Beefcakes Undead Project.

[beefcake]

Righto, I've finished the chariots. I'm pretty happy with them. Very limited colour palette due to everything being bone coloured, I made the yoke to them grey and the scythed wheels rusted to add some variation. The bases have been done in limestone again but it kind of blends with the bone colour but I'm going to base everything this way so went with it anyway.
Originally these had riders with lance arms on them but I've set them aside to go on some skeletal horses I've ordered from a tomb kings box so I can get 4 horsemen out of this lot as well at the expense of 4 infantry from the infantry box I bought from Slayer (thanks mate).
After this I have some Wights on my workbench, I have 5 of the 8 from the time period I'm looking for so will need to get the other 3 at some point in time. I have 2 other different versions of wights as well, 1 from and earlier set, 1 from a later set. They should fit together nicely if I paint them with a similar theme. I think I'll go for rusted iron with a touch of bronze in there too.

20240717_181146 by Kieran Me, on Flickr
20240717_181159 by Kieran Me, on Flickr
20240717_181210 by Kieran Me, on Flickr
20240717_181219 by Kieran Me, on Flickr
20240717_181228 by Kieran Me, on Flickr

[Ragsta]

They look great, I do love those bases. I remember buying a box with 1 chariot and 3 cavalry I think? Also 8 skellies, those were good days.

Are you keeping your Undead a purist force or any non GW stuff? Wargames Atlantic/ Warlord have plastic skellies that could ‘flesh’ your numbers out  (so sorry)

[Tactalvanic]

great stuff

I remember being seriously ridiculed back in the day when I turned up at the local GW store with a small skelly army based on that plastic horde set.

For doing them in similar to my mind bone and brown limited colouring in - eg like real dug up dirty bones as possible. Actually mainly I think based on a GW article actually of the time from the Dwarf.

They looked good. not yours good, but good.

Reason for ridicule "they are supposed to be bones like, black and white."... - the other in attendance nodded in the expected accord to the staffers better knowledge.

I never bothered going back again. Funny the details you remember of people being stupid.

Your bases are really suited to them to, love the bare barren ground suggestive of rocky desert, devoid of anything living.

[snitcythedog]

Wonderful work Beefcake!  Nice to see the old bones with some color. 

TI remember buying a box with 1 chariot and 3 cavalry I think?

Back in my day we use to wish we had skeletal cavalry.  We had to make do with a box of 24 plastic skeletons and some twigs!   Of course at the time they were only $20.00 for the box so maybe not as bad as I remember.  We still had to walk up hill to and from school in the snow.  

[beefcake]

They look great, I do love those bases. I remember buying a box with 1 chariot and 3 cavalry I think? Also 8 skellies, those were good days.

Are you keeping your Undead a purist force or any non GW stuff? Wargames Atlantic/ Warlord have plastic skellies that could ‘flesh’ your numbers out  (so sorry)

Yes, I'm going purist. I'm aiming to have at least 1 of each model from the 3rd ed army book which is the one I bought a long time ago. I have most of them maybe. I need 1 specific metal zombie and 1 specific metal zombie standard bearer, all the metal skeleton command 3 other wights and all the metal skeleton cavalry. That's about it though. I have all the special characters (although there weas no Krell or Settra at that time), I might need a mounted necromancer too I think. Oh and the skull chucker which I have parts of but not complete.

great stuff

I remember being seriously ridiculed back in the day when I turned up at the local GW store with a small skelly army based on that plastic horde set.

For doing them in similar to my mind bone and brown limited colouring in - eg like real dug up dirty bones as possible. Actually mainly I think based on a GW article actually of the time from the Dwarf.

They looked good. not yours good, but good.

Reason for ridicule "they are supposed to be bones like, black and white."... - the other in attendance nodded in the expected accord to the staffers better knowledge.

I never bothered going back again. Funny the details you remember of people being stupid.

Your bases are really suited to them to, love the bare barren ground suggestive of rocky desert, devoid of anything living.

Well that's pretty crap. glad it didn't put you off the hobby for good though.
It was either rocky/sandy bases or boggy bases. And seeing as I have all the limestone I could want to make rocky bases it was the easy, cheap option. Thanks

Wonderful work Beefcake!  Nice to see the old bones with some color.  Back in my day we use to wish we had skeletal cavalry.  We had to make do with a box of 24 plastic skeletons and some twigs!   Of course at the time they were only $20.00 for the box so maybe not as bad as I remember.  We still had to walk up hill to and from school in the snow.  

  sounds like you could have had them riding broomsticks.

[Utgaard]

They look great!

[beefcake]

Thanks!
Here are the next 3. 3 Wights of varying eras.
The leftmost wight is the era I like the most, although this is one of my least faourite sculpts.
The middle one I bought originally in a set of 3 with a necromancer (next on the painting table after the wights) and a vampire count. The wight I ended up selling a while back so was happy to find a replacement at some stage. The rightmost one I bought in a job lot, I don't particularly like the sculpt too much, he's showing a bit too much leg for my liking, but you can't call me a prude for that because page 1 shows evidence of me painting up a bunch of naked skeletons. I also had to replace his weapon with a plastic beastman axe as the original broke off.
The armor I painted extremely rusted as I figure they've been in their barrows for quite a long time. The weapons I painted green as they are wight blades so I figure they have some magical ability to keep them dangerous, unless the danger from wight blades is tetanus. Never thought about that.
I picked out the "living" bones with a bit more brightness to give them a difference to the bone decorations.
The next three should be ready for pictures in a couple of days. Then the necromancer followed by probably some mummies.
20240720_104109 by Kieran Me, on Flickr
20240720_104133 by Kieran Me, on Flickr

[majorsmith]

Great project! Undead are my favourite faction for fantasy, I remember seeing a vast army of minifigs in Nottingham model shop as a kid and I think that’s stayed with me all these years, your bases for the chariot are great! So much better! Love the wights too! I have most of them

[beefcake]

Thanks. These 90's wight sculpts are some of the best I think
Here are the next wights.
These my 3 favourite of the wights. Especially the wight with the large axe. I wonder if he was an early version of Krell, or at least I imagine a lot of people would have used him as a proxy. Probably much like the flail mummy (which is on the list after the necromancer) was used as a proxy settra in the early version, before he was mounted on a chariot. Although as I have 2 of that sculpt I might see if I can get a different chariot sculpt to mount him on.
The wights I have done rusty as said previously, but I also did them with bronze parts too with the green copper oxide patina covering them
Anyway, here are the pictures.
20240725_195637 by Kieran Me, on Flickr
20240725_195658 by Kieran Me, on Flickr

[boneio]

- sees Beefcake
- sees undead
- opens topic
- see chariots   
- sees (agreed, the best ever) wights 
- is happy Boneio 

Lovely, lovely work. Thanks for sharing!

----

As an aside the undead army in White Dwarf 211 is what got me into this hobby way back when, with all the gothic contrasting black-and-white bones, so it was disappointing and oddly ironic to read the other poster getting stick for not painting that way. I love that style. I also love the style on display here. All undead are valid 

[Tactalvanic]

Lovely 90s stuff. Classics nicely coloured in.

[Basementboy]

Love them- really fantastic work

[Elbows]

Yeah, that's some tasty work there, Beef.

[beefcake]

Thanks all.
I'll have to see if I have 211 (or more liekly if my prother does as I mostly read his before buying my own).
I might need to get some more of these wights. Hopefully broken ones so I can do some conversions. I'd love to use the spear wight as a battle standard bearer.
Just need to take some photos of the necromancer. I'm pretty happy with the result. I've used my vampiric skin paints on it which I'll do for the majority of my flesh tones I think. I reckon the skin tones will work well for the ghouls too. Thinking back I wonder why GW went for green with them, a pale white would look suitably creepy, then again they did go for fun colours and they looked good.

[beefcake]

Here is the first of the characters, aside from the fact that the wights could be characters as well.
The necromancer. This is one of my first minis I bought for my undead army back when I was 12, 13 or whatever age I was. 30 years ago at least anyway. I originally chopped his base tab off so I could stick him on the back of my plagues cart (which I still have and will probably rebase for the purposes of this). I stripped it a few years back and now repainted. As I said previously, I went for a vampiric skin flesh tone from Reaper minis (one of their painting triads) and it worked really well. Originally I was going to paint the ruff white, but I thought the red would work better with the other colours used. I was lazy and used the rust red that the wights are painted in. The fact that it ties them togetherwith the colour scheme was what pushed my laziness with it. The staff I origanlly painted bronze but it was going to be too bright for this guy. I also made the eyes black with white dots for light reflection. Not sure that came off too well.
He will be a lesser necromancer for the army, level 1 I imagine. The great thing about doing this is I can also use them in my DnD campaigns with my kids.
I'm finding myself being a lot more patient with my painting lately (not so much the skeletons), maybe I want to do a better job on these than usual.
20240727_171123 by Kieran Me, on Flickr
20240727_171133 by Kieran Me, on Flickr
As I'm no longer on holiday my painting is sure to slow down. Next update will probably be 10 weeks away, (hopefully not)