WIP Skeleton Chariots... Old School!

Been testing out a few things including my new air brush and some instabond accelerator for superglue - which, by my eyes, is the greatest invention of Western Civilization. It's miraculous. So I've been on a tear gluing together a bunch of old models that I can never seem to keep together. Some of which are these old school skeleton chariots back from the days when GW models were called "Citadel". While I was assembling, I also figured out I'd do some painting as well.

C22 Plague Cart

This is the old Citadel "Plague Cart" from the early 80's. A funny little model, sort of a precursor to the current plague cart. The ox cart is driven by a wraith, but I'm not partial to wraiths or other ethereals in my army - nothing but bone! But that's solved with an easy conversion. I just clipped an appropriately sized plastic skull in half and glued him into the void in the hood. Now he's a Grim Teamster!

Assembled, primed and painted with the zenithal highlighting technique.

Grim Teamster taking shape!

Pile of corpses washed with Agrax Earthshade.

MD8 Skeleton War Machines

This is a chariot from the Citadel Skeleton War Machines boxed set released in the mid-80's. In addition to the chariot it also came with the "skull chucker" catapult, and were the first chariot and artillery piece in my Legion.

I always found this big hunk of metal to be a bitch to keep together however, but using the instabond it fit together easy peasy. So here it is assembled, primed and zenithal highlighted.

In the original set, the hero was a bull-headed beast man by the name of "Longhorn". But Longhorn is doing duty in a beast man unit in my Undead Chaos army so I had replace him. I wanted to keep it in the Oldhammer Citadel family but most of those models are already in units. But I did find this model loitering around, and early 90's Citadel wraith/banshee.

Normally, I'm not a banshee guy because I'm not into ethereals, but she's pretty skeletal so I picked her up at some point. And when looking at her the idea hit me.

Long haired woman hero in a chariot? Boudica!

I've been listening to the British History Podcast, which is a fantastic show, and that turned me on to the story of the Iceni queen who led a rebellion against the might of Rome in the 1st century A.D. This would be a lovely representation of the doomed queen who I could plop down in my 1st century A.D. Undead Roman Legion. Romans... defeated enemy... all winding up in service to the dark arts in the end!

Citadel - Minotaur Lord

Minotaur Lord

Company: Citadel

Part #: 074640/4, 074640/5, 074640/6B

Sculptor: ??

Released: 1980’s

This is an old, OOP Citadel Minotaur Lord from GW.  Some of the old Minotaur Lords, including this one, came with variable legs, torsos and heads.  In true Chaos fashion one of the heads was skeletal.

For a while I had been looking for some monsters to fill out my Ancient Greek brigade.  Yes, when you play against me, the question is not, “what figures will he field?” but rather “which brigades is he going to field?” 

I have a bunch of generic/medieval fantasy type of brigades, but I also have some that run to various themes; a 1^st A.D. Imperial Roman skeleton brigade (a quincunx of infantry and supporting cavalry/artillery), a medieval samurai skeleton brigade, a New Kingdom Egyptian skeleton brigade (natch), a chaos skeleton brigade (chaos warriors, beastmen, demons), etc. etc.

One thing I’ve been putting together is an Ancient Greek skeleton brigade.  But instead of sticking to 5^th century B.C. types, I’ve also wanted to flesh it out fantasy-wise using figures from Greek mythology (cyclopi, Cerberus, centaurs, etc.) 

What other Greek fantasy monsters do I need?  Why, minotaurs of course!

The problem is, there are not that many good examples of skeletal or otherwise undead minotaurs.  I have one AD&D skeleton minotaur from Wizards of the Coast that is pretty lame.  Another pre-painted AD&D plastic which is even worse.  And a smallish Chainmail zombie minotaur not much better.  I have a Ral Partha one that has an, of all things, Egyptian theme.  But really big, ogre size minotaurs, not so much.  And I figure a minotaur, even if not a giant, has to be at least ogre size.

I found this on ebay.  It’s a pretty big size mounted on a 40mm base.  Even though I had collected all the Citadel skeletons from this era, I had skipped this piece because, well, the skeleton part is kind of an afterthought.  It’s more a creature of chaos.  But, given I’m looking for such a minotaur to field with the Ancient Greeks, he’ll do.  He can definitely pass as an undead in any case.

He came already painted, rather badly at that.  The flesh was painted a horrendous orange and the bone was splashed on.  I immediately rebased all the relevant parts with black primer.  I decided to leave the clothing the way it was, but may in the future come back to it.

After I primed the flesh and bone black, I dry brushed the flesh bits with Ghoul Skin to give him that rotting zombie look.  This sculpt is not one of Citadel’s best, but there is some neat detail in the flesh around the eyes that the dry brushing picked up.  I then painted the bone directly onto the skull.  It’s naked with no wash.  I like how it looks, but I might revisit it later on.

Unfortunately the axe that he originally wielded is missing so I'll have to replace that later.  But for now, he is ready to roll with my skeleton hoplite phalanx.

Two Recent Acquisitions

I just recently snagged two old out of print figures from ebay.  I’m pretty sure I actually have these two figures.  My problem is I don’t have a database of what I have and my memory is fallible.  In some sense, I’m hoping to use this blog as a visual reference for myself.  In the case of these two models, I figure you can never have enough anyway.

First up is a zombie gnoll, from the now defunct Chainmail Miniatures line.

When they had the license for D&D, Chainmail put out a nice series of undead figures that were especially useful to fill out non-human races.  You don’t see many examples of non-human undead, which is a shame, since I believe that the best part about playing the Skeleton Legion is that you get to kill your foe and then make him rise up and fight for you against his former comrades!  Therefore, I’m of the opinion that every model released should have an undead equivalent. If I ever get adept at sculpting, high on my priority list would be a set of skeletal High Elf eagle riders.  One can dream.

In any case Chainmail made some nice undead meta-races like dwarves, orcs, and troglodytes (lizard men.)  I believe this is the only example of an undead gnoll ever produced.  So I can either collect enough to create a full unit (12 figs) or slip them into my Skeletal Chaos Legion as beastmen or weres.

Due to its unique nature, it gets past my “nothing but bone” rule.  As do a number of particular monsters such as dragons or trolls.  But that’s pretty much it. Strictly speaking, this is not actually a zombie gnoll.  It's a construct, specifically, a flesh golem.  Ergo, the four arms and two heads stitched together onto the model.  Of course, it could also be interpreted as an undead creature of chaos.

Chainmail miniatures were multi-part and unfortunately very fiddly.  But I think that can be overcome now that I use green stuff as bonding agent rather than just super-glue.

Next up is a figure from way, WAY back.  A Citadel miniature from before they had slottabases!  And before GW was the marketing steamroller it is today.

This is a skeletal samurai that I will incorporate into my Skeletal Medieval Samurai brigade.  Mostly made up of Clan War/Legend of the Five Rings samurai figs, but also a sprinkling from other companies; Grenadier, Ral Partha, Citadel.  I’m always on the lookout on ebay for that old Grenadier skeletal samurai command blister from the early 80’s (Fantasy Lords #173.)  It is one of the few blisters (maybe even the last) I do not own from Grenadier.  Also, I’m always on the lookout for the “Lost Moto” blister of samurai cavalry for L5R (#13-121.)   I have one blister, but that’s only 2 figs and not enough for a full unit of cav (8.)  Therefore, I am relegated to using them as brigade commanders.  Valiant has begun re-releasing the Clan War figs, but sadly, no Lost Moto yet.