Undead Death Riders [PICS]

[Pil]

Hello fellow adventurers! For my undead army, the LPL and a Warhammer tournament in my hometown I painted up five classic undead Death Riders. "Death Riders" being the name given to skeleton cavalry in the third edition of Warhammer.

These models were sculpted between 1985 and 1987, to be replaced (mostly) in 1989 by the plastic skeleton horsemen in the "Skeleton Army" boxed set. You can see some of those plastics here:
http://leadadventureforum.com/index.php?topic=25017.0 .

I don't know how the availability of the metal Death Riders was after the release of the plastics, but I suppose most gamers went for the cheap option as these babies can be more difficult to find than normal metal skeletons from the same period. However, I managed to get my hands on a handful of these (I still have more to paint though) so I set about painting some of the nicer models up as Blood Knights for my Vampire Counts army (the plastic skeleton horsemen were pressed into service as Black Knights).

Anyway, on to the models!




Let's start of with The Red Count. I really like the knightly look of this rider so I gave him a steed to match. The blood knights are basically vampires and I think this model carries a bit of that royal air. Of course the equipment is all wrong without a lance and shield but I didn't exactly feel like cutting up these hard to get and beautiful models.



Next up is this model. It's sold as a skeleton rider with a mace (and often painted as such). But the mace is in fact a head with the spine still attached. A very nice detail which I gladly took advantage of by bending the spine as if the head was used as a flail. Or as a music instrument, because I used him as a musician in my games. The rotting horse is one of the older steeds and shows a lot more 'damage' than most other horses. I quite like the pose of the horse but there is one (not depicted here) that looks really pathetic dragging it's rotten legs over the ground. It has a great "Black Beauty" (the animated film) feel about it.


This rider was originally (or unoriginally) called "No-skin". Well, we can see that. The horse doesn't look very rotten at all (no damage whatsoever) so I tried to simulate some rotting patches with Vallejo Black wash, which dried up way too opaque, as did the Vallejo Skin wash on the green barding. Still a nice pose for a horse though.



I really love the way this skeleton horse looks, with one eye, an old piece of barding and stumbling about. Just the clumsy look I like. I had more horses than riders so a normal skeleton with an axe was pressed into service as a rider. He performs well, and also carries a shield, which makes him slightly more WYSIWYG than the Red Count.

I tried to select as many skeletons as possible with the right equipment (heavy armour, shield), but hardly any of the old models have spears (let alone lances) and a lot of them don't carry shields either. Apart from that there is a wide range of riders mixed together including wraiths, zombies, liches and skeletons. All of them were skeleton cavalry so if I throw all my models together it looks a bit like a rag-tag bunch.

Fortunately, among the rag-tag models are some which work better as characters and "Bloodharvest" served as my Kastellan (Blood Knight champion):


Another beautiful and characterful sculpt on a good looking skeleton horse, a worthy champion!

I took some group pictures (like I said, they were painted for the LPL as well), and here they are:







In the end I put the group picture together with some face close-ups (of the horses for a change) and made it this entry which you may have spotted in round 4 of the LPL:

[phreedh]

They make a nice unit, Pil! I have one metal rider/horse. Would like more. =D Agree that the blotchy wash application wasn't optimal on that horse, he looks a bit spotted. More than good enough for gaming though! =) Really like the eyes on the leader type fella. Was wondering why the hell you painted that mace red, until I read your post! =D Fun model!

May I gripe a bit about your rust, btw? Try having it "pool" in the recesses, especially on parts of the chain mail. Also, break it up with some metal here and there. Looks a bit unconvincing as it is now, but see comment above re spotted horse. Fine additions to the army, all of them!

[Pil]

Thanks! I noticed the rust doesn't work extremely well on more armoured models but on the tabletop they blend in nicely with the rest of the army. The rust isn't really meant to look like 'wet' rust which has pooled and is quite bright in the recesses, though of course then I probably should have painted it darker. I'm not going for pools of rust though simply because I would have to change my entire approach to painting it. As it is it's a sort of wash/glaze of orange ink over drybrushed bone colour (so dark in the recesses and bright orange on the higher areas) and that wouldn't look good when pooled (the orange ink, I mean).

There is some metal colour brushed over the rust here and there, this does break up the look but might not always be very clear in the pictures (or in real life for that matter  ).

Anyway, thanks for thinking along! I guess most of my models work better in large numbers, which is of course what I aim for in the end. I think I can safely say that your undead are getting much better paintjobs and I'm always looking forward to more

[Doomhippie]

These are wonderful models. I love this old school feeling about them and I actually find the rust just nice the way it is - as all these models have a rather rotten look about them I can imagine their armour to be al lot mor rusty than ususally.

As to the "spotted horse": Just cover the spots up a bit with very watery color. The same holds true for the barding. It should look okay then.

But overall lovely models. I'm a bit envious.

[Blackwolf]

Lovely stuff Pil,very subtle,I like them alot

[phreedh]

I think I can safely say that your undead are getting much better paintjobs and I'm always looking forward to more

There's a big difference my friend... I have about 15 undead models painted up. You have a metric fuck-ton, AND they all look GOOD.  As doomhippie says, I'm envious!

[redzed]

classic

[Bloodysword]

These riders and your Nightmare Legion are so cool.  I've always loved those figures.  I bet that they look amazing arrayed for battle.  I can't wait to see the rest of the riders when they are completed.

[Damien]

Man, I didn't know these guys even existed! They look great, I especially like the first one holding a mace. I really like the rust and think they are painted really well.


Damien

[Bloodysword]

I love the shields as well!

[phreedh]

I love the shields as well!

Yup, all of Pil's undead have awesome shields! I hate painting shields, as I'm crap with freehand (and unimaginative).

[Pil]

Thanks all! I'm glad you like the shields! I decided to stick with the method of wet-blending (sort of) the shield designs on the shields. It's a bit of a hit and miss technique but it's reasonably fast and the shields that work well look good (like the shield of "No-skin") and the lesser designs, well, they're good enough on the table anyway.