Category Archives: Warhammer Fantasy – 9th Age

77001: Skeletal Spearmen (Reaper Bones)

by

5

Recently I showed the Bones Skeletal Swordsmen that I finished for Marouda’s Mythical Greek force. These six are the other half of the group. Originally the twelve of them were to make up a single unit of more generic undead troops, whether spear or blade worked out simply by swapping the front rank as appropriate. Since the Mythical Greeks are now becoming a thing with the addition of a big load of stuff from Wargames Foundry, they got split into the Blade regiment and these guys, who I finished last Friday and will be the back half of the Spear regiment.

Reaper Bones 77001 Skeletal Spearmen

Reaper Bones 77001: Skeletal Spearmen

You may well have noticed that the spears appear to be made of rubber. Well, that’s Bones PVC for you! While I could have replaced the spear shafts with wire by cutting them off, drilling out the hands, and reattaching the spearheads, just look at the sculpts! They’re hardly worth that kind of effort. I did what I think is a nice enough job on the actual bones, but that’s because I enjoy painting bone most of the time. I’ve painted the shields with a kind of pseudo-Verginia Sun to give a Greek-Macedonian vibe to go with the preudo-Dipylon style shields. I left the shield bosses bronze rather than painting them the colours of the rays, or carving them off as I did on the swordsmen.

Reaper Bones 77001 Skeletal Spearmen

The arse end of the Skellymans!

The unit will be completed soon, hopefully. I’ve got the four Foundry skeletons with spear completed, though I still have to do a shield for one of them and I’m unsure about shields for the other three, due to their poses. I’ve used a Wargames Factory Model for a fifth, but I’m still struggling to find an appropriate sixth to complete the unit. Any ideas? I’m looking for an unarmoured skeleton armed with a spear, sturdy one piece casting, nice enough sculpt, and preferring metal or at least sturdy HIPS. (The Wargames Factory ones seem a little fragile).

Mantic Ogre Shooters – Units 3 and 4: 2013-2015 (a year on)

by

3

Mantic Ogre Shooters with Heavy Crossbows

Mantic KoW Ogre Crossbows. Leader with Citadel head.

Despite the difference in dates, it’s “only” 14 months since I last updated on these figures. As I’ve noted before, while Mantic’s Ogre models do turn out nice enough, I do not enjoy painting them. My cunning plan was to cockblock myself and not allow myself to paint the “fun” Ogre models until after I finished the second batch of shooters. Since I hadn’t worked on them in 13 months, I think we can safely state that particular plan wasn’t the best. It was one of those 3am epiphany-type things that actually got me to finish these. Getting back into painting again after almost 3 months, wanting to paint Greeks and Romans, and thinking about the mess on the desk resulted in the thought of “just finish the fricking things – they’ll probably only take a couple of hours to finish” replacing the usual “shove them out of the way”. It’s the same thought process that helped get those Skeletons out of the way as well as a several of the other odd figures that I’ve recently shown and will continue to show shortly, and will also have some Elites for my Gondor army finished and off my desk in a couple of days. Or within a week. Or two. Hopefully.

Mantic Ogre Shooters with Heavy Crossbows

I went with red tabards for these guys, so they’re distinct from the blue of the original two units, though sometimes they’ll potentially be combined into regiments of 6 rather than troops of 3. I’ve kept the tabards a dull red. I feel there’s no need for them to be overly highlighted. I’d been looking at the shields for months thinking about adding some red to them, and I think it’s worked well to add a little more colour and interest to them. As I mentioned a long time ago, I used Citadel Ogre Kingdom heads on the leaders of both units since Mantic has an incredibly limiting six total heads for their ogres – most of which are average or below quality.  (Along with only three body types!) The Crossbows are equipped with the “Jar of the Four Winds”, which I’ve represented by cracked amphorae filled with lemon-lime soft drink-coloured …liquid.

Mantic Kings of War Ogre Blunderbuss Troops. Again, the leader has a Citadel Ogre head.

Mantic Ogre Shooters with Blunderbusses

The blunderbuss unit had a bit more reposing, in an attempt to make them a little more interesting (or less uninteresting?) I also gave them bucklers and a shield on the boss to aid in this. It wasn’t until the end of painting them that I finally decided on painting the shields red.

I’d hoped to finish all six of these in a week from getting “motivated”, but in the end it took closer to two weeks to finish the Crossbows and a further month to finish the Blunderbusses, but that’s largely due to the fact that I still found it quite hard to make myself sit down and finish them. I found breaking them up into their sub-units just made it easier again. The trouble being, obviously, that I didn’t really enjoy working on them.

Mantic Ogre Shooters with Blunderbusses

Now they’re done, I’m happy enough with them to use them or look at them, but I’m in no rush to work on more of them. I’m planning on getting back into painting more interesting and fun Ogres – not Mantic ones for awhile! I’ve actually got two more units almost done – each both lacking a single Ogre to finish them.

Here’s some shots of the Ogre Army in progress:

Ogre Army - WHFB, 9th Age, Kings of War

The Ogre Battle Line …so far.

Ogre Army - WHFB, 9th Age, Kings of War

Ogre Battle Line – Left Angle

Ogre Army - WHFB, 9th Age, Kings of War

Ogre Battle Line – Right Angle

Ogre Index:

Jes Goodwin’s Classic Citadel Ogres #1. (Nov 2013)

Bob Olley’s Classic Citadel Ogres. (Nov 2013)

Golfag’s Ogre Mercenaries. (April 2014)

Mantic Ogre Shooters: Units 1 & 2.  And Based. (Nov 2013) WIP (Oct 2013)

Mantic Ogre Shooters: Units 3 & 4 (Feb 2015) WIP (Dec 2013)

Mantic Ogre WIP 1 (army concepts/other ogres pre-touchup/rebasing)