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Author Topic: A Cry From The Crypt (Undead Army) [PICS] [PIC HVY]  (Read 14924 times)

Offline Pil

  • Scatterbrained Genius
  • Posts: 2006
  • One shot at glory
A Cry From The Crypt (Undead Army) [PICS] [PIC HVY]
« on: September 20, 2011, 01:17:55 PM »
Hello all! You may remember my undead from previous threads such as:

Classic Undead army [PICS]: http://leadadventureforum.com/index.php?topic=23652.0 or http://frothersunite.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=29603
Vintage Citadel Undead Army [PICS] [PIC HVY]: http://leadadventureforum.com/index.php?topic=25017.0 or http://frothersunite.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=30516
Undead Death Riders [PICS]: http://leadadventureforum.com/index.php?topic=28351.0 or http://frothersunite.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=32545
The Nightmare Legion Revisited [PICS]: http://leadadventureforum.com/index.php?topic=27920.0 or http://frothersunite.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=32311
Mikael Jacsen and his Grave Guard [PICS]: http://leadadventureforum.com/index.php?topic=28771.0
Fundead Festival [PICS]: http://frothersunite.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=32143&highlight=pics

Well, I decided it was high time for new complete army shots and an update to everything I've added in the past months. Let's start off big with a poor shot of the entire army:


From left to right you can see in the front row:
Fundead Festival: a skeleton band with drunk party skeletons.
A block of 40 skeletons.
Josef Ochmann the liche.
A block of 22 horsemen.
A Nightmare Legion of 108 strong!
Finrum the liche.
The ride of the Chariots: 7 undead chariots.
Morbius the liche.
Another block of 40 skeletons.
A giant scorpion.

In the back row, from left to right:
Five Death Riders.
A block of 33 archers.
Krell, Lord of the Undead in front of the archers.
Pythius, Tom Meiers Zombie Dragon.
The Colossus of Argil, an undead giant.
Four undead ogres in front of the giant.
A Wight King in front of the ogres.
Two skullchucker with two wight kings in front of them.
Kaladrax, the Red Dire Drake of Blood Peak.
A block of 58 skeletons in front of Kaladrax.
Perrius the Liche next to Kaladrax.
Three Skullchuckers.
Grim Reapers (24) in front of the Skullchuckers.
A wraith.
And finally a unit of five horse archers.


Well, I finally did it! I set out to create a 100-strong Nightmare Legion and here it is in all its glory! There are 99 troopers, two fully painted command groups and a skeleton commander. They are arranged here in ten ranks of eleven, with an incomplete rear rank. In game they can be used either as armoured spearmen or as Tomb Guard with halberds.


Twenty-two horsemen, mostly old plastics. The only new addition is the musician with metal arms from the bulky 1998 skeletons. It's not perfect but it'll do.


The first block of 40 skeletons and Josef the Liche. Some close-ups of more notable models will follow later but the bulk of this unit is made from the old plastics.


A merry band of skeleton musicians and some drunken party skeletons, twelve models in total. Originally painted as a 'civilian' entry for the Lead Painters League, they can be merged into any block of skeletons bur for the picture I arranged them together with some other skeletons to bring the unit to 20.


Five undead Death Riders, lovely models though the horses may be a bit small. I should be adding more but I have so many horsemen already I doubt they'll be needed.


A block of 33 archers in three ranks of eleven. This is a mix of metal archers, metal skeletons with arquebuses and plastic archers. The metal archers are my definite favourite.



Pythius the Zombie Dragon by Tom Meier. His base got an update. My plan is to give this treatment to all bases in the army but I'm not in a hurry. I think this is these pictures show my paint job on him best so far.


The ride of the chariots! Not the best picture but individual shots are featured below. I added four oldschool plastic chariots to the three chariots I had already painted. All seven chariots received upgraded bases.


For these plastics I had to choose between plain plastic crew or 'sacrificing' metal models to ride the chariots. I decided to use plastic drivers posed like they were originally intended. I added thread to the models to make the drivers a lot more convincing. With the plastic drivers so prominent I decided it would be a waste to hide a metal model behind it so I made the other crewman from plastic too.


The existing chariots don't all have such a nice driver but some metal riders in the front make for a nice mix.


This chariot got a musician borrowed from the Nightmare Legion. It also got a metal chariot horse from the metal chariot as I had some to spare.


Ironically my only metal chariot painted has plastic horses, but don't worry, I have three more to paint up and they will get the original horses.


I think the new basing works wonders, especially on larger bases like these. The tufts and flowers enhance the fertile ground look I was after.


The problem with using one metal horse per chariot is that they're a lot smaller than the plastic ones. Causing this chariot to bounce up and down. Luckily the driver can manage it.


This is another plastic chariot about as plain as they come. I added an archer in the back to stress their ability to shoot as well as fight (and so I don't forget this myself).


A big block of 58 skeletons, mostly plastics. You can see the more recently painted models also have fancy bases.


A block of 24 Grim Reapers. They can be used as Grave Guard in Vampire Counts armies and in Tomb King armies they will most likely be stuck in with the skeletons. More detailed pics of all these models will be show later :)


My final block of 40 skeletons, led by my conversion of Mikael Jacsen. This unit has a bit more random models thrown in which will be shown later.


A battery of five Skullchuckers. I can only ever field a maximum of four in the current rules but I had five so I painted them all. The three in the front all had thread added to them though it's only apparent on the one in the middle. I was lacking some crew and skull piles so the one in the middle has one plastic crewman and the one on the right has converted Grenadier bolt thrower crew.



Kaladrax, the Red Dire Drake of Blood Peak used to terrorise the farmlands between the Upper Reik and the River Sol. When his time came to die he flew to the plain of bones where he was later resurrected by Perrius to serve in the army of Finrum.


Kaladrax and Perrius.


Kaladrax is one of the more recent centrepieces in this army and the largest model in the entire army. The model is made by Reaper and he's huge. I mounted him on an Arachnarok base (10cm wide and 15cm deep) which I think makes him the same base size as the new plastic zombie dragon/terrorgheist. Because it's basically a skeleton I tried to bring as much colour as possible into this model. I decided it was a red dragon in life and gave his spines a red tint. I painted the nails and the horns dark to contrast with the bone.


I wanted the wing membranes to have a light colour so to add some colour to it I painted a mottled reddish colour around the fingers. I touched up the decaying edged of the membranes with black paint to make them look rotten. Just look at that wing span!

The time has come to look at some models more closely, starting with Perrius the Liche.


Perrius is an old pre-slotta skeleton by Alan Perry. I really love his stance and look. He's rather small but I don't mind.


An old Citadel Grim Reaper. The end bit of his scythe is missing but I left it as is. He's a rather crude sculpt and I believe Ral Partha did a much nicer version that looked very similar. I don't have that model so I'm not sure. He's quite nice as a character though.


A marauder skeleton champion, check out those goat legs!


A pre-slotta skeleton, I love the helmet.


A Ral Partha undead ninja. I've had this model for years and even made rules for an undead assassin based on this model. Now he has a far less glamorous job of just mixing in with the rest of the bunch, but I still like this model.


A Ral Partha skeleton. I have a bunch of these (more will follow) and some are very nice, while other are less so. They are all rather different in proportions than the GW ones but in a horde no-one cares.


Two Denizen Miniatures skeletonsnext to a GW one for comparison. The Denizen models are rather nice and well detailed, but my main problem is that they look like humans with skull faces. You can even see a very clear muscle definition below the chainmail. And it's not like these models are conversions of existing models either. Anyway, I got these in a lot with a lot of other pre-slotta models where most of them had had their weapons cut off. I gave them all replacement weapons from the plastic skeletons. In this case the skeleton on the left has a scimitar.


An idea was once proposed by kingofdaveness to paint your worst (accidental) eBay purchase. Not considering any broken bits these are definately mine. Six Prince August skeletons. Apart from suffering from the "human body with a skull" syndrome they are also incredibly flat. I trimmed the bases down, mounted them on bases and painted them along with my Nightmare legion, but nothing could save these. Actually, seeing them together they look alright but they don't fit in with the rest so they will always remain rear- rankers. For those interested, I bought them in a lot with a Rogue Trader Space Marine scout I was after (the one with the shuriken catapult I believe), if I'm not mistaken.


My oldest model (I think) a Ral Partha skeleton from the 'missing weapons lot'. He's dated 1979, he's tiny and the small plastic sword looks huge on him.


A somewhat miscast pre-slotta citadel skeleton whse back is more interesting than its front.


Another slim Ral Partha skeleton.


A pre-slotta Citadel skeleton from the 'missing weapons lot', luckily the plastic scythe is a good replacement for the metal one he used to carry.


Some of the older Citadel pre-slotta skeletons which are too small to pass for human but they make ok children, or small people. The one in green in the middle was missing a hand and a weapon but I didn't bother fixing it as I had no proper alternatives. Note the two dwarf skeletons.


Three more Ral Parha skeletons, the left one, as you may have guessed, is from the 'missing weapons lot'.


Some more random models. I can't identify the one on the left but it's rather poor. The three in the middle are Denizen and the one on the right is the sole surviving Grenadier Bolt Thrower crewman after the rest got to work on the Skullchucker.


More random models: a huge skeleton from Alternative armies, one of the finer Ral Partha skeletons, a skeleton by Metal Magic, now sold by Mega Miniatures and finally an Essex skeleton standard bearer by Bob Olley. I generally love Bob Olley sculpts but this one is definitely too rough and he was horrible to paint.


That's more like it! Four lovely old Citadel skeletons.


Though the pre-slotta range has a selection of nice models I really like the later slotta skeletons. A commander and half a command group pictured here.


Another lovely pre-slotta model from the missing weapons crowd. The scythe looks good on him but I couldn't get all the thick paint from his skull and unfortunately, it shows.


A shot of the Boney Bomber.


A shot of my Mikael Jacsen conversion.


A lovely skeleton command group, and also the start of my Grim Reaper pictures.








All my painted Grim Reapers, or Grave Guard. With the command group they form a nice unit of 24 (though bigger is better nowadays). I still have a bunch of unpainted lead skeletons to add (not too mention a lot of plastics) so a new installment of this army is a must for the future.


Last but not least, some fresh pictures of the Colossus of Argil, with an updated base.



...and since I love Pythius so much he gets to be in the last picture too.

Well, that's it. I hope you enjoyed this update and if you're yearning for more don't forget to visit these links (but please reply in this thread):

Classic Undead army [PICS]:
http://leadadventureforum.com/index.php?topic=23652.0 or http://frothersunite.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=29603
My first pictures of my army, with details on Pytius, Finrum and the Nightmare legion. This thread also contains closeups of some banners.

Vintage Citadel Undead Army [PICS] [PIC HVY]:
http://leadadventureforum.com/index.php?topic=25017.0 or http://frothersunite.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=30516
The second wave of pictures with Undead Ogres, the giant scorpion and a lot of 90s characters. This thread also contains details on the Colossus of Argil.

Undead Death Riders [PICS]:
http://leadadventureforum.com/index.php?topic=28351.0 or http://frothersunite.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=32545
More pictures and background information on the old undead Death Riders.

The Nightmare Legion Revisited [PICS]:
http://leadadventureforum.com/index.php?topic=27920.0 or http://frothersunite.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=32311
More details on my steadily growing Nightmare legion with more pictures.

Mikael Jacsen and his Grave Guard [PICS]:
http://leadadventureforum.com/index.php?topic=28771.0
Details on my Mikael Jacsen conversion and more pictures of my Grim Reapers/Grave Guard.

Fundead Festival [PICS]:
http://frothersunite.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=32143&highlight=pics
The Fundead Festival diorama as entered in the Lead Painters League.
Let me hear the battle cry
Calling on the wind
Let me see the banners fly
Before the storm begins

Offline Belgian

  • Scatterbrained Genius
  • Posts: 2680
    • Wargame News and Terrain
Re: A Cry From The Crypt (Undead Army) [PICS] [PIC HVY]
« Reply #1 on: September 20, 2011, 01:20:25 PM »
WOW skeleton overdose! Impressing army especially the legion and dragon!  :-*
Wargame News and Terrain Blog, daily updated with the latest wargame news

Interested click https://wargameterrain.blogspot.com/

Offline Drunkendwarf

  • Mad Scientist
  • Posts: 540
Re: A Cry From The Crypt (Undead Army) [PICS] [PIC HVY]
« Reply #2 on: September 20, 2011, 01:21:12 PM »
Impressive!!

DJ

Offline Doomhippie

  • Scatterbrained Genius
  • Posts: 2688
Re: A Cry From The Crypt (Undead Army) [PICS] [PIC HVY]
« Reply #3 on: September 20, 2011, 02:22:57 PM »
 :o
I remember seeing some of those models before but WOW! that's impressive! I love your combination of plastics and preslotta minis. And your painting style gives them the real army-like feeling, all rotten and rusty. And that lich ist supercool, it looks like it has a German accent when talking....  ;)
Roky Erickson flies my spaceship!

Offline Mason

  • Elder God
  • Posts: 21222
  • Eternal Butterfly!
    • Blind Beggar Miniatures
Re: A Cry From The Crypt (Undead Army) [PICS] [PIC HVY]
« Reply #4 on: September 20, 2011, 02:30:27 PM »
WOW!!!
 :o :o :o
Thats a lot of bones!


Awesome work there, especially liking all the unusual types, bovine heads, preslotta etc.
I also love the Legion, my all time favourite Undead regiment.

Pil. How long have you been working on this project?

Seeing all those old school skellies is fantastic, must resist urge to buy some....




« Last Edit: September 21, 2011, 09:03:54 AM by Mason »

Offline Hybrid

  • Assistant
  • Posts: 29
Re: A Cry From The Crypt (Undead Army) [PICS] [PIC HVY]
« Reply #5 on: September 20, 2011, 02:37:27 PM »
Wow, just WOW  :o

Beautiful  :-*

Offline Pil

  • Scatterbrained Genius
  • Posts: 2006
  • One shot at glory
Re: A Cry From The Crypt (Undead Army) [PICS] [PIC HVY]
« Reply #6 on: September 20, 2011, 02:38:31 PM »
Thanks all!

:o
I remember seeing some of those models before but WOW! that's impressive! I love your combination of plastics and preslotta minis. And your painting style gives them the real army-like feeling, all rotten and rusty. And that lich ist supercool, it looks like it has a German accent when talking....  ;)

Hehe, I never thought of it but now that you mention it I can imagine an evil accent from Ze Leeche.

Pil. How long have you been working on this project?

I didn't really think of it when I took the pictures, but I may have started the Monday after I came back from a holiday last year, on the 20th September 2010, so exactly a year ago. Though I could be a few days off ;). I know I started with the Nightmare legion which set the colour scheme for the bone and armour.

Offline DeafNala

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Re: A Cry From The Crypt (Undead Army) [PICS] [PIC HVY]
« Reply #7 on: September 20, 2011, 02:46:58 PM »
Appropriately enough, that is JUST FANTASTIC! There is SO MUCH OH-SO-COOL stuff, it is going to take some enjoyably spent time to absorb it all...WONDERFULLY WELL DONE!
I'd NEVER join a club that would have me as a member.  G.Marx

Offline Finarfin

  • Bookworm
  • Posts: 74
    • FINiatures
Re: A Cry From The Crypt (Undead Army) [PICS] [PIC HVY]
« Reply #8 on: September 20, 2011, 03:02:43 PM »
Nice! Wonderful army. I especially like this guy:

Looks like a medieval version of Red Skull... That's how a villain should be depicted. Pure supremacy...

Much better than the new industrial looking skeletons of GW and a gorgeous paintjob!
« Last Edit: September 20, 2011, 03:21:45 PM by Finarfin »

Offline mweaver

  • Scatterbrained Genius
  • Posts: 2684
Re: A Cry From The Crypt (Undead Army) [PICS] [PIC HVY]
« Reply #9 on: September 20, 2011, 04:37:44 PM »
Zounds!  I am impressed both by the quantity of bones in your army, and the quality of the painting.  That is one seriously impressive force!

Have you considered adding the old Minifigs Valley of the Four Winds bell (giant bell being dragged along by a mob of skellies in harness)?  It came back into production again a year or so back.

Thanks for sharing!

-Michael

Offline Prof.Witchheimer

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Re: A Cry From The Crypt (Undead Army) [PICS] [PIC HVY]
« Reply #10 on: September 20, 2011, 06:39:03 PM »
Pil, that is one of the most impressive threads of the last weeks. This bones force is in all its glory is phantastic. Congrats to this very special collection!

Offline Diakon

  • Mad Scientist
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Re: A Cry From The Crypt (Undead Army) [PICS] [PIC HVY]
« Reply #11 on: September 20, 2011, 07:01:39 PM »
Lovely army mate. Some fantastic models there. Cheers.

Offline Pil

  • Scatterbrained Genius
  • Posts: 2006
  • One shot at glory
Re: A Cry From The Crypt (Undead Army) [PICS] [PIC HVY]
« Reply #12 on: September 21, 2011, 08:22:17 AM »
Nice! Wonderful army. I especially like this guy:

Looks like a medieval version of Red Skull... That's how a villain should be depicted. Pure supremacy...

Much better than the new industrial looking skeletons of GW and a gorgeous paintjob!

I totally agree! I got him in a lot of pre-slotta models and as I didn't know the models too well it's always a bit of a guess if it's any good. When there is a model like this among them though I'm sure it was money well spent! 8)

Zounds!  I am impressed both by the quantity of bones in your army, and the quality of the painting.  That is one seriously impressive force!

Have you considered adding the old Minifigs Valley of the Four Winds bell (giant bell being dragged along by a mob of skellies in harness)?  It came back into production again a year or so back.

Thanks for sharing!

-Michael

Thanks! I wasn't aware of the old minifigs. The bell looks rather nice but I believe it's now OOP? Anyway, it's a very atmospheric piece and I'd love to see some better pictures of it. 8)

Prof. and Diakon, thanks!

Offline Mason

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Re: A Cry From The Crypt (Undead Army) [PICS] [PIC HVY]
« Reply #13 on: September 21, 2011, 09:09:07 AM »

I didn't really think of it when I took the pictures, but I may have started the Monday after I came back from a holiday last year, on the 20th September 2010, so exactly a year ago. Though I could be a few days off ;). I know I started with the Nightmare legion which set the colour scheme for the bone and armour.

A year!  :o :o :o

Pil, You really do live up to your tag of SPEEDPAINTER!

Seriously impressed!


Offline Pil

  • Scatterbrained Genius
  • Posts: 2006
  • One shot at glory
Re: A Cry From The Crypt (Undead Army) [PICS] [PIC HVY]
« Reply #14 on: September 21, 2011, 09:50:11 AM »
Truth be told, I have been mostly unemployed for the past year and these skeletons paint up quite fast. My painting productivity drops rapidly when I have a job ;)

 

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