A New Breed of Skeleton

Assembling the Cursed City skeletons and seeing how they size up against the previous iterations.

 

The undead have always been my first love, and the earliest Warhammer models I bought and painted were the 5th Edition Skeleton Warriors in the small 8-man box. 

 

Those skeletons were also some of my first conversions, chopping up parts to get some unique poses:

 

 

I combined the old plastics, with the even older metal skeletons, and the 20-man "Skeleton Warriors" regiment box into the Crimson Reapers skeleton regiment.

 

 

This skeleton regiment box lasted from the end of 5th Edition until 7th Edition in 2008, and was my go-to for skeletons. I combined that skeleton box with Empire parts to build my Red Guard skeletons, which wore more armor and resembled reanimated Empire soldiers. Those same regimental sprues were used for the Tomb Kings Skeleton Warriors kit, and included an extra accessory sprue with different heads, shields, bows, and weapons.

 

 

During the End Times, I dipped into the past and used the older metal armored skeletons to build some archers. The Red Rain Host was a Tomb Kings regiment that had joined my force as part of the "Undead Legions" End Times army list. This unit was comprised of the metal skeletons, with plastic Tomb Kings skeleton arms and bows. 

 

 

I skipped over the 2008 Vampire Counts skeleton regiment altogether– First off, it was only a 10-man box, which was really cost-prohibitive, and I still had tons of sprues and boxes of the previous kit. I also wasn't a fan of the poses and skulls in that newer box. They were leaning too far forward, and their jaws only had one row of teeth, looking very under-detailed and small compared to the rest of my skeletons. (I did, however, buy one box to check them out and take bits from.)

And that brings us to the newest generation of skeletons. Let's start with the 10 skeletons from the Cursed City boxed set:

 

 

First up, these sculpts are fantastic. The armor is suitably medieval without looking like it belongs to any one faction (there's no obvious influence from the Empire or Chaos, for example). The height of the models is the same as previous skeletons, and while the faces are a bit smaller, they are not lacking in detail. (They have all their teeth!) The skulls and hands are noticeable smaller than the older skeletons, and everything is very fine and "dainty." (The spear shafts are particularly thin.) It mostly works because the elements of the models are all correctly in scale with each other, but I do prefer chunkier details so they are "readable" from across the table, where they will mostly be viewed. Thicker spear shafts also hold up better when repeatedly handling the miniatures.

Two of the Cursed City skeletons have swords, and I wanted them to all be identically armed, so I replaced the blades with spears.

 

 

The shaft is 1.2mm thick styrene rod, and the spearhead is made from a spear tip from the Vampire Counts skeleton sprue. I sculpted over it with putty, then carved it down to the same shape as the rest of the spears, and pitted it with a pin vise.

 

 

Because everything is so thin, I pinned the spear components with .26 gauge wire, and drilled the holes with a similarly small drill bit. (I mentioned this in my post about the Wight Queens, but here's the actual wire that I used, available at most craft stores.)

 

 

Two of the skeletons were holding their spears in a reverse grip, with the spearheads pointing down. In order to make them consistent with the rest of the unit, I changed them around. The arm was cut at the elbow and repositioned; the spear tip was reattached (pinned of course), and the bottom of the spear was cut away from the back of the robes and replaced with styrene rod.

 

 

On the back, I sculpted over the spot where the spear shaft had been trimmed away.

 

 

The skull of one of these guys had been used on my Wight Queen, and I replaced his torso with the spare champion's torso with the fully armored head. I also added the standard bearer's sword, and gave him some wings on his helmet by attaching the knee wings from the Vampire Lord. I think this guy has a lot of character and really dig him!

 

 

I built one standard bearer, and replaced the flag on the other with a spear shaft. For some reason, the points on the helmets bugged me, so I trimmed them off. However, the spike on the standard bearer's helmet was designed as a reinforcement support for the flag (which is brilliant).

 

 

I used some of the second flag to extend the banner and attach it to his helmet, which allowed me to remove the helmet spike and get a larger banner.

 

 

The shields were a point of contention for me– The filigree looks nice, but I prefer large fields to either paint, or add a decal or unit markings. I scraped off all the detail with my hobby knife.

 

 

I considered a few options, and eventually settled on using the old skeleton shield icons. I took the smaller skull, cut away the crossbones and trimmed it down into a more stylized shape.

 

 

I finished off the gang with some tombstones and skulls. I also leaned into the "branch" motif so these skeletons will match the new zombies and my other Age of Sigmar Soulblight models. I cut up some Woodland Scenics plastic tree armatures and added them to the base.

 

 

I also picked up a box of the new Soulblight Gravelords Deathrattle Skeletons, and I'll be using them to eventually fill out the ranks.

 

 

These match the Cursed City skeleton aesthetic, with a few minor differences, mainly in the armor– Looking over the sprues, I noticed that nearly all the skeletons have full shin guards and knee pads (there are only 4 "bare" legs in the whole kit). There are also no unarmored arms– None of the Cursed City skeletons are wearing bracers, but all of the arms in the regiment box are armored. I would have preferred a little more variety, but at least the City skeletons will provide some.

 

 

There's no musician in the kit, so I'll have to convert one; I know skeletons technically no longer have the option for a hornblower in the Soulblight rules, but I'll be damned if my troops are going to march to war without their tunes. We may be undead, but we're not savages!

'Til next time!