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.

Fifty Bucks???

What I mentioned in that last post, that GW would find some sort of way to charge $40 for one single plastic war sphinx?  Yeah, I was optimistic.

Five-Oh smackaroos

GW truly is the Microsoft/Starbucks of the gaming world.  How can anyone, especially younger players, be reasonably expected to shell out 50 dollars for a plastic model?

And those interesting skeletal knights?  Riding the cobra constructs?  Fifty-Five dollars for three!

Sorry Timmy.  We can't go on vacation this year.  But I was able to build a sweet unit of cobra riders!

Fortunately for GW, being gripped in the depths of OCD, I'm far from reasonable.  So I'll definitely be buying  all the new stuff.  But this has been the problem with GW since time immemorial and a big reason why my friends and I moved away from Warhammer and eventually to Piquet.  I certainly hope that one of the companies that trail in GW's wake like Gamezone or Mantic will make similar, alternative models for people who actually want to, you know, just play with toy soldiers.

New Tomb Kings!

Well, time to break out the wallet come May.  Games Workshop, makers of Warhammer™, is coming out with new a new Tomb Kings book for 8^th edition.  And with a new book comes delicious, delicious new models. 

Warhammer™ may be a sucky game, but I still collect the figs – and GW can certainly put out some nice models.  And these new figs are certainly… interesting.  Definitely out of the box thinking from GW.  Skeletal knights riding cobra constructs?  I have to admit a certain uneasiness concerning a lot of these figs since many aren’t strictly skeletal.  A lot of them are constructs, or golems, like the previous ushabti in the Tomb Kings line.  I accepted those as part of my fantasy Middle Kingdom Egyptian Legion because the heads were skulls, and beautifully crafted skulls patterned after the Egyptian gods; Anubis, Horus, Set, etc.  But some of these may be too out there for me.  Like the war sphinxes?  Definitely constructs.  Beautiful ones surely, but not skeletal.  Of course, one of them has a howdah with skeletons in it.  So that may be a possibility.  But those snake constructs?  We’ll have to see. 

And then there’s the new Tomb Guard set. That looks nice.

I like the fact that all these are in plastic, which is rapidly becoming my favorite medium.  Not only is it way cheaper than pewter (and with GW you need to save every penny you can get.  They’ll STILL probably find a way to charge $40 for the war sphinxes) but the plastic sets just allow for a wide variety of customization.  We’ll have to see what the detail is like.

There’s rumors of a new plastic catapult set and bone giant as well.  With these I can probably field an entire Middle Kingdom Egyptian undead force.  All the previous GW figs, plus the ones I have from Gamezone, Reaper, Crocodile Games and half a dozen other companies give me an army of such size that I couldn't fit in an augment of ancient Greeks or Romans even if I wanted to.

Sweet.