Winged Ghouls: Proof of Concept

Including the Garden or Morr, I have about five projects currently in progress for my Vampire Counts. So what kind of hobbyist would I be if I finished any of them before staring another?

Winged Ghouls

This is a unit that I've had in mind ever since the Legion of Everblight Grotesques came out a couple years ago. Anyone who's followed this blog long enough knows what a stickler I am for proper bat-wing anatomy, and the Grotesque wings are near-perfect. The arm and hand are well formed, and the fingers extend with the wing membrane stretched between them. What's more, they all have consistent anatomy across the different poses. (I'm looking at you, Vargheists!)

The current edition plastic Crypt Ghouls look nice and feral, and I thought they would be perfect as winged bat-men to form the infantry core of Marduk the Wolf's bestial army. I've got some wings and a box of ghouls, now I just need to see if I can make it work.

I figure it's as simple as swapping out the arms for the wings. Sculpting will be required, of course, to cover the shoulder join.

Those awful piercings and back... things (seriously, I can't tell if they're spikes, quills, or hair; bones are randomly stuck through and impaled on it) have to go, too. I'll resculpt a bony spine on each model.

With the torsos assembled, the next step is to pin the wings in place using a single brass rod running through the arm sockets.

Not bad.

As I'd suspected, the wings make it difficult to rank up the ghouls. I'll definitely need to go with regimental bases for this unit, with some of the ghouls perched on tombstones so they sit at different levels.

I sure do miss the days of skirmishing ghouls. That would make this so much easier. But, hey– The 9th edition of Warhammer is apparently just around the corner, so there's a chance the next Vampire Counts book could revert ghouls back into a skirmishing unit. My winged ghouls will be a long time in the making, with luck I'll have my answer before I've glued them onto regimental strips.

'Til next time!