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Thoughts on the Citadel Skull Kit

Hello everyone! I've had some thought about this kit rattling around in my head for a few days now, and I've finally decided to put them down on virtual paper.

I don't think I've been more excited for a Games Workshop release than I was for the Citadel Skulls kit that just came out. The converter in me did a little happy dance when I saw the announcement on the Warhammer Community site. 340 plastic skulls are a dream come true, and the variety of skulls GW included in the kit is staggering.



I'm still a little confused by the fact that there are daemon skulls included. I thought daemon bodies evaporated back into the Warp when they were killed, but apparently not. Maybe daemons work differently in 40k than they do in AoS? Although, I believe the Grey Knight Terminator kit included the severed head of a Bloodletter, so maybe my assumption about what happens to dead daemons was wrong.

Anyway, I'm really excited by their inclusion in the kit, and not only because they'll make great base decorations. They're going to make great conversion bitz as well. The Plaguebearer skulls are definitely going to be finding their way into my Nurgle forces, either as decoration or replacing the heads of some of the Plaguebearers entirely.

I have a lot of plans for the kit and the possible conversions I can do with the contents. I'll be adding a reply to this post later detailing some of my thoughts because this initial post is going to be really long as it is.

For those of you who haven't had the chance to see the sprues that come with the kit, I've included pictures of each below.

Sprue #1



Sprue #2



Sprue #3



Sprue #4 (this one makes my OCD really happy)



The detail level on these skulls is good. It's not as sharp as some of the other kits I've seen, but the details are definitely not too soft.

The product listing on Games Workshop's site lists the different types of skulls that are included in this kit.

- 82 human skulls with jawbones;
- 86 human skulls without jawbones;
- 15 human jawbones;
- 60 assorted damaged human skulls;
- 2 giants’ skulls;
- 1 Morghast skull (in 2 components);
- 1 beast skull (in 2 components);
- 4 small horned skulls;
- 4 medium horned skulls;
- 3 large horned skulls;
- 7 bird skulls;
- 2 Chaos beast skulls;
- 6 plaguebearer skulls;
- 6 Bloodletter skulls;
- 10 T'au skulls;
- 5 Kroot skulls;
- 6 alien skulls;
- 21 Genestealer Hybrid skulls;
- 20 Ork skulls without jaws;
- 5 Ork jawbones;
- 7 Ork skulls with jaws open;
- 7 Ork skulls with jaws.

Time to crunch the numbers.

I've shopped around for bulk numbers of skulls before this kit was released, and found a few companies that sell large numbers of skulls. Understandably, they are always in either metal or resin because plastic injection molding is still very expensive to get started.

Secret Weapon - Sack O Skulls - $15.00

Greenstuff World - 100x Resin Skulls - $11.90

Greenstuff World - 50x Resin Ork Skulls - $12.51

Greenstuff World - 50x Resin Burning Skulls - $8.48

Toad King Castings - Bag of Skulls - $11.53

Wargames Exclusive – Human Skulls in 28mm Scale – $12.80

These are all really nice quality from the looks of them, the only ones that I purchased are three of the Greenstuff World 100x Resin Skulls kits a few months ago. This isn't the place for a review of these kits, but I might have to do a short review of them later.

Let's do some per skull price comparisons.

Secret Weapon - Sack O Skulls comes with 50 loose skulls for $15.00. That comes to $0.30 a skull.

Greenstuff World - 100x Resin Skulls comes with 100 loose skulls for $11.90 at current exchange rates. That's about $0.12 per skull.

Greenstuff World - 50x Resin Ork Skulls comes with 50 loose ork skulls for $12.51. That's about $0.25 per skull.

Greenstuff World - 50x Resin Burning Skulls comes with 50 loose skulls for $8.48. That's about $0.17 per skull.

Toad King Castings - Bag of Skulls comes with about 100 loose skulls for $11.53. That's about $0.12 per skull.

Wargames Exclusive – Human Skulls in 28mm Scale comes with 64 skulls for $12.80. That's about $0.20 per skull.

There are a lot of options out there for skulls of humans, and even some for ork skulls. Sure, some of these kits are most specialized like the flaming skulls from GSW, and the skulls with bionics from Wargame Exclusive. For many that may be a significant difference, but comparing the price per skulls, product material, and variety of skull types the Citadel Skulls set blows them all out of the water.

The Citadel Skulls kit comes with 340 loose skulls for $25.00. That's about $0.08 per skull. That's 33% less than the least expensive kit from one of the other companies shown here.

If we only count the human skulls in the kit it's still a better deal. There are 228 human skulls in the GW kit. If those 228 skulls were sold as a stand alone kit for $25, that would be $0.11 per skull.

And the GW skulls are plastic.

If I ever need specialized skulls like the flaming skulls from GSW, I'm certainly willing to pay the extra $0.09 per skull so I don't have to sculpt fire on 50 tiny skulls, but for plain skulls the GW kit has the game locked down.

What do you think?

I think some of those demon skulls are going to end up on chaos marine conversions. I don't see me using many of the other skulls unless I grind them flat at the back and use them as decoration in relief. Good price for a box of stuff I wouldn't want to make myself though. Thanks for posting the info, very useful to know.

price per skull depends on tax

but yeah it's a decent buy for sure, I picked one up. Too many uses for them even if you don't have an overly skull centered army.

I mean: terrain, objective markers, bases

Also, if it were all the usual humanoid skulls, which are pretty easy to get a hold of by other means (other kits with spares etc) it'd be one thing, but the main thing that makes it worth while in my book is the number of 'other' types.

I'll probably save some of the demony ones for my Skaven army.

Most of them at this point are going to be going under the Crunch crunchin feet of my Gorkanaut though I think

What is the big skull supose to be?

 Niiai wrote:
What is the big skull supose to be?

Dark Eldar Clawed Fiend

Back when Tomb Kings was still a thing I struggled to collect skulls because I wanted to re-create Ryu-kokki as a Bone Giant.

This may inspire me to revisit that idea again, especially since the giant beast skull is perfect for his head.

 Phobosftw wrote:

 Niiai wrote:
What is the big skull supose to be?

Dark Eldar Clawed Fiend

Thank you! I was wondering about that, and couldn't figure out what it was. The product description on the Games Workshop site doesn't even tell us what it is. It only describes it as a "beast skull"

Does anyone know what these skulls are from? Are they Ur-Ghoul skulls?

A Use for Skulls

There are a lot of conversion opportunities presented in the Citadel Skull kit, so many that no one person can come up with all of them. That’s the beauty of our hobby, there doesn’t seem to be an end to the possibilities we can come up with.

There are a lot of different types of skulls in this kit, so I’m not going to be talking about the Human and Ork skulls more than a mention here and there.

I’m currently working on a Nurgle Daemon army, and fortunately I’m building the Plaguebearers at the moment. The Plaguebearer skulls present a wonderful new bit to use in their construction. I plan on taking a couple of the skulls and carving out the back so they will fit on the necks of the daemons. After compairing them against the regular Plaguebearer heads the skulls are much smaller and will take some serious bulking out to look ‘correct’ on the bodies.

The skeletal nature of the skulls will be perfect for creating Plaguebearers that look like the flesh of their faces has sloughed off due to various skin diseases. Adding some Greenstuff to the skulls will add variety to the new heads.

A specific conversion that I’m looking forward to completing is a mostly skeletal face with a distended mouth gurgling the praises of Grandfather Nurgle. I can use one of the lower jaws from the human skulls as the lower structure of the mouth.

Another thought is to use one of the lower jawbones for the ork skulls instead because of the larger teeth. I like the idea of a horribly overgrown and deformed lower jaw that is slowly tearing the disease weakened skin and muscles away from the rest of the skull jaw with it’s weight.

Whichever I end up using I will have to strengthen the connection between the jaw and the skull with some wire which will also give additional strength and contact points for the Greenstuff.

Moving on to other skulls in the collection, the Bloodletter skulls offer some of the same kinds of opportunities. These will take a bit more work to build up the back of the Bloodletter heads as most of those are missing on the skulls, but the effort will be worth it to have a few skull faced horrors mixed into a unit of ‘normal’ daemon warriors of the Blood God.

We also cannot forget the chance to use these skulls as decoration for armor. I mentioned this use in my last Bonelords progress blog post. I plan on using one to decorate some of the bear plasticard armor on my converted Exalted Deathbringer with Impaling Spear.

The Beastmen skulls are a great resource for one of the more common conversion styles found in the AoS28 community, building hybrid skeleton/Nurgle/dryad warbands for Hinterlands and AoS Skirmish. Most of them are too large to look convincing on groups of skeletons, but that’s never stopped a good conversion before. The skulls will also make great decorations for the now very powerful Herdstones of a Beastman army as well.

With some work the Kroot skulls could be used to make Tzanngor skulls. The spines would need to be cut and shaved down a bit as feathers aren’t made of bone and are held on a body by the skin, but some of the Tzanngors have spines growing out of their bodies, so that might not be such a big issue.

You could also use the bird skulls from the kit to make some Tzanngor skulls as well. If you were able to source a bird skeleton you could use them to make animated bird skeletons. They would also make for interesting heads for warpicks, warhammers, or other weapons.

The Tau skulls present less of a use for us AoS players, but the uses for 40k armies are obvious. Base scatter, kill decorations, objective markers, or even a helmetless Tau body sprawled out in death are excellent uses. You could even use the skulls to make servoskulls for a very radical inquisitor, or maybe as the head of a servitor slaved to the will of a Heretek Adeptus Mechanicus Magus.

The Tyranid skulls have the same possible uses as the Tau skulls. I plan on using at least one of them as the head of a leader of a Death unit that I’ve been working on off and on. I will of course shave off the crest bone of the skull before adding them to the leader of the unit.

The Ur-goul skulls present a bit of a challenge as the details are sadly not very well defined. If I use these for a project, I will be using a very small drill to deepen the nasal holes on the skulls. They would make effective bases for building your own Ur-gouls if you were able to strategically use Greenstuff to soften the sharp edges of the skulls and complete the missing nostrils. They’re missing their lower jaws, but the human jawbones could be used to fill in for the missing parts.

The Morghast skull is extremely detailed and could make for some absolutely amazing Death conversions. I can see the skull being used for a head on Daemon Princes or maybe even 40k Dreadnoughts.

The same could be said for the Giant skulls. They could be used as heads for all kinds of machines, monsters, etc. I’ve seen some really cool uses to create Giant zombies. Using them as the head of a Nurgle chaos Giant could also be very interesting with enough Greenstuff work.

The massive skull is one that is kinds stumping me. It could be used as the head of a massive undead or Nurgle beast. I could also see it in use for some kind of Khorne project. It strikes me that the top portion and facial area of the skull could be used to decorate a chaos chariot. If you really wanted to do some work you might even be able to make the body and face of a Nurgle Plague Toad out of the skull.

Well those are a few of my thoughts on the conversion options presented by the Citadel Skulls kit.

Thanks for reading!