Category Archives: Kings of War

Citadel Spirit Hosts – Completed! + LotR Barrow-Wights.

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So, the following day from starting these nice little surprises in the post, I managed to finish them. As stated last time, it’s a quick and simple job, but it’s effective enough and they look good on the table.

Citadel Spirit Hosts – Based as a unit of Wraiths for Kings of War.

It seems that these figures are properly called “Spirit Hosts”, and appear to date from 2000 when GW split the undead army into “Wet” (Vampire Counts) and “Dry” (Tomb Kings), as that’s the first reference I can find to them over at Stuff of Legends. They usually mount three to a 40mm base, but I’m using them for Kings of War, so individual 25mm round bases does it for me to turn them into a regiment of Wraiths.

From the last post where I talked about the paint process, I simply painted the bases (base, drybrush, wash, weathering powders) and added a thinned down Citadel Sybarite Green paint wash to the eyes, nostrils, mouths, and around the belts and necks/hair of the individual ghosts to emphasis those parts slightly. And of course, a nice matt varnish to finish them off. – And yes, that is a spot of weathering powder on that front guy in the photo. Sorted now!

Some might be critical that I’m using what now seems to be the “official GW palette” for ethereal models, but I liked the effect when they were used on the Army of the Dead figures more than a decade ago, and to me the look really is suitable for undead, and looks better than the “dirty sheet” look that was used before.

Citadel Spirit hosts bases as Individuals for skirmish games.

While I do like the look of the new ones, these ones were free, painted in a day, won’t snap off their bases if you look at them funny, and are a lot more versatile – at least when based individually.

I could see designing a Pulp Alley/7TV scenario game of Scooby-Doo using the Hasslefree figures that starts off like a typical Scooby-Doo adventure using the Hasslefree “gang and dog” set, and once “the gang“‘s players makes it to the safehouse, taking their figures away and replacing them with the second version of that set, and turning it into a L4D apocalypse scenario…

While I was photographing these guys, I thought I’d also take a pic of my Citadel Lord of the Rings Barrow-Wights. These two (and their third – a former Army of the Dead figure) are used both as actual Barrow-Wights in LotR SBG, and also as a troop of Wights (surprise!) in Marouda’s Kings of War Undead army. Well, she hasn’t used them yet, but soon.

Citadel LotR Barrow-Wights

I’ve shown these on the blog before, but that was some time ago, and the pictures there aren’t exactly the best, so why not show them again in a slightly better light? Why not indeed.

Oldhammer Trolls and another ID Request

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This time we have another couple of figures started decades ago and finished a couple of years ago. A couple of the old-school Citadel (or Oldhammer) Trolls.

C20 Oldhammer Troll

C20 Cave Troll

The first guy is a C20 Cave Troll. I started painting him in the mid-1990s with the skin tones of a Stone Troll, for my WHFB Orc and Goblin army. Finally finished him 2 or 3 years ago, and stuck him on a slate base from back-to-base-ix

Oldhammer C20 Troll

C20 Warrior Troll

Also from the old C20 range, this guy is known as “Warrior Troll”. No D&D style misgivings about metal armour for him, no indeedy! Also started around the same time as his mate up there, and finished at more or less the same time, when I dug them out of half-painted purgatory and finally completed them.

Oldhammer C20 trolls

C20 Trolls. Two thirds of a unit!

Both of these guys were sculpted by Aly Morrison, who really did quite a good job on the Troll range of the day. I have to say I’ve also liked pretty much all of the subsequent renditions of trolls that GW has come out with over the years. The stone trolls, the LotR-inspired Trolls, the plastic Swamp Trolls… all good stuff. Well, except for the Chaos Trolls, I guess. But I don’t really consider them part of this range, which I’ve mostly thought of as a subset of the O&G one, with a side range of being really useful for tabletop RPGs. These guys will have a new lease of life at some stage when I finish painting their mate, and then convert my old O&G horde over to Kings of War. But working on 5 armies already at once means the Orcs and Gobboes will need to wait a little while.

C20 Oldhammer Trolls

C20 Trolls – the arseward shot!

Looking at them today, the golden yellow-blonde hair does look pretty garish, especially with the bright blue skin, but hell – that’s how I started them, and it’s not something I’m willing to mess up, change or repaint. I’m just happy to have them done. I’ve got their mate on my painting shelf as well. A mid-90’s stone troll who I selected to finish this unit off about three years ago when I finished these two. He’s been partially painted and sitting on my painting shelves ever since… funny how these things work, eh?

 

And finally, a request to those who read this blog. Inspired by the fast work in finding out the identity of Farendil, Elf ranger so quickly, I’m again asking for help in identifying this guy.

Oldhammer Wizard – seeking his name!

I’ve been looking through SoL a bit, and he’s not a C02 wizard. There’s no pic of the TL2 wizard on SoL, so that’s a possibility – it’s certainly from the right timeframe. He’s not from the DungeonQuest series, or any of the other board games of that time. He’s listed as #19 of the Wizards in the Blue 1988 catalogue, but that group is a mash-up of several previous ranges, and I’d like to find where he comes from originally, and if he had a name as well.

This is actually his second paintjob. I first painted him bright blue and red, with brown hair back in the 1990’s, then repainted him in the 2000’s in the darker blue scheme with grey hair. I don’t intend to repaint him again, just rebase him this time. I figure he looks the part to play the Necromancer that Marouda’s KoW Undead army needs for their next battle, so I’m rebasing him and might just add a tiny bit of edge highlighting.