A scary number of Celtos Fir Bolg Skeleton Spearmen
Last June I ordered a bunch of “Fir Bolg” Skeletons from Brigade Models, originally produced and still sold for the “Celtos” skirmish miniatures wargame. By August, I’d managed to paint up a unit of them armed with “Warscythes” to use in Kings of War before my focus in 2015 shifted to finishing off models that had been started months and years before.
Musician and Commander #1
Quartered Heraldry
With the Tale of Gamers challenge I’ve been running over on Dakka this year, I decided to paint up some more skeletons. After all, they’re quite work-friendly, and it’s always rewarding to finish stuff off. I’ve got a nice bunch of Skeletons done for KoW, role-playing or any kind of skirmish from Age of Sigmar to Dragon Rampant to, you know – Celtos!
Musician and Commander #2
Par Chevron Heraldry
Once again, the colour scheme is pretty simple and in keeping with the rest of the army – Red and Black, Iron and Brass, Rust and Verdigris, Cadmium-Red wood – and Bone. The tabards and cloth have either been quartered or feature a par chevron to tie them in with one another or allow a distinction when both units are run side by side. Of course, they can be combined into a “Horde” formation as well.
The original pair with an unmodified “spike” skeleton. Chest painted as bone and not banded mail this time.
There’s quite a lot of these guys. By my standards, anyway. The initial two models from eBay that led me to Brigade’s website have been incorporated into the units, so that just left me with 22 others to paint up to complete the units. As I’ve mostly worked on them during lunch breaks, they took quite awhile to get done. And yes, I need to touch up the bottom of the base rims.
A “unique” pair of Skeleton Spearmen
Skeleton Spearmen
Jaw-less Skeleton Spearmen
Jabby, armoured Skeleton Spearmen
Yes, I need to get more brown Renedra unit trays. Unfortunately the last time I ordered them from Firestorm they sent me sets of green ones, which clash with my model bases. Spray paint time, probably.
Awkward shield placement. Crescent shields to the rescue!
I found their shields to be a little problematic. They came with damaged Celt-ish shields, but these three guys were having none of it. I figured out a workaround, which was to use these really old Citadel shields, and then I followed up with the rest of the models by using selected WHFB4 Starter Goblin shields with skeletal iconography – for what is very much an unrealistic but old-school Warhammer-esque Undead look… (Why are “traditional” RPG and gaming undead covered in skeletal iconography? Who is smithing and painting their gear? – At least the sadly-Squatted Tomb Kings had some rationale behind theirs.) The original shields have gone into my bits boxes, and might come back out when working on Historicals down the line.
Charging Skeletons with repurposed Goblin shields.
“At Guard” Skeletons with repurposed Goblin shields.
I used white for the embossed shield devices shaded with Vallejo’s Pale Grey wash so that the shield iconography would be distinct from the “real” bone of the actual undead.
“Quartered” Skeleton Spear Regiment
“Quartered” Skeleton Spear Regiment
“Quartered” Skeleton Spear Regiment
“Chevron” Skeleton Spear Regiment
“Chevron” Skeleton Spear Regiment
“Chevron” Skeleton Spear Regiment
Both regiments combined into a Kings of War “Horde”-style unit. …Skeleton Horde.
I know there’s a ton of photos here, but these guys took a lot of effort and a lot of time – pretty much a full month. As much as I enjoy painting bone, I’m pretty sick of it at this stage. I’m still cleaning up the next unit batch of skeletons (only 12, thankfully), but I’ll get the basics done (clean, prime, base coat spray, basing, first wash of brown) and then leave them for a week or two before getting back to them. I think in April I might try to do more character models for the painting challenge rather than masses of troops.
Imperialrebelork requested a tutorial on painting skeletons/bone in my style recently, so I took some photos as I painted these guys up. In the coming days, I’ll sort them out and do a write-up. It’s actually pretty simple.
Azazel's Bitz Box. 
Lovely skelies mate, top job! They look great individually, but are awesome ranked up 🙂
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Thanks Alex. I sometimes question myself with the “no-one will ever see or notice this – why am I doing it?” point when painting the finer details on a duplicated model that will be hidden in the middle of the ranks, but hey – I know it’s there!
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It’s called ‘attention to detail’ and ‘pride in your work’ I think? 😉
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Either that or OCD. Probably a little from Column A and a little from Column B. 😉
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They look great – the warm reds and brown work nicely with the bone
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Thanks Kev. I’m happy with how they came out and they will tie in nicely with the rest of the army when placed on the table together.
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Outstanding! They are bloody ace. So good, it makes me want to build an undead army. Really evocative and properly ticking the box marked ‘Argonauts’.
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Thanks mate! I find one piece metal skeletons to be one of the easiest things to paint, and I’m happy with the way they come out. The photos are a bit too bright – I’ll have to work on that but I had to use Marouda’s iPad for the photos yesterday and they looked a less over-contrasty on the screen. I finally got my Foundry Argonauts recently too – so they’ll be a unit to build shortly-ish!
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Excellent work. I, too, love the reds and browns that work beautifully with the bone tone. I really can see these guys being exposed to the harsh desert sun for centuries. I think it is worhtwhile putting effort in the single miniatures. After all you might use them in soem skirmish game down the road.
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It’s a good point, and likely they’ll be used for some SAGA this weekend. Not with the Revenant rules, but with others as proxies. I don’t have enough of the appropriate historical figures painted yet, so it’ll likely be Undead fighting Black Numenorians fighting Gondorians and so forth.
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Great job! Since everyone singed their praise of bones already, I’ll give their due to the gorgeous gorgeous cloaks!
You also reminded me that I have a Celtos rulebook somewhere, and never played once. It had some nice and original artwork, if my memory serves me…
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Thanks Carlo – I’m the same with my Celtos rulebook – too many games and not enough time. The red and black seem to work well enough to add a bit of uniformity to most of the current army, and once I get a lot more painted and start to split the components off (Mordor, Tomb Kings, Mythical Greeks) permanently into their own armies, it’ll make them all a bit more distinct.
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