Category Archives: Kings of War

Celtos: Fir Bolg Skeleton Archers (June-It ’18)

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Three years ago I ordered a big bunch of “Fir Bolg” Skeletons from Brigade Models that were originally produced and still sold for the “Celtos” skirmish miniatures wargame. They arrived a couple of weeks later, in Mid-June – and have only gotten around to painting the last of them this year. So three years from order arrival to completion. That’s actually pretty good for me! These models are actually the third “set” that I got from them. The first once I painted were done in August 2015,  a unit of “Warscythes” to use in Kings of War followed in March 2016 with a whole lot of Spears (one large unit, or two small units) and then finally is September another dozen of them armed with sickles and shields.

Celtos Fir Bolg Skeleton Archers

By the time I got to the end of 2016, I was well and truly over painting undead, as I’d churned out at least one unit per month for Marouda’s Undead Army and also my own Gondor Army. (You can see all the half-painted Nazgûl in that pic as well as some of the half-painted named Nazgûl filling out the numbers!)

But… we haven’t played KoW for ages now. Not for a couple of years after a period of pretty regular play. Got to get back to that, of course. But need to clean up the War Room a bit more first since there’s so much shit in there that I can’t even fully lay a mat down on the table right now. So these guys sat idle until I had a few days away from home for work at the start of this year, so I took them with me along with a few paints and started work on them. Before putting them away to one side when I got back. Until now. June. June-It.

Celtos Fir Bolg Skeleton Archers

And now they’re done. 16 models. 2 units of 8 models to count-as two “troop” formations in KoW, or just 16 skeleton archers for AoS or whatever other game. I’ll have to find my cut MDF bases at some stage and blu-tac them down, but for now, they’re good enough. The two troop leaders are the standard hero models that have both had a hand removed and replaced with a bow-hand from the old Citadel Skeleton Army box. A last-minute modification but one that I think works with them being archer units.

I’ve retaken the blurry mess that was the original header photo, and replaced it so I could finally post these models up – chalk up another two units for June-It! And there’s still one more to come… (yes, there was a spray varnish backlog caused by our cold weather).

Citadel Grave Guard – As Kings of War Wights (Neglected Model May ’18)

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Citadel Grave Guard 6th Edition Vampire Counts

A (little) bit of a break from WarZone models today, however briefly (I have another two close to finished, so hopefully can get them done and posted over the next two days.)

A couple of years ago, around about September 2014 – I bought a whole bunch of Undead off Nerdfest over on Dakka. Amongst those were a bunch of Spirit Hosts which I rebased individually got got up and done within a day of receiving them. These models… not so much.

Blister photo via eBay.

Part of the Vampire Counts range from the early 2000’s, 2004-05 being the earliest reference I can easily find, they seem to have come in very specific blisters, since I keep finding the same trio when I was looking to find out more details about these models. That makes them models from the 6th Edition, so they could easily date back from as far as 2001, which was when the 6th Edition Warhammer Armies: Vampire Counts book was released.

Citadel Grave Guard 6th Edition Vampire Counts

Anyway, when I got them I thought they were decent models that could be pretty simply painted up. I suggested to Marouda that they’d be good models for her to paint up. She never showed much interest, so I got started on them myself. Of course, I didn’t exactly get them done quickly. I felt that as a trio of models that are quite different to everything else I have in sculpt style, and a re a bit bigger than the norm, I thought they could work well enough as a unit of three Wights in Kings of War. With that in mind, I mounted them on 32mm bases as opposed to the 25mm bases they came with. Wights are (now) on 40mm bases, but I’ll just build them a unit tray-base for KoW with the correct 40x120mm footprint.

Later.

Lord of the Rings Barrow-Wights. Yeah, that “OSL” is incredibly rough, but it was my first ever attempt.

Similarly, their paint scheme was informed by the scheme I used on the other unit of Wights, which is made up of two Lord of the Rings Barrow-Wights and a single Army of the Dead plastic model in the same paint scheme. Spectral blue-green robes (yes, these are more blue-blue-green than the previous set), metal weaponry and armour, and the creature inside looking roughly how they might look that far into their death.

Citadel Grave Guard 6th Edition Vampire Counts

So here, I’ve followed that with the robes, but the leather coifs and cuirass straps looked a bit silly in spectral blue-green, so instead I went with dark grey instead, over other choices like leather browns. Being in that awkward space between the metal armour and the spectral cloth, dark grey-black was good enough to fit in without drawing too much attention to it.

Citadel Grave Guard 6th Edition Vampire Counts

Shields came from a mid-point range of GW’s Chaos Warriors. Following the old-school, Realm of Chaos models with their open-hole shields but before the range went all-plastic. Given the skull-tastic designs on all three, I nicked them out of my shields tub for these undead fellows instead.