replace the shields with pelta or something similar.

The next set of photos depict some of the mythical creatures I field in this army; two undead cerberuses and two undead chimera. The first cerberus is the fantastic sculpt from the now sadly defunct Rackham miniatures; Cerberus of Acheron. I've had it for years and it's one of my favorite pieces. The paint job consists of a primer coat of black that also acts as the base coat. From there, bone color is applied directly to the bones with the rest of the flesh and muscle being dry brushed over the black base. The second cerberus is the Reaper Cerberus, Hound of Hell (03423) by Julie Guthrie. It's a "meh" figure. Again, it's primed in black with a dry brush for the flesh and fur.


Lastly, there are the two chimera. Both are from Wyrd miniatures, the first being the old Rogue Necromancy metal sculpt and the second being the newer plastic resculpt. Like the other creatures, there is a layer of black primer, with base colors painted directly over. There is some dry brushing for the feathers on the wings, and a light sepia wash. I like how they turned out generally, but I am going to have to go over the eagle parts again because the purplish look doesn't inspire.