Kings of War - Mantic Wraiths

I recently painted a wraith for an undead warband for Vanguard and I liked the paint scheme so much I decided to do some more.  I have a set of two 500 point armies for teaching Kings of War, though it was built back in the days of first edition and was based on the Morgoth's Revenge boxed set.  To work in 2nd Edition it needs a bit of re jigging (an ongoing process that really deserves a box of it's own), and one change was the troop of wraiths.  Troops are now 10 minis rather than either 10 or 5, and the boxed set only had five of them.  When I finally tracked them down I was surprised to find that of the five I had only painted one!

Looking at what I had already painted a while ago I realized I wouldn't reliably be able to match the paint scheme (and I prefered the new wraith) so I moved the earlier wraith to the Vanguard warband, and painted up five new ones to go with the latest paint job.  If you're interested, the one I painted for Vanguard is the one on the left with the two handed sword.  Coincidentally the same pose as the older one that is now part of the Vanguard warband.

Six Mantic Wraiths

I'm happy to use just six wraiths to represent a troop of ten; the unit footprint is correct, and I've added some additional interest with a couple of gravestones.  The small one at the front (which marks the unit's centre point) is from the Mantic skeleton sprue; the larger one at the back is from the Renedra gravestones set, an excellent source of stuff for Undead bases.  I'm not too happy with the veining I tried on the marble, it looks more like biro graffiti, at least it's at the back of the unit and one day I'll go over it again and make it look more natural.

The wraiths were pretty easy to paint.  A white undercoat followed by VGC Bonewhite for the bones, followed by VGC Bright Bronze for the metal armour and similar.  Anything iron I painted in VGC Chainmail.  The metal was given a wash of black ink and the bones and iron a wash of AP Strongtone, then the robes were repainted white.  Once all this was done, the robes and armour were given a wash of VGC Green Ink, with touches of Dark Green ink in the deeper folds.  This ink nicely dulls the bronze and gives a feel of age.  As this is a bit of a special unit, at least in a small army, I added a few extra highlights to the bone and some of the weapons.  I'm really pleased with the effect, they almost glow.

The unit is based on a Warbases movement tray.  I've had these a while and I think I had them custom made (Warbases are excellent at that).  I got them originally for my elves, a long neglected project, and they have eight rather than ten holes that fit the circular base on the bottom of a Mantic mini.  The holes are offset as well, giving a rather irregular look.  I just filled in a couple of the holes since there were only six wraiths.

Once again I have used Luke's APS' basing scatter; this is the Arid Grasslands mix, as opposed to the Patchy Plains I used on the handgunners, which I think looks good for undead.  I haven't added any tufts (yet), but might try a few of the drier looking ones.

I've also been playing around with a new photo booth/light box thingy (a nice birthday pressie) and with editing the photos a bit.  I hope you can see an improvement.  I'm even going through some past photos on here and either replacing them or at least editing them to give (hopefully) better results.  So it might be worth revisiting past favourites (or not).  Please let me know if you think things have improved.