It Begins!

The bone dragon and bases that I ordered have arrived, so I can finally start working on my Tomb Kings army! Here's what I've got planned...

 

First off, looking at the Necrolith Bone Dragon kit, it's as nice as any of the newer GW plastic kits, loaded with some fantastic detail. I gave the sprues a once-over to make sure there were no miscast parts. I've heard stories of plastic parts that haven't completely filled on the sprue, but I think I've only encountered that once in the hundreds of plastic models that I've purchased over the years, so I wasn't terribly concerned. Everything looked fine. 

 

 

One idea I have had since I first saw the model revealed at the launch of The Old World, is to use the howdah parts to build a more elaborate chariot for my tomb king. I'll have to have a closer look as I build the kit, but I think I might be able to remove the howdah and replace it with a more traditional "saddle." Perhaps the saddle from the Mortarch kit might come in handy. Stay tuned...

 

 

Something that jumped out at me was the size of the liche priest's face. It looked really tiny compared to the rest of the Tomb Kings line.

 

 

The tomb king's head is a little better, but I might have to do some head swaps in the future. And hey, there's the kitty!

 

 

I had built a unit of skeleton spearmen ages ago, so I'm going to attempt to re-base them on 25mms and see if I can salvage most of the work I had done.

 

 

One thing that had always bothered me was the "gothic" appearance of their spears. I took steps to eliminate that as much as possible on these models, slicing off the cross bars and metal studs on the spear shafts, but now I want to replace the spear tips entirely. Back in the days when you could purchase individual metal components by weight, I bought a ton of guards from the Casket of Souls– Enough to build an entire unit of Tomb Guard! Now, I think I'll use the swords as spear tips, and mix the metal legs and torsos throughout the regiment to represent skeletons with light armor. So, maybe these skeletons will have to be rebuilt from the ground up. 

 

 

I've also got a standard bearer for an archer unit. The design was based on the small banners in my Warmaster army– A tall thin pennant with a skull on top. I'm not sure if I want to add more "Egyptian" flourishes to it, but I'd still like to evoke the design of the little guys. I'll probably rely on the painting of the banner itself to get the Egyptian iconography. I was hoarding different banners back in the day because I really liked the idea of having banners in the army, rather than just Egyptian totems. Maybe I could add some head scarves and cloaks into the unit as well to get more color throughout the regiment.

 

 

For my initial list, I'm going with the models I already have, and three skeleton regiments:

Tomb Prince Selketta

High Priest Omentet (Hierophant)

Necrolith Colossus

Tomb Scorpion

30 Skeleton Warriors (with spears and light armor)

20 Skeleton Archers

20 Skeleton Archers

The points cost will be 890 before adding in magic items, which will bump it up to 1115 if I max them out. So, I can bring the list in right around 1000 points. That's enough to play a small game with a mix of units, and I can flesh it out from there.

The first thing I need to do, however, is make some new bases for the big guys...

 

 

'Til next time!