Tag Archives: Skeletons

Undead SAGA Warband episode #6 “Skeletal Giant”

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Pretty intimidating to see this guy coming at you

So just a quick post up of more “UnDead” that should have gone up long ago but just been busy and posting is way down the list of important things in life…. trying to get in more post means less writing and just slapping up the pictures!

I absolutely love the sculpt and especially the weapons on this guy! Also the “repairs” to the bones from past battle damage.

I did this guy last year and he’s figured in a few battles. Very imposing at about 7+ inches considering regular 28mm is a bit over 1 inch! He’s a REAPER figure, the metal version, and was a joy to build, convert, and paint! In SAGA he’s a hard hitter being a 14/0 armor 4 or 12/0 armor 5 depending on how you run him.

It’s a big heavy figure and I took time to drill and brass pin all the joints. Legs, arms, and torso, joints were also epoxied with 2 part JB Weld as even quality super glue would not be up to the task! The JB KwikWeld is also very good at filling in gap and can be carved before full curing and sanded at full cure.

I used a semi-gloss coating on this figure just like the rest of the UnDead warband as it gives a bit more kick, deeper colors, and just looks great to me.

Worked on a few techniques that I do not normally do on historical figures, aged bronze blade, cats eye star sapphire jewel, and a Jade handle.

I love how the modified pose came out, much more dynamic and taller than the original hunched over pose the stock model has. This required cutting, bending, repositioning, and pinning of legs, torso, arms, hands/weapons, and his head.

I liked this figure so much I bought a second version, slightly different and made from that weird plastic and sold under the “Bones” division of REAPER miniatures as well as a second identical figure to this one. Both currently in the “lead pile” for future projects.

Detail on this REAPER figure is just right, not to little nor to much like many over done Games Workshop models.

This guy is always ready to”lend a hand” on the battlefield! He carries one on his belt just in case…..

A small amount of the tattered cloth hanging on him was painted with the same “red” found to some degree on all figures in the warband to tie them all together.

The Secret Warband episode #3

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As usual my posting of projects and updates has gotten spotty at best as my house remodel, commission “build/paint” projects, and just painting for myself just left little time. When you add Christmas into the mix and a full-time job it’s near impossible but here’s episode #3 of “The Secret War-band”.  I guess that after 2 previous post on them it’s hardly a secret anymore, and in fact there are enough of them finished that we played a 6 point SAGA game with them about a month ago! It was our first “Age of Magic” game and even though they lost  my opponent said they were an intimidating force to look at anyway! (who knows as it was close and we misplayed many things)

I was really happy with the look of these and they gave me a chance to expand my painting skills with colors and techniques not normally used on straight historical s.

The basic warriors that you saw in the last post were fun and a simple way to start getting colors and a style down. After doing about 30 of them I decided to switch it up and move over to a more complicated Hearth guard unit of mounted un-dead knights. I looked at a lot of different manufacturers but settled on Games Workshop figures from their “Age of Sigmar” collection. Particularly I used the “Black Knights” from the large boxed set “Skeleton Horde” that contains, 10 Warrior infantry, 5 mounted knights, and the warlord “Arkhan the Black”. It’s not a cheap set and I was a bit worried that I would not like them. I was really hunting for a badass Warlord and with some modifications I felt “Arkhan the Black” would be great (more on his build/paint soon). After doing enough research on the internet about the figures and seeing the different builds from other painters I felt they would work and took the plunge.

Where ever you look on these guys there is some cool detail.

Yep, after nearly 40 years I actually broke down and bought some Games Workshop mini’s! Well sure I had bought flee market bits and pieces for conversions before, but never paid full price for figures to be used in an army like that. While I do use some of their miniatures at times I have never been interested in their games or style of play. Truth be told these figures are very nice and not goofy looking or too “over the top” like I feel most GW stuff is (well for my taste). These are plastic but they are well defined, go together nicely, and being plastic are easy to modify should one want to, and I always “want to!” Being a guy who beats up on Games Workshop at times I have to say I really love their “Age of Sigmar” line!

I really like the sculpts on these figures especially the horses. They do give you a bit of  choice for variety when building them and they fit together easily with little flash. I was a bit apprehensive looking at all the detail and every-time I looked at them it seemed I discovered more! I let them sit on the bench for about a week while I thought about and worked out the color/paint scheme. This always helps me to avoid choosing colors/combinations that don’t work, ends up with a better looking miniature, and actually saves time when the painting starts. Even then I was a little apprehensive about painting these guys but once I started and got into it was actually fun .

I did some re-posing of the horses to give them a bit more dynamic look to them.

The more I use plastics the more I like them because of the ease of conversion. These looked great out of the box but I still did some things to make them different, like creating a rearing horse pose on the leader horse and a leaping pose on another. I also cut out some of the plastic “grass” support points to make them look less like models. Make sure though when you do this the model still retains its strength overall on the base. This means you may have to ad or strengthen other supports. Being plastic helps as drilling and placing “hidden” brass or steel pins is much easier than in pewter.

Pro Tip: a light coat of QUALITY super glue over a possible weak section creates a hard reinforcing “shell” strengthening the area.

Plastic polystyrene pads are placed to level modified poses or help in creating variations in the basing.

After building them and taking time to work out the color scheme and what part would get what treatment painting began. I had already decided that the over all color scheme of the army would be bone (obvious right) with Black, Rust, and a bit of Bold Red tying it all together. Accents would be Gold/Brass, and a mix of ghostly un-dead green/blue shades mixed in where appropriate. This ghostly color really helps offset the black and red as well as contributing to that feeling of strange magic   This army would be sort of “clean” compared to some other un-dead army’s I’ve seen.  I wanted the details to show and the army to “pop” and not just blend into a indistinguishable mass of rotting figures that I’ve seen in other army’s. I have added some rust, rot, and decay, but I have kept it to a minimum and balance it with the cleaner look of an army that has been magically “restored” well at least partially!

This horse was selected to convert from a normal galloping horse to a rearing horse like in the movies where the hero rears up his mount and brandishes his sword just before he charges. The figure also requires a bit of work to now sit properly on the mount.

These were fun to paint, although the detailing is more time consuming the way I picked it all out. Options for different styles and having them paint up much faster is easily found searching the internet. I have seen entire armies painted in a “ghost style” with a few colors, washes, and highlights painted in less than a week! They looked good as well but not my “cup of tea”. I was not concerned with time and really wanted to push my level of painting up and into new territory, I went slow and had fun with it.

I really like the dynamic pose’s on these figures and the sculptor really did a great job on conveying a sense of movement to them. I also love that if look you will see that each figure while having a similar “horse armor” on, each has it’s own pattern and that is carried over loosely to the shields the figures carry.

I also pushed into new territory with paint and for really the first time started using quite a few of the Games Workshop paints. I had used a few in the past but just special things like washes or blood and everything else would-be Vallejo paints. I have to say that they do make some very cool colors and technical or special purpose paints that work very well but on the other hand their paint is over priced and the paint pots suck (my opinion). Nearly twice the cost of Vallejo for less paint and their paint pots do not seal well. I have taken to transferring the GW paint to “drip tip” bottle such as Vallejo and other companies have gone to, but again this adds to the cost and time factor!

I made some strides in improving my blending technique on these, lots of blending is something that is difficult to justify time wise when painting large numbers of figures as opposed to just 1-2 figures, leaders, or specials. The shields were at first just a plain brown/rust and I didn’t want to ad any designs as I thought the figure was “busy” enough already. After some thought the ethereal glow was added to try and show some “dark magic” was present.

About 6 months ago I started using a different primer for my plastic figures (requires airbrush) called Alclad II Lacquer, it comes in Black or White and has a very fine micro filler in it. It’s used by model plane builders mostly but was recommended to me by one of the guys down at Burbank’s House of Hobbies. I have come to love it! It’s very thin and sticks well to plastic giving a excellent bonding surface for following paint layers. To simplify things and speed the paint process up I used the white version as my primer and also the first coat for the skeletal “bone”. After this a wash of GW  “Agrax Earthshade”, a heavy dry brush of GW “Ushanti Bone”, and finally a light dry brush/spot highlight with Vallejo “off white” make a very convincing old bone look. Yes the GW paint line has goofy names that I cant pronounce or remember but they are invaluable for some effects.

Pro Tip: Burbank’s House of Hobbies is an “old school” type hobby shop run in a very modern way! Very knowledgeable, great service, tons of stuff, great prices, and excellent mail order serving the whole country! The store is always well stocked!

The poses on the figures and the way clothe on both the horse and figure are done really give the impression of movement, something not done as well by some other manufactures. Ive used a “tuft” of grass to cover the support under the front hoof  while the other hoof had it’s support removed, it really gives the impression now that the horse is galloping over it.

That effect of carefully thinking and planing of colors and layout can be seen here where the two large areas of red are separated by the rusty armor and the black cloth/metal armor on the figure. This allowed me to then paint the top armor red and have it stand out, something that would not have been the case if there was no color separation. One of the plans for this army was to have a bit of “red” on every figure to tie it together but the amount of red on the figure is directly related to the figures importance in the army.

The opposite side of the previous figure. The sculptor has vines growing on various parts of the figures, something that at first I was not a fan of and almost tried to grind it off. Coming to my senses I went with it and now very much like the effect of something that came out of the ground.

Normally I make my own banners out of other materials but I decided to go with the one provided and once painted really liked it. I did it using the ethereal colors for a more ghostly magic effect. This figure had extensive vines growing all over the figure, shield, and out onto his lance. To me it gives the feeling that the earth is trying to drag the warrior back into the ground, prevented only by the magic of the sorcerer who raised them from the dead!

With this entire army my choice of very plain grass and rock bases was deliberate to not draw attention away from the figures. I have seen some very nice army’s where this happens. Basing should be complimentary but not over powering to the figure. The green grass here creates a nice contrast in color and “living” verse “un-dead” look. The effect of dead/burned grass where the figure touches the ground was also used here to show the life force being sucked out of living things and used to give temporary “life” to the un-dead. The effect can be seen in some of the shots above.

 

On this figure you can see more of the sculptors use of vines and how it does work. These cross from his torso to the shield and also wrap around into his mouth.

This was another one of the mounts I altered from a lower galloping pose to a semi-rearing stance often seen as a horse rears upon impact with an opposing battle line! The horses head was also slightly altered to enhance the effect.

I hope you like this episode of the “Secret Warband” project and please leave a comment if you do as that motivates us to do more. Oh and before I sign off an important note! Plastic figures may not fair well in heat and most people don’t realize how hot the inside of your car or storage unit can get! different manufactures use different blends of plastic and some sagging and deformation can happen! Even just leaving your box in the sun for long periods can do it. High heat can also affect paint, fading it over time! Take care of your investment and enjoy them for a long time…cheers!

 

The Secret Warband episode #2

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Things have been quite busy around the house and as usual lots of projects and things happening. Getting tons done but “posting” is way down on the list! Having put a few chores out of the way along with quite a few commission “build and paint” job’s I finally have a few moments to pound out an update.

The SAGA Age of Magic Undead army has been my main focus as far as figures for myself and the subject of the previous post The Secret is out, an UnDead Warband where I promised to post up the waband as I completed various units.

There are several more boxes and “sprues” that didn’t make it into the original picture. They are just so cool!

After purchasing nearly “all the skeletons in the world” the first units were built from the Warlord Games skeletons produced for their fantasy game “Warlords of Erehwon”. Starting with these was a deliberate choice based on their look and style. These were the skeletons that I remembered from my youth and the movie “Jason and the Argonauts”. They were also fairly simple allowing me to develop a painting and basing style for my army before tackling more intricate and complicated figures. Those readers who are paying attention might notice that in the picture there are not only a box of 30 of these figures but directly below it another of 90 more figures! WTF? Bill you said a SAGA warband? That’s way more figures than you need! Yep well I just don’t know when to stop in fact there are about 200+ figures in the collection but I plan to have lots of force options as well as use this army for other games where a larger figure count is needed. (Thanks for the commission work gents, see what it bought me!)

I’ve painted all 30 from the first box as well as completed my warlord and started on my “Sacred Ground” terrain piece that will appear in future post. I may use them as warriors or perhaps “mindless” in SAGA will see. For now, here’s the 30 “skeletons”

I have about 100 more of these to build and paint! It goes fairly quickly and you can see with some simple cutting, bending, and swapping bits and pieces around no two are alike!

They are a bit fiddly during assembly and a bit delicate in handling but in my opinion some of the nicest and most fun to build “skeletons” out there! Add that to the fairly inexpensive cost of around $25 for 30 of them makes it even better.

As I said before “posing” them was just a hoot and allowed me to capture those cool shots I remember from the movies. Rey Harryhausen was a master at this posing or positioning in his stop animation work and I tried to recreate some of those looks! These two and the ones in the “gallery” below are a few of my favorites so far.

I remember as a lad seeing the skeletons clawing their way out of the ground and thinking that was the coolest! This pose I created is a tribute to that memory!

Building the dirt up around the “hole” helps the impression. This was originally a standing figure.

Painting was done by starting with a white primer base using ACLAD II primer in my air brush and then going with GW/Citadel paints which is a change for me as I mostly go with Vallejo paints. After the primer comes a wash of Citadel AGRAX Earthshade (its a brown wash) straight out of the bottle, then a heavy dry brush (not too dry) of Citadel USHANTI BONE, and a finial highlighting of Vallejo OFF WHITE. I did not age these guys weapons/shields down much as I liked the brighter look off setting the bones and figured “hey they were magically restored” Most of the “coming out of the ground” poses where custom made just using parts with a little cutting and bending. Enjoy, I did!

 

In “Jason and the Argonauts” the Skeletons fought and moved in a way that truly made them look like they were undead and not as coordinated as the living. This was partially due to the stop-motion process but also deliberate by Harryhausen to give them a character unlike the living.

Ends of the arms and legs are ball socket-ed to allow easy posing and the other joints can be easily bent with a slight cut. Heads are the same way.

NEXT Post UP, a Warrior unit using Mantic Games Figures!

 

The Secret is out, an Un-Dead Warband

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Places like Paul Freilers (Torrance, California) were magic and I could spend hours there just dreaming among the oh so cool treasures!

Back in the beginning (early 1980’s) when I first started to collect and paint miniatures it was only a hobby to relieve stress from work, an outlet for my creative/collecting desires. I didn’t play games with them, I simply bought figures I liked, painted them and stuck them in a small cabinet I had. Most of the first figures were from the Dungeons & Dragons world since that was the rage at the time, for me Historical’s would come later but it was fantasy first.

Like most folks I painted the “good guys” to start with, some Wizards, Elves, a few Human hero’s, my collection grew. One day while in a shop looking at figures, I noticed a rack of books with small rule books allowing you to play games with these miniatures, sort of a way to bringing them to life. I now became interested in playing with these miniatures, found a group in Santa Monica’s Aero hobbies (sadly closed) that played and I signed up for a Saturday session. I was hooked, my minis now had a purpose in life!

Back in the day painted mini’s were not always that common in games, well painted was rare, and basing…whats basing?

I painted, I played, but after only a few sessions the Game master of our little group failed to show up for our Saturday adventure. In his place I was nominated to run an adventure (perhaps because in of all the group my minis were actually painted in more than two colors!) so letting my imagination go I winged the group through a made up on the spot adventure. Afterwards I figured I had done so poorly that they would never have me as a GM again but to my surprise the players said it was one of the best sessions yet and could I do it next week! I agreed but without telling them that I had no idea what I was doing, that most of my die rolls had nothing to do with actual rules, I just rolled dice and then interpreted results, balanced with what I thought should have happened for FUN! Most players back then had little knowledge of the rules anyway…thank God for those GM screens!

Sure I read the “Hobbit” and had to have three trolls for under the bridge!

I realized that as a GM, players relied on me to bring the “bad guys”, the monsters, NPC’s, the things in the game they had to fight, out think, and overcome. I started painting Goblins, Orcs, and the various things one finds in D&D dungeons. Remember Kobolds? Lots of those! I would go down each week to the hobby shop to see what new treasures had come in, yes, remember when you had to “go to the shop” to see figures!

Fast forward to 2018, D & D is long behind me, I’ve been playing “historical games” for many years and with many different groups. One of the groups I have played with the longest is the “Dogs of War” in Los Angeles, they had gotten deep into a game called SAGA by Studio Tomahawk, dark age battles involving warbands instead of full armies. I was never a big fan of Ancients, Dark Ages, or the Medieval period although I had painted several large “Tactica” armies, Romans, Huns, and played that for a while. Still this new SAGA “Dark Ages” period interested me, especially since it had “Vikings”. Several of the movies from my youth involved Vikings and had left strong impressions on my young mind, adventure, gold, sex, and hacking apart your fellow man to get them! What’s not to like?

Who better than Kirk Douglas to play a Viking!

Yes, my dad and his buddies had a habit of taking me to all those movies their wives were not interested in, Goldfinger, Fantastic Voyage, The Longest Day, etc.… (thanks dad!). I’m sure my mom was not thrilled about me going either but go I did (thanks Mom!). Movies like “The Vikings” staring Kirk Douglas. Tony Curtis, and Ernst Borgnine as well as “The Long Ships” with Richard Widmark and Sydney Poitier were what SAGA was about! I got roped into a few SAGA games with a “lender” Viking warband and was hooked! Soon boxes of “all the Vikings in the world” were headed to my house (I bought almost the entire line of Foundry Vikings). Warbands of Vikings, Saxons, Normans, Teutonic Knights, and Moorish hordes poured off my workbench! I painted, played and enjoyed SAGA for several years but then like many other popular games it grew and produced an updated version SAGA II

It was the move from SAGA into SAGA II that worried me. Now SAGA II changed a few things around (for the good) but it introduced “Fantasy” warbands and “magic” as an option, yet another peroid, and one I was not interested in starting, my lead pile is big enough! . As we moved into SAGA II some of the group leaned towards creating some “fantasy” warbands, in fact they fairly quickly built them! Ha! “Not me” I said “NEVER, not going to happen” I told them, over and over, right up to the point while watching one of their silly Saga Magic games I picked up the “Age of Magic” supplement book to help look up a rule. While looking through the heavily illustrated book I saw a skeleton warband in 28mm and felt faint….my head started to spin…..I spun straight back to my youth once again, I’m sitting in a darkened movie palace, gobbling down popcorn, and watching “Jason and the Argonauts”.

Burned into my memory was one of the last scenes where after Jason kills the Hydra and steals the fleece the local king cuts out the Hydras teeth and scatters them on the ground to release long dead victims, “Children of the Hydra”, only skeletons now to catch and kill Jason and his band. The Ray Harryhausen’s master piece of animation that brought the “children of the Hydra” to life was when I fell in love with skeleton figures.

What young boy was not inspired to create his own adventures after seeing this!

The “Master” of stop motion Ray Harryhausen works with one of his skeletons on the set!

Now this photo in the SAGA II  Age of Magic book was not the first time I felt that pull from my past as far as skeletons are concerned, it was years ago on one of those trips to the hobby shop for some new D&D figures that I first saw skeleton mini’s! They were quite possibly the first skeleton minis ever made in 25mm, and knocked me over, I had to have them!  They were modeled in the style of Hans Holbein’s Dance of Death, or “Totentanz” renaissance wood block prints from the 1500’s. As I recall the sets were produced by Minifigs in 25mm and the range was called “Valley of the Four Winds” or “VFW” for short. I bought perhaps 30-40 figures in the range and had them on display in my miniature’s cabinet for years, even after becoming mostly “historical only gamer”. Yes I did some Victorian Science Fiction, Battle Tech, even Starship Troopers. As the years passed, I started to sell off most of my unused fantasy figures to create space and cash for the historical figures. The cherished VFW skeletons went to greener pastures, but I never forgot them….

Pretty impressive for the early 80’s….many of the GW crowd who might think they came up with this stuff were still learning to walk.

Original packaging from the still popular among collectors line. (out of production)

It was after returning home from that game at the “Dogs” clubhouse that I felt the urge to see those old skeleton figures and what was produced in 28mm Skeletons nowadays, heck just “looking” wouldn’t hurt… Little did I know that like a fish below the boat looking at the bait, I was in dangerous water.

 

Wow! found an old picture of my painted VFW skely’s! Painted Circa 1981

Wow, there are tons of skeletons out there nowadays!!! A dozen or more manufacture’s, different period’s, styles, historical and total fantasy to choose from. Now being a very “traditional” type I was not impressed with the many times overblown sculpts popular with some gaming systems and manufactures, I yearned for the style I remembered from my younger days. I wanted Skeletons from “Jason and the Argonauts”! Well it was not long using the power of the internet that I found what I was looking for. The bait was looking good!

I couldn’t believe how close these figures looked to the figures in “Jason and the Argonauts” and then I read the box that proclaimed “Children of the Hydra” doh!

There it was, a box of 24 Skeletons looking as if they came right off the silver screen! They were pretty bare “bones” (pun intended) and had only options for spear, sword, or bow, and a few Greek style shields. I figured I’d just take a look at prices and availability but  before I knew it my shaking finger hit the “buy it now” button… the hook was set, and I was into the net called “Age of Magic”

The figures arrived and while unboxing them I remembered they were plastic, I had to assemble them and oh boy what a lot of parts, small parts, fiddly parts! This was going to take time. The good news was that there was little flash, and mold lines were not bad at all. Yes, there are a lot of parts but with some proper glue and a bit of patience I built the first one and he (?) looked great! I soon got the hang of assembly and could churn out 5-6 of them in about an hour. You get plenty of options for body parts, and since they are plastic the posing possibilities are nearly endless! They even have options for a few coming out of the earth which is really cool and something I definitely wanted. I actually really enjoyed building these! The box says you get 24 figures but if you want you can use extra pieces to make partial skeletons emerging out of the ground, or as casualties, and increase that number. I think I got 28 figures all told with a few casualty markers (pile of bones) to boot!

Now normally I have a habit of not revealing my new projects until they hit the table, it’s fun that way, the big reveal. Now with the Corona Virus, Sheltering at Home, and social distancing get togethers are done for a bit so I have decided to just share my build of this warband here.

Ok, enough! Let’s see the figures!

REMEMBER “clicking” on the picture will give you a larger version.

Some might question the basing choice since I went with a “fairly” simple flocked base instead of a more intricate “undead looking” base that many people use. Well several reasons,

  1. I didn’t want the base distracting from the mini, sometimes “skeletons” are  a bit plain.
  2. We play mostly on “grass” covered mats (and see above)
  3. Skeletons, even with their armor, weapons, and dressing, can be a bit monotone so the green color really helps off set this.
  4. There was going to be a lot of skeletons and simple is faster!
  5. I had a plan to “tie” in the basing with the figure! (see further down)

While there are a few bases designed for “clawing out of the earth” poses its very easy to take spare parts and create your own. I actually found creating varied poses was a lot of fun and pretty easy given the thin plastic. In part two of this series on the “Undead Warband”  I’ll talk more about the nuts & bolts of building and modifying.

My crazy brain like to analyze figures before I paint them, what are they doing, why are they doing it, what are they thinking, etc. I find it helps me in selecting how to paint and pose them. With the “skeletons” I started thinking, “well their frekkin dead so what keeps them going?” and thought “ok, dead equals no “life force” so to reanimate them the Necromancer gives them a magical shot of “life force” but how can he keep this up for a whole army?” well he doesn’t! Once they are brought to life and sent off they have the ability to steal “life force” from any living organism they contact.

So if you look at my bases you see that the grass where the skeletons walk is black or brown, wilted and destroyed as the “life force” is pulled away. Yea, I sometimes go down the “Rabbit Hole”……

These are just the first five of 30 that I’ve done already, they are fairly simple as I was using them to develop a style and paint selection for the rest of the army. I will post picks of the others soon. There are also quite a few other components to this army to be revealed in future post!