Hobby Update: More Misc. Undead

In addition to the Undead Adventurers, I hobbied on a number of other undead over the last year. I already have about 4k of Undead for Kings of War, and with very little hobby space still over the summer, I just wanted to continue hobbying on random stuff and small groups.

First up in the update here are some necromancers. Undead don't tend to raise themselves in most settings after all! One is from the GW Mortis Engine kit. I liked his look but he doesn't really fit neatly on an infantry base so I used some pink foam wall insulation to carve out a little roughly-hewn perch for him. I opted not to add any brickwork to it to make it look more privative. I really like the blindfold and the dangling keys, and I think he'll make a fun boss necromancer guy in a Dungeons and Dragons game some day.

The other two minis are WhizKids Pathfinder minis I picked up from a FLGS while running errands early in the summer. I like many of these style minis (both the Pathfinder and D&D lines), but I have not kept up with any promotions or release schedule, so these tend to be impulse buys as I see them. The bone armor reminded me of Diablo II a bit and yeah, I just had to pick this box up! 

Mr. Diablo got a very basic aged bone scheme with a nice black cloak, and I tried a wet-blended icy blue flame with a lighting effect that I am moderately happy with. The spell effects on these minis are just weird and I usually end up just breaking them off. I did this with the spirit... wall... thing from the last necromancer here. She was the partner in the little box. There is nothing inherently evil about her, and I had just finished watching Netflix's Castlevania series at the time, so decided to give her a more colorful cloak similar to Sypha. I really like the "stop it" hand gesture she's got going on too. Without the spirit wall she doesn't look too spooky, so she may end up just as a normal caster down the line in a D&D game or whatever.

Necromancers!

Hobbying on all of these got me thinking about minis agnostic games. This was about the time Reign in Hell launched, and a good chunk of my free time over the summer was spent reading and musing. I think I can't be the only one with random undead minis sitting around. Everyone picks up a box or two at some point, right? Maybe there's some fun to be had with necromancers vying for power in a casual skirmish-style game. Nothing is remotely presentable, even testable yet, but we'll see what the future brings on this front. I've been trying for years to create something, but production is always way beyond me. A rulebook or PDF seems like it could be doable if I can actually blend the game design ideas I have kicking around in my noggin. We'll see.

I continued to pick up a few sprues here and there for fun. I had picked up some Grave Guard bits way back during the End Times for some kit bashes (I think just a torso or two from a bits shop), but this was my first outing with their full sprue. I actually liked them a lot. They look really cool and come with a lot of options.

An assortment of Grave Guard! I went for a mix of weapons, since I wasn't hobbying on a unit.

The great weapons assembled a little awkwardly, as they often do with GW kits where you need to get hand sockets and shoulder sockets to line up with little arms, but with the pauldrons I was able to fudge a decent connection as I encountered issues. Overall, I gotta say I really like these models. They just look really cool and imposing. Some of the helmets (mostly just the Champion one) are a little much, but overall they look cool and ornate, like an ancient honor guard.

I also picked up a sprue of Crypt Ghouls, which comes out to 10 minis. As mentioned before in other posts, picking up a new box is almost certainly better cost-wise than picking up sprues, but the difference is usually only a dollar or two, and I was willing to pay that premium since I was looking to get some interesting minis to play around with rather than dozens and dozens more minis. 

With the Ghouls here I wanted to play around more with creepy skin tones. I really liked how the Zombies my girlfriend painted up had a variety of tones, and wanted to explore those more myself. I had three shades/washes I wanted to play around with and a few paint pots of skin colors, so I split the models into three groups of three (and one King) and just experimented.

Group 1: Kislev Flesh base, Pallid Wych Flesh layer. Left to Right, Green, Blue, and Flesh shades.

Group 1 turned out really nice, though I did prime everything in black like a fool again. The base color took several passes for a roughly consistent result before "highlighting" the raised parts with the Pallid Wych layer. The washes set nice and distinctly. 

Group 2: Cadian base, Kislev layer. Left to Right, Green, Blue, and Flesh shades.

Group 2 had a darker skin base, but still needed a few passes to get good coverage. This combination (Cadian then Kislev) is how I tended to approach skin for the Regnum when I need more definition, otherwise it is one or the other color plus a flesh shade. These turned out ok. The darker flesh tones beneath muted the washes slightly in person, but the end results weren't drastically different.

Group 3: Pallid Wych base, Kislev layer. Left to Right, Green, Blue, and Flesh shades.

With Group 3 I tried playing around more, doing the more-white Pallid Wych color as the base with a more gently applied highlight of Kislev. I wanted to see how a lighter base coat would interact with the washes. Fine I guess? They look just a little "off" and as could be expected these appear "brighter" in person than the rest, given the lighter base color, but honestly not as drastic as I was expecting. 

Overall, I think Group 1 turned out the best. Kislev + Pallid Wych + Flesh Shade has a real pale and creepy result that I am really digging. The full blue wash looks the worst in each group I think. Going forward I think I would either use this sparingly, either in like 1/10 minis, or use this only on parts of a body to discolor it more. 

One mini comes with a really awkward skeletal... backpack? I don't get it. But that mini was going to be the King. My idea was to pick a favorite and then paint the King in that method to get some more practice with that approach. However, I painted all these up at the same time though... so that timeline wasn't possible. Silly me. So he got a little bit of everything as I went.

He also got a crown. I tried to make it look bad, like they maybe crafted it themselves, but the angles are so bad on the plastic card that it draws a little too much attention to it. Oh well.

Last up for my undead hobbying sojourns was a box of "Legio Mortum" miniatures. I picked these up on a whim in 2020 via Noble Knight Games since they looked like undead Romans. I had to backtrack now to get good links for them, and well, they kinda are. They come from a game called Godslayer, which has a Roman Legionary-themed faction, of which these are failed legion raised up again to serve the empire. Pretty rad stuff overall.

Undead Legion! 

These were primed over the summer, along with a lot of other stuff I haven't gotten to yet. I found myself with a free afternoon around Thanksgiving, so these were painted up late November while watching the first few episodes of Wheel of Time. I actually read that whole dang series a few years back. The show is different, but I'm enjoying it so far. 

These look neat, but I will warn you that these are metal miniatures, which did cause me a lot of trouble. The shields arms were a pain, as the shields are also metal, and weighty, so most of them were glued also to a leg or other bit of the model for extra "stability." The legs has a stand which was way sturdier than the legs. I almost bent a few legs sticking them into the bases, so take care. I also lost their original stands, which I think were a little bigger. These sit on old GW-style slottas now, and a few are a little wobblily. 

Hobbied up in late November, I hadn't painted anything in a month or two at this point, and so I opted so mess around with some simple ideas and go for a "washed out" look for these, like they had crawled out of piles of ash or something and had lost some color. Over the black primer I did several layers of progressively lighter gray, building up a gradient with the dry brushing and giving a nice statue look to them all. I was going for a subdued look so instead of full layer of metallics, I tried a dry brush of silver over the mini, which you can see best in the shield of the leader.

To continue on with the subdued color idea, I diluted green for the shield, brown for the straps and boots, tan for the bone, and a bronzy color for the sword hilts. All watered down, they give the hints of color without being too vibrant. 

I then wanted to try a glowy effect for the eyes, which ended up being just messy red around the eyes and a more controlled pink in/around the sockets. Unfortunately, these minis are sculpted in various states of decay, some with completely empty skeletal sockets and some with raised (presumably rotting) ocular bits inside. I couldn't get a brush (nor even a toothpick) cleanly in the sockets to paint white, so after a few failed attempts and some repaints, I left these as-is for now. This gives their memey laser eyes a bit more subdued effect as well, which I am ok with. I like the way these turned out. I could have painted up a few more things (the hem on the mail skirts, and maybe a bit more color on the edges of the leather straps) but this is fine for now.

These were all fun hobbying diversions over the last year. I learned a few things, and with these small groups (and all the other warbands) I got to play around with some schemes and ideas I probably would not have tried. Good times. If you are in a hobby rut or just want a break from your army, hit up ebay, grab a sprue and churn out a few minis. It's fun!