So here are eight now repaired skeletons of various pedigrees, some of which you will have seen in my earlier posts.
Mending Broken Bones
From the left, the first two are plastic skeletons from Citadel's Skeleton Horde/Skeleton Army. I gave away my remaining Horde, or so I thought, earlier this year, but recently I found a few bits lingering in an old box.
The first one simply needed a new weapon arm; with his scythe, he can join my unit of two handed weapons, and the plastic skeleton with scythe is iconic.
The next chap was missing both arms and his left foot. Fortunately, I have a small collection of bases with one or two skeleton feet still attached, so I easily found a donor foot.
When mending the broken bones, I don't rely on plastic cement; I use a very fine drill bit and brass wire. It's thin enough that I can actually drill into some of the plastic bones for pinning. I gave this chap the coffin lid shield, up there with the scythe for iconic Oldhammer undead. It's far too small for an adult coffin, but sadly I'm sure there were smaller lids available.
The next skeleton is a Harlequin model who was missing both feet. I pinned two of the plastic feet from another base. Looking closely now, I realise that I should have reduced the length of the leg bones, but it's not too obvious.
The next three are identical minis. Grenadier skeletal dog handlers sculpted by Andrew Chernak. These were from an eBay job lot. Initially, I thought that they had broken weapon hands. However, on close inspection I realised they were designed to have seperate hands with weapons (spears) plugged in, the bracelet providing a fixing point. No drilling was required, I simply trimmed down the forearms on spare Skeleton Horde bits to fit the hole. The two spears were taken from my sprue pile and fitted in holes drilled through the hand, the sword is the weapon the bony hand was already holding.
The standard bearer is the most ambitious repair. The model is supposed to have a standard; he is one of the Grenadier Undead Legions of Khomar-Lolth Set (I've now got six out of the set of ten from various sources) but was missing right hand and standard. The arm is held straight upwards, meaning that none of my spare hands looked right - they would have held the standard horizontally rather than vertically (I realised later, after finding a picture of the mini completed, that the hand wrapped round the shaft, but that still doesn't help with the components I had). Fortunately, I had a spare right arm with spear. The whole of the mini's arm was removed at the shoulder and a wide pin inserted for the socket on the arm. The plastic spear was removed, and the hand drilled to take brass wire which then had brass tubing slotted over it. The top of the standard pole came from a more recent plastic spear, drilled to take the brass wire, with a plastic skull to finish it off.
The final mini in the line is the one failure. The left leg is broken at the ankle. I tried using thin card to make a greave. This, I hoped, would provide sufficient extra surface to run some superglue into the crack and hold the foot in place. Unfortunately this just didn't work. Never mind, I'll remove the card and take both feet off and pin them. In fact I've something planned already for this mini.
Painting the Skeletons
Painting was pretty straightforward, there's not a lot to say. If you want details, check out my earlier post on Ranlac's skeletons. I kept with the red and black or yellow and black livery on some of the shields; at some point I'm going to have to paint some living troops with this, simply to show where the undead and orcs are getting them from.
Basing was, again, Geek Gaming Scenics Arid Grasslands with appropriate dead tufts.
So that's another seven skeletons to add to Kemmler's horde. Of course, they are also the beginning of a nice old school undead army.
I'm collecting skeletons with hand weapons, with swords and with two handed weapons, (including scythes). These all perform slightly differently in Warlords of Erehwon*, but I can just mix them up and call them 'normal' skeletons.
Not only did I enjoy painting these, but I had a lot of fun repairing the damaged or incomplete models.
What's Next?
I'm unofficially calling this month "Deadcember"; It's just an excuse to paint more undead. I've managed to get some more of the rather nice Grenadier Fantasy Lords minis, and they'll make nice additions to my growing army.
Bodvoc has suggested a campaign, so I'm getting ready for it, I'll need more than just the skeletons and zombies from Terror of the Lichemaster though, so I guess I'll end up with quite a collection.
As I finish this group I've got several more undead minis in the Dettol and another unit, plus heroes, part painted.
Expect more undead soon.
*When I look at the army list, skeleton warriors can swap hand weapons for spears, but relatively few can have two handed weapons (or 'huge' weapons as the rules call them), so I guess it's mixed units for the bulk of the skeletons.
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