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Thanks! - and thanks for the Bones Offer as well!

Lemme check..

Hm.. there's actually quite a lot spread across all of the expansions and most of the smaller add-on packs. I just didn't want to add on $300 worth of stuff (plus postage) for 30% of the included models. Certainly interested in some of the dragons as well, as I couldn't afford nearly as much in Bones II as I wanted.

Are you able to PM me a list or pic for me to scavengebuy some stuff off you?

Back in my teens, I used to finance many of my Warhammer purchases by commission painting for other people. I got to paint some cool stuff, and bought a hell of a lot of Space Marines (most of which are still unpainted to this day(!) One of the kits I painted for other people was the stuff from the MD8 Skeleton War Machines box set, , which was the eighth in the Machineries of Destruction range. As with my old Dwarves, I only ever had a couple dozen of the old Undead models, and sold off most of them back in the day, excepting a few (exactly as with the Dwarves). Since Marouda's "building" an Undead Army for KoW (as fast as I can paint it for her) and I've been following Subedai's blog for a couple of years, I've gotten inspiration for various bits and pieces. Recently, he showed off his Plague Cart, which triggered something in my pea brain and sent me to eBay looking for some of the cool old Undead kits I painted back in the day. While I haven't been completely successful so far, I've managed to get a few pieces at least. Here's the first of them: The Skull Chucker (also alternately known as the Screaming Skull Catapult before that new TK kit took the name)


Yep, there are some "mistakes" and missing bits there.



First and most obviously, the crew are "wrong", and it's missing the Skull Ammo Pile. It was sold on eBay with two loaders and a spotter, but not the bonehead who fires the catapult. Still, the price was ok, and shipping from the UK was decent rather than exploitative (both real concerns when you're here in Australia) so I figured "good enough" and got it anyway. There was a ton of old superglue encrusted on the launcher arm and frame, and the arm was glued slightly up at an odd angle. Also a fair bit of old, old flash and extruded bits of lead to clean up. No big deal though. I used a bit of greenstuff to get a good bond when reassembling, and then noticed that both braced were missing from the kit. D'oh!



Now luckily I'd just bought some undead Tomb Kings stuff off a guy locally, and I'd literally just received the bag of bits that he'd "forgotten" (cough) to send out with the other stuff a week earlier. I thought it would be worth checking through to see if there was something appropriate in it that I could use to fix up the Skull Chucker. Now the bits bag was actually filled with cool bits (it was a big reason why I bought his stuff). and it included several of these ...banner poles(?) After cutting them down, they turned out to be a great fit, and the socket cutouts with little embossed skulls on the joins worked perfectly as replacement pieces. I should make up a replacement Skull Ammo Pile. It was one of the first things I thought of, but I completely forgot about it until now. Shouldn't be too difficult, at least.



They look like they're supposed to be there, so as fas as I'm concerned, Job's a Good'un.
For the paint, I stuck to Marouda's chosen Undead palette. Bone/Black/Brass/Iron with deep Red and some Aqua (verdigris) as the spot colours. My style of painting bone might be a bit bright to be properly realistic but it pops nicely on the table.



The crew provided me with some stuff to work on at work last week. I'll have to prepare some new models to work on for this week's lunch breaks now. It's like an extra deadline each weekend. Eurgh.



Undead and Orcs. Back together for the first time in a long time. Back in 3rd Edition WHFB, I used to regularly summon Skeletons as allies for my Orc and Goblin army. They often just stood in lines breaking up the line of sight between my Orc units so they wouldn't kick the crap out of each other via failed animosity rolls. Now that's something I don't miss in KoW!

Huh, you go from awesome Bones models to awesome Bone models! (see what I did there?)

I really love those strange 'gribblies' the first one you did with the pale pink in the mouth is really striking! it's subtle and I just am drawn to it! perhaps it wants to eat me?

Loving these Az. Reminds me of the figs I used to make with my Dad (rubber moulds, melting white metal, pouring etc) looooong time ago which first got me into figs. Great job

That pic of the three skeleton crew, I thought the middle skele was holding onto his pot belly. Then realised i was just the angle

Anyway, you've got the aged bone look down very well. Love the classic colour schemes

The skull chucker looks great, I'd totally forgotten about that. I use to have loads of fun with mine was a great unit with the screaming skulls.

I'm sure I had the Plague Cart as well, those were the days

 Azazelx wrote:
Thanks! - and thanks for the Bones Offer as well!

Lemme check..

Hm.. there's actually quite a lot spread across all of the expansions and most of the smaller add-on packs. I just didn't want to add on $300 worth of stuff (plus postage) for 30% of the included models. Certainly interested in some of the dragons as well, as I couldn't afford nearly as much in Bones II as I wanted.

Are you able to PM me a list or pic for me to scavengebuy some stuff off you?

This was exactly how I felt, luckily between three of us here it was just about viable to go for it.
I'll spread out what's left and snap a pic for the PM, it's easier than trying to remember what these are called.

Thanks gents. Haven't been on as much this week as work has a bunch of new things for me to take care of from here on in, and I've been much more sleepy once I finish of an evening. Hopefully I'll have some more cool old war machines to share soon, and some other interesting stuff.

But first, I'm still working on those tedious goblins.

Come on Az, punch out those Goblins and get back onto the awesome trip down memory lane with the cool old school warmachines. Can't wait for what you have for us next.

You did a fantastic job of repairing the skull thrower by the way, its seamless.

I got 14 of the plastic Moria Goblins done by last weekend. I've picked up some more Moria Goblin Prowlers in the last couple of weeks (8 more of them, plus three I had sitting around unpainted) and so I'll combine this 11 with the three finished ones for a KoW unit of 12 and a couple leftovers. These Prowlers are my week-work project, so hopefully done by this weekend and I can get back to the final f̶i̶v̶e̶ seven of the metal Moria Goblins (maybe next week?) and then paint something fun. I've also started a few more random metal skeletons that have shown up recently in the post. Also tried to get a trio of GW Night Goblin Fanatics done over the weekend, but failed.

The Bronze Bull is kinda-sorta-mostly finished. But needs to be glued down to its base and have the shield and sword spots worked out. Probably this coming weekend.

Yay me!

Have some WIP pics for the meantime... had some fun with the rust on the goblins' ball and chains. It'll be easier to see in the final (completed) pics. I hope to finish these three over the coming weekend as well.






Automatically Appended Next Post:
I'll photograph the plastic Moria goblins when I've got the metals done, as the metals will be their "unit leaders" while the plastics are more of the same old.

It just occurred to me on the weekned that I could use them as Red Goblins for my Ogres in addition/instead of as a crappy small regular goblin force.

You've really given those old models a new life!

Great stuff.

The fanatics are looking great. Is there room for them in a KOW army?

Hanging out to see the bronze bull finished and all based.

Looking forward to the next update. The flames on the gobbos looks great.

Looking forward to the metal cow. And yes, the Goblins look great as well, loving the colour of the flames in direct contrast with the typical black robes.

Thanks all. I was trying to work out what to do with the gobboes to give them some interest/pop, since I'm not really a huge fan of checkerboard patterns on my goblinoids. I went with the old standby of flames in the end.

The Skelly is coming along alright so far. Hopefully I can have some fun with his shield. Just got to figure out what to paint on it...

and yeah, I'm looking forward to gluing down the bovine as well. Then I can get it off my desk!

No updates for a little while. New role at work with increased hours has meant less time for painting, blogging, sleeping, gaming and all of the other stuff that I enjoy. Not to mention the weather has been unsuitable for spraying lately as we slide towards winter here.


First up, we have "Snake" from Wrath of Ashardalon boxed game. I'm assuming that these "properly" come in several different flavours, but I'm happy to just go with "Giant Snake". These three have been near-painted for.. well, quite some time. At least a year, and probably around 2-3, when I was really into painting the boxed D&D games' figures. Finally knuckled down and got them finished yesterday after doing a little on them last weekend. They're a little bright, and much more on the "fantasy artwork" side than the "realistic" side in their colouration, but that's ok by me. The important thing is that they look good on a table, and more importantly - are finished.


Next up we have "Cave Bear". These were actually painted a year (or two?) ago. Aside from the unfortunate PVC mould lines, these are lovely little sculpts and painted up like a dream. I've always been pretty happy with how well they came out, as well. Obviously here I went for more of a realistic feel to the colours, though still keeping it bright.


Heartbreaker Chronopia Kilt-wearing Celt-Barbarian guy provides human-sized scale reference. What can I do with these figures aside from roleplaying? I'm honestly not sure. Mayhe they can slip into Kings of War as proxies for units in the "Nature" army. I'd need a bunch more to fill out enough to make up a unit, though. Maybe the bears can join in with a unit of Wood Elf Wardancers and the Snakes can do the same for Witch Elves? Actually, that's not a bad idea...

Do it!


They look good, nice work as usual

There's always 7th Voyage from Crooked Dice, which is a nice homage to the stop motion swords and sorcery movies done by Ray Harryhausen. There are plenty of expansions and tool sets released to date that allow you to field just about any monster you've got in your collection.

The D&D monsters look great, you got a great scheme going with them and they look very impressive. I think as a "mascot" within a unit of Elves or other nature oriented troops could work pretty well.

They are both really nice, the fur on the bears is very realistic.

Nice selection of beasties!

Thanks, Gents.

7th Voyage looks interesting, and you've just reminded me that I've got Song of Blades and Heroes knocking about here somewhere, and I've also been meaning to do something (someday) with 7TV. I'll certainly have a good chunk of Mythical Greek figures (soon) for use in 7thV.

Today I've got another couple of trios of Wrath of Ashardalon figures. Despite both of these sets being finished a year or two ago now, I haven't photographed them before. This is because my initial plan for both the Castle Ravenloft and Wrath of Ashardalon sets of figures was to paint them all up, and show them all off as completed sets - one for each of the boardgames. Obviously that hasn't worked out, and so I've decided to show them off anyway, which will hopefully help motivate me to finish them off.


The Orc Basher is a nice enough figure. It's a very different style of Orc to the much more familiar (to me) Warhammer Orc. I took my paint cues for these figures from the LotR Uruk-Hai of the White Hand. I was in two minds about actually painting a White Hand on their shields, but decided against it in the end in order to keep them a little more generic.


Gibbering Mouthers are another of the oh-s0-very D&D creatures that inspired the new D&D category. When I saw these figures, it took a little while for me to work out what to do with them and how to paint them. Fleshy-looking tendrils of eyes and teeth? Hm. In the end, I decided that I had to paint them in a disgustingly wet, fleshy manner, with subdermal veins visible through the pinkish skin. Finished with satin varnish, and with some clear mucus of some kind dripping from one of their mouths via Water Effects.


Once again, Heartbreaker Chronopia Kilt-wearing Celt-Barbarian Guy provides human-sized scale reference. The Orc is pretty much human scale but more heavy-set, while the Gibbering Mouth-breather is a bit shorter. In wargaming terms, the Orcs can easily fit into an Uruk unit of some kind anyway if need be, and manage to look quite decent in and of themselves. I guess the mouthers could either be mounted on top of 40mm bases to be something disgustingly daemonic/abyssal, or as a form of chaos spawn/beast of Nurgle. Or possibly Slaanesh.

You have managed a suitably nasty looking gibbering mouther.

The Orc looks fantastic. I have always preferred the D&D aesthetic to the green-skins of games workshop. Although I appreciate the humour they inject into the game.

Wow that Mouther model is all kinds of freaky!!

Yeah, my reaction to it when I first saw it out of the box was pretty much "WTF is that thing supposed to be?" But out loud, and without the abbreviation. It's very Cthuluesque in many ways.

I'm personally torn on the Orcs. I know exactly what you mean about the D&D look, and in a lot of ways I like the "brown orc" look better than the green, but I've got so much history with the bright green ones that I just can't do the GW ones any other way. (They're the only one of my WHFB armies that I kept whole from my 3rd edition days.) LotR and D&D Orcs on the other hand, I'm now happy to go hard in the other direction whereas even just a few years ago I'd have painted them all green as well. Tre' Manor's Bones ones will be quite the quandry. GW-style features without being quite as exaggerated.

Don't get me wrong. After doing a 40k ork army I came to love the character and chaos of the greenskins. I just like the brown Orc for my more serious moments. Plus you have done such a good job.

Love that orc!

When it comes to fantasy Orcs, anything but green and the less bulky the better, as far as I'm concerned. With the LotR orcs being 10/10 stylistically for me, and WFB Greenskins at 1, that guy is a solid 8 or 9, and would work perfectly in LotR as a Black Guard, Feral Uruk or even Half Troll.

Where's he from?

The great stuff keeps coming Like the orc for sure, but the gibbering nightmare fuel wins the day.

That gibbering mouther is, indeed, a thing of beauty.

I really like the Orc.