Toppled Obelisk and Casket Crew

Here's a look at a new piece of resin scenery that I've added to my Skull Forge Scenics shop, and an update on how my Casket of Souls is coming along.

 

 

I've been working on a toppled version of the desert obelisk for a little while. It's based on the Standing Desert Obelisk, which I've broken apart and applied new damage and displaced skulls.

 

 

 

The molds are finished and I've made the first resin castings. You can find the Toppled Desert Obelisk for sale now in my shop:

 
https://www.etsy.com/shop/SkullForgeScenics

 

 

It comes in two pieces, which can be used as separate terrain elements or placed end to end to create a full obelisk, fallen over and shattered on the sand. 

 

 

In an upcoming post, I'll have a tutorial about painting the toppled obelisk. Stay tuned!
 

The Casket of Souls
 

I've been fielding the casket in my games, using some Tomb Guard as stand-ins for the casket guardians. There are normally two guardians stationed at the front of the model's base, but the casket is categorized as a War Machine, and its crew characteristics are 4 Wounds and 4 Attacks. When a war machine crew loses a wound, it also subtracts one from its Attacks characteristic, so I'm using four crew members and each one represents one Wound and Attack, so as the crew get killed off, I can remove them and easily see how many Wounds and Attacks remain.

 

 

To make some proper guardians for the casket, I'm using Tomb Guardians as the base model, with some added bits, and a lot of re-posing. The first thing I did was cut and swap around some of the legs to get a deeper stance with a more hunched over posture.

 

 

As I've taken to doing with most of my Tomb Kings models lately, I attached the models to a piece of styrene, and cut around the feet to give them a little height so the sand on the base won't overlap onto their feet.

 

 

The guardians are equipped with Great Weapons, and I want to give them heavy axes, which they are holding low in front of them. To pose the arms, I'm using the straight left arms from the Tomb Guard, and the sword arms.

 

 

To make the axe handles, I cut away the lower portion of the Tomb Guard halberd, and I also cut the bracer from the forearm and attached it to the left arm.

 

 

For the right arm, I cut away the hand and scraped off the detail on the bracer so all of the armor will match.

 

 

For the hands, I used the classic skeleton arms, cut the hands free and drilled through each one so I could pin everything together. I really like the axe that comes with the Necropolis Knight crew, and it even has a bird motif so it matches the aesthetic of the casket and priest.

 

 

If you've ever had to glue a halberd held with two hands onto a model, you have some idea of how difficult it was to get all of these individual bits together. I actually had to cut the left arm at the humerus and rotate it because the bracer wasn't in line with the hand. 

 

 

I was also planning to use the straighter right arms so the figure would be holding the axe very low, indicating its weight, but I couldn't get the arms to align, so I switched to left arms with a bent elbow.

 

 

It was a struggle, but I was eventually able to get all four guardians assembled, with a length of wire in their hands to ensure that they would be properly lined up along the axe handle.

 

 

To build the handles, I cut up the halberd segments, drilled them out, and put them together with the wire inside.

 

 

The final step was to attach the head and put the figure on a base.

 

 

I need to scrounge up a few more of those axe heads, and then I can finish off the remaining guardians. After that, I'll work on the spirits emerging from the casket.

 

 

'Til next time!