Category Archives: Warhammer Fantasy – 9th Age

Oldhammer MD8 Skeleton Skullchucker/Screaming Skull Catapult Crew

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Oldhammer MD8 Skeleton Skullchucker/Screaming Skull Catapult Crew

This trio of skellingtons are, obviously, from the original Skullchucker (later known as the Screaming Skull) Catapult, released as part of the MD8 Skeleton War Machines boxed set, way back in October 1987. This isn’t my first Skullchucker crew, as I painted and posted my previous one back in 2015. These guys I picked up off of eBay probably shortly after finally painting the previous one, as I was well into building the Undead army for KoW at the time. As often happens with eBay purchases, the models were badly painte,d and so these needed stripping. Worse, though was that the catapult itself seemed to have part of it’s frame sawn in half at some stage, so it’s presently somewhere in bits, probably in a jar of dried-out paint stripper that I’ll need to get to sometime so I can repair it, paint it and reunite this set of models.

Sometime when the weather is nicer and I don’t have the relentless bullshit of life pounding at me. Maybe/hopefully over summer if all goes well (ha!) It certainly won’t be in October!

High Elf Mage with Sword (Gary Morley, 1998)

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High Elf Mage With Sword 021003901, Gary Morley, 1998

“Too Sweet!”

This model is one I started painting several years ago. A High Elf Mage from that Warhammer Fantasy range’s refresh back in 1997, I needed a High Elf Wizard model to represent Immeril, the Eladrin Wizard character in the Ravenloft D&D boardgame that we’d started playing the first time around way back then. Eladrin, it turns out means “Elf” and “Elf-kin”. So a High Elf mini was roped into play. This particular model is one I liked, as it’s a little more subdued for a Warhammer model (ie: no gigantic hat)

As I noted some time ago, I don’t want my High Elves to look like everyone else’s High Elves. Silver armour with blue trim. It’s a good looking scheme, no doubt, but everyone’s models look like that! Instead, I took inspiration from World of Warcraft (which I was still playing at the time) and their High Elf offshoot, the Blood Elves. I’m not going to go into their convoluted background here, suffice it is to say that they look aesthetically pleasing and also different enough to the standard.

So I did that.

High Elf Mage With Sword 021003901, Gary Morley, 1998

The main drawback was the fact that when we stopped playing these board games, all those years ago, I also stopped working on the related models, and so this guy sat in a tub, with a bit of red on him for years. When we started playing again, painting/completing this character wasn’t a big priority until it started getting used, when we were into the second campaign and did a character shuffle. At that point, this model was being used on the table and then it wasn’t until after my Sigmarite Warrior Priest (as a D&D Cleric) got completed that I plucked this one out of the active game to finish off. Bjorn the Stormborn also announced a Painting Challenge for High Elves and Skaven around this time, and I hoped to also get this guy done as part of that as well. Unfortunately, as well as all of those stars aligned, personal circumstances also intervened, and I wasn’t able to complete this model until Early September, and I’m obviously only getting to posting it up now, at the start of October.