Hobby Update: Multi System Undead

Back in 2021 and 2022, I hobbied up a bunch of Undead on round bases. The idea was to then invest in some movement trays, and thus have a nice multi-system army. 

I have mostly given up on this. While the rest of the Undead have been put on unit-sized trays, some of the minis are metal, some have slotted bases, and some models were acquired second-hand, and appear to be attached to their round bases with the melty plastic cement. To save my sanity, these particular models will be put on trays.

The trays themselves were actually an impediment to this army concept. While the Stormcast Ogres work ok on larger trays, that's 3-6 models per unit. In my messing about, I've found that smaller models really need the insert try approach instead of just a movement tray. While there are STLs around, I do not have a 3d printer, nor the tools or skills to make good uniform inserts or trays by hand. I know some people with 3d printers though, and Trevor from Data and Dice was able to hook me up with a few trays in order to finish these units and this little project up.

After rinsing the trays, I applied some basing paste to parts of the tray, then primed and painted it to match the basing of the miniatures. The tray got the acrylic glaze for the shiny mud, but I held back on adding the fog effect here, and kept it just on the round bases, to keep things a little cleaner.

Enough Grave Guard for a horde of durable Revenants!

The first unit is Revenants are GW Grave Guard. I bought a sprue of five a while back, and then some more models second-hand over the last year or so. They were fun to paint, and I really like their look of these bulky, armored Skeletons. The second-hand models seem to be held to the base by plastic cement., and while I think I could pry or saw them off… that’s a lot of work. Additionally, I only have 25 models, and they are a mix of shields and two-handers. I would likely need smart planning or more likely, more models to get some wysiwyg units… So, we will dump all that extra work, and just base these up on rounds, like the original plan was. Since the unit can swap weapons, the front ranks will denote what the unit has for gameplay.

A Regiment of Revenants

The second group of minis are Legio Mortum from the Godslayer game (with a metal Reaper Mini snuck in as well). I believe the game is discontinued now, so these are unlikely to get any reinforcements. The models are metal with slotted bases, so for now, we are keeping them as-is and on the round bases too, and will run them as their own regiment of Revenants. No fog effect for them (yet) because they were an exercise in painted some drab and muted tones, and not originally intended to be part of an army.

Crunch-wise, Revenants look great. With Fearless, great Nerve, and Def5, they can really provide some nice stopping power for the Undead at any unit-size. They have Just Melee 4, so aren’t likely going to be hammering through enemy units, but they can swap around weapons and shields, and I'll be trying that with the GW Grave Guard at some point. More often than not, I think generals are taking Revenants because you want that cheap Def5. 

A little "bone"-us regiment of Skeletons.

The final unit is just Skeleton Warriors, cobbled up from some old GW skeleton packs. Like the Legio, these are also out of production and aren’t likely to get reinforcements, though Wargames Atlantic does make some great “naked” skeletons these days. These are around, but are honestly unlikely to hit the table unless I am really stretching for things. No fog effect for them either, as they aren't likely to hit the table, and will probably be used more for D&D extras and such... but we'll see what the future holds for the unit.

And so ends my multi-system Undead experiment! If I had a 3d printer, I might have kept after it more, but I am ok with how this all shook out. Officially adding all of these units in brings my Undead collection up to over 8,500 points without upgrades or spells, and all the various skeleton units really round out the collection. I definitely have some options for the army now, and look forward to exploring the army some more soon!