Hobby WIP: Multi-System Undead

As mentioned back in June, my next army-sized projects will be individually based and hobbied on and will be using movement trays for Kings of War. Most of my coming additions to existing armies will continue to be multi-based, but I decided to make some exceptions with some new Undead. 

The Undead are a pretty ubiquitous faction in fantasy settings. Most of my army / collection thus-far has been more "elite" units, like Wights and Wraiths and a lot of Vampires. These are all things more unique to Kings of War, and so have gone very well with multi-basing. However, I felt like I needed some fodder units to balance things out in the collection and make more balanced lists, and decided to finally get around to painting up some more skeleton units, and do them up in this manner so I can use them for skirmish stuffs or D&D. I made a pretty good dent in my undead pile of shame! These all aren't quite done, but I am down to a literal handful of lingering Mantic skeletons and looks like an old box of GW Skeleton Warriors from the Vampire Counts army. We'll see when those last minis all get hobbied on, but I am thinking they might get some similar treatments to the units that follow here! I am reasonably happy with how these are all turning out so far.

A very simple unit. I think I used a greater variety of paint on the bases than the minis...

The first unit up now are some Skeleton Warriors. Back in the day, GW sold a 5-pack of push-fit Skeletons, and I apparently picked two packs up long ago. Probably for D&D. They were never built, and I apparently lost their arms too, as they weren't in my little bits box... It was for the best though. Their shoulders looked far too broad, so I snipped down those push-fit pins and mixed in some other generic GW skeleton arms in for a slightly more natural look. Filling out the unit to the "full" 12 are two "late risers" from Mantic. This is a nice extra bit in that kit, and I was happy to find a use for them here. Overall, this unit still need a few touchups, and I am debating whether or not to add in shields. I like the "bare-bones" look with just a weapon, but enough have clenched fists with the shield arm that shields might look better.  I will need to revisit my bits boxes before calling these done.

I need a banner (or another weapon) for one of the skeletons in front, but this unit is also coming along.

Then we have a unit of Mantic skeletons, who will also be used as a regiment of Skeleton Warriors. A single, combined horde would arguably have been better, but given the available minis here, separate regiments will have to do for now. Mantic's skeleton sprue comes with 3x skeletons with weapons (1 axe, 1 sword, 1 hammer). I liked that (gluing weapons to hands can be a real pain), and built them up for D&D years ago, as I like giving monsters different weapons as a simple way to mix things up for combat encounters. This unit got a simple blue for their colors, but I'm debating on an accent color or maybe even decals for the plain shields. These are close but something is missing.

Like I said, gluing weapons to hands can be rough. After three separate attempts, one spear is *still* not cooperating in the unit on the left.

Then, we have a bunch more Mantic skeletons, to be used as a horde of Skeleton Spearmen. While not a competitive unit, I really like the "at the ready" look of skeletons with spears, so these have been primed for maybe three years now? They ended up with red cloth and dark gray shields. I think I need an accent color or decals for these shields as well, but am pretty pleased with the unit so far.

My older Undead share colors with the Regnum, as my old fluff was that the Undead were the ancestors and slain human armies, raised to fight and usurp the current, living kingdom. But I'm trying to get away from that. I want to explore more painting schemes and don't want to repeat a scheme across two major armies. So I think a lot of touchups and small repaints are in my future for this collection. I think my general goal will be to have the units share colors, but keep the army as a whole a bit jumbled and ununified. I think these units are all steps in the right direction for that jumbled effect, and I am happy with the look and progress of all of these units so far. 

I also have a small assortment of bonus things for the Undead, which is actually what started me hobbying all these other units. I figured the rats could be following units to denote the army's "Giant Rats" upgrade to lifeleech, or even swapped in if the unit is using trays like these are. The gravestones, tablets and small undead critters were just me messing around with some undead-themed loot / objective tokens. 

The necromancer has been primed forever; and is the human wizard Leisynn from Reaper. He was primed before I knew you should really wash Reaper minis before working on them, and so has been sticky for years, languishing in a box. That stickiness has gone away now, so I finally painted him up like a good old Warcraft 3 necromancer. The variety of robe colors was what got me thinking about the other units, and I'll likely lean on the robes to help guide my future color choices as I touchup the army.

The last thing to note in this WIP post is the movement tray approach. It is neat and working ok for these units, but I think the pictures here already highlight its biggest shortcoming, namely that naked MDF is not a good look! I think I will need to hobby on the trays a bit to make them come off as more legitimate, and I'll need to keep this in mind on my future army projects, which were going to lean more heavily into the tray approach. More thoughts to come on the trays after some more fiddling!