But this week I hit a big mile-stone with the completion of the two Hordes of Skeleton Infantry / Spears. I say completion, but I may go back and add a tree to each base yet. Otherwise these chaps are done and dusted and ready to take the field along with their leader, Famine.
Famine as we know from our source material comes with his scales and I've done my best to model these but to be perfectly honest I'm not that happy with the outcome which is why he is shuffled off to one side in the pictures. However he does round out the four Horsemen and leads a big chunk of the battle-line into combat.
These models are primarily intended to be used as the Spear variety but could be fielded as the cheaper generic Skeleton Warrior if required. But with the buff to Phalanx this version and the fact that even the Spearmen Horde is cheap and gives an extra Unit Strength and extra attacks means they look to be a good investment. Skeletons also received a couple of extra buffs with the speed increase to 5 inches and the fact you can measure to charge from any point on the base frontage meaning they can project a threat over a much larger area than previously. These chaps are built to be a damage sponge and if backed up with some healing or life drain along with life leech (2) they should be sticking around for a while.
For the models themselves these are the Mantic Skeletons and for £30 you get 40 plastic skeletons with a good range of options and a decent variety of poses available. I actually rather enjoyed painting them up as they have plenty of character and despite spending so long painting the same kit I never got tired of them.
For the base I made up my own crackle paste by mixing some paint into a Deco Art crackle product, this gives the same affect as the Games Workshop technical paint but at a fraction of the cost. The original plan was to apply a layer of Polyfilla & paint mix to the base of each rank as they went in and then the crackle paint but as I would have needed to wait to each rank to fully dry before doing the next one I gave that up as a waste of time. That means that the paste has sunk a little around the base of each mini but that is not obvious when you take a step back.
As well as working on getting the Skeletons based I also speed painted some Mantic Scarecrow models to use as Ghouls / Zombies. I had loads of these left over from when I got sent the wrong stuff twice for the Vanguard Kickstarter and wanted to add some extra options to the wet side of the army. So this week I painted up 36 of the little fellas which gave me the models for the six troops I wanted.
Most likely these will see action as troops to be used as chaff as they are cheap and fast, not having shambling.
They could also be fielded as a Horde and/or two Troops added to the back of my Zombie Regiments to make a Zombie Legion, -/28 is a lot of nerve to chew through even at defence 2+.
Considering this only took 1 week to put the whole lot together I am very pleased with the results.
As I had the models out I took a quick group shot, this is 3 foot of infantry and chaff for only 1300 points, not a bad amount I would say.
So it feels like I am into the home straight with the Undead now as the two Skeleton Hordes represented a very large percentage of the models I had left to paint, next up are the Barrow Wights who hopefully will help to tie the army theme together, so no pressure on them then!
Certainly a lot of bodies there.
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