Category Archives: Warhammer Fantasy – 9th Age

D&D Monster Manual 4: 77171: Stone Golem (Reaper Bones) & Harlequin Zombie “Buster Rotvessel”

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Some of the first few figures that I finished this year, as part of my recent drive of

“This fricking thing is almost finished and has been for a year or more – just get it done!”

Reaper Bones 77171: Stone Golem and Harlequin Zombie "Buster Rotvessel"

Reaper Bones 77171: Stone Golem and Harlequin Zombie “Buster Rotvessel”

First up is the Reaper Stone Golem, who I decided to paint in a Sandstone kind of scheme, ostensibly for the Egyptian-themed contingent of Marouda’s Undead army. Originally, the plan was to have the bronze/gold armour pieces as part of the magical mechanism keeping the golem animated/enslaved (pick one!) and to additionally feature chipped and worn paint on his skirt in the traditional blue/yellow scheme everyone uses for Egyptians based on Tutankhamen’s Death Mask. The thing was that I was never entirely happy with the idea, so the figure just sat in almost-finished limbo for over a year. So recently, I decided to just bloody finish it. I used the same Citadel Technical Nihilakh Oxide over white for the eyes as I did on the Bronze Bull, though this one was finished a week or two earlier. (And this was used as one of the examples for Marouda to choose the Bull’s eye style from.) I see I’ve missed some overflow below the belt line on it’s skirt. Probably from when I’d planned to paint the skirt. I’ll have to go back and touch that up. Maybe.

Reaper Bones 77171: Stone Golem and Harlequin Zombie "Buster Rotvessel"

Rear view. Just look at that arse-crack! That’s an arse-crack for the ages!

The second figure in this update is the old Harlequin Miniatures Zombie. Somewhat of a classic figure in many ways, mostly due to his distinctive “exploded” torso. I picked up this figure in a single blister many, many years ago. Long enough to qualify him as an “Oldhammer” figure? Maybe just on the fringes, since it would likely have been into the mid-90s, when GW stalwarts like Kev Adams and others had started to move on from the company. This guy seems to have a name “Buster Rotvessel” (see what they did there?) and apparently had a whole unit to back him up back in the day. Sadly he no longer appears to be available from Black Tree Design, who currently own the old Harlequin sculpts. Still, I’m sure he’s relatively easily available on eBay and from other sources. Still, the silly name they gave him makes me keep thinking of Busta Rhymes. And giggling. 😛

Not a perfect figure by any means, his ham-hands and the tree-trunk handles on his weapons are both somewhat ridiculous, and indicative of the WHFB4-era’s aesthetics that he’s very much a part of (despite not being an actual Citadel figure) but his obese, corpulent, exploded physique add a lot of extra character to the model overall. He’d been sitting around in various stages of partially painted for several years (5?) before I finally pulled my finger out and finished highlighting the skin and picked out the exposed bone. A week later when I was blooding up some Zombivors, he got finished up with the same batch.

77017: Skeletal Swordsman (Reaper Bones)

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Since Marouda is building an Undead army for KoW, and was interested in practicing/learning how to paint more gooder, I dug out the undead Bones figures from their first Kickstarter. I’d already knocked up the 6 archers for a missile unit, and so suggested these Swordsmen and Spearmen as easy/simple/fast figures to teach my method of doing bone. It’s much easier to paint “naked” skeletons than clothed or armoured ones, that’s for sure! They got up to about half done – the point of starting to highlight the bones after base coat and wash, when Marouda chickened out(!) because she was intimidated by picking out the bones, so they sat on my paint desk taking up space for 6 months or so.

Now that I’m starting to paint again, and starting on her Mythic Greek army, I had an idea while cleaning up the Wargames Foundry Greek Undead (think Jason and the Argonauts) and noticed that the Bones Spearmen have Dipylon-style shields. I decided then to pair these bones figures up with the Foundry Undead Swords to make a full unit of 12 (20) for her Kings of War forces. They can obviously do double duty between Mythic Greeks and Generic Undead. Unless of course the Mythic Greeks are fighting the Generic Undead. Then they’ll have to choose a side!

 

Bones Skeleton Swordsmen.

So anyway, there’s absolutely nothing special about the paintjobs on these. I finished them off over 2 days that were mostly spent playing Far Cry 4, and the final touch was adding some of Warlord Games’ Greek shield transfers and rimming the shields to give them more of a Hoplon look. Since these figures are pretty …shall we say basic. We chose unexciting transfers for them. They’ll be the rear and centre-mid ranks of the unit, and so will mostly be hidden by their nicer Foundry brethren once the unit is set up. They’re being shown here mostly due to wanting to document what I get done this year a bit better than I did last year, and also to share my opinion on these models. Only changes to the models has been mounting them on Proxie Models 25mm round bases so they fit in with the rest of my armies and doing the usual sand & putty combo – and slicing off the shield bosses to make them look a little more like Hoplon-style shields. Obviously helped a great deal by the transfers, and surprisingly, even more so by the simple act of rimming the shields in a simple Hoplite-style.

Bones Skeletons, in roughly the formation they’ll be used (back row and middle centre).

As models go, like many Bones, these do what they say on the tin, in a very basic manner. I’d really only recommend them for roleplayers. If you’re playing D&D and want some cheap and cheerful skellys for your adventures, then these are a perfectly serviceable way to go. They even work okay if you’re the kind of roleplayer who never paints their models, or just gives them a wash to bring out the detail. For wargamers, there are many better options out there. Still, I already owned these, they pass the three-foot test, and they’ve now gone from Unpainted to Painted, and we know that every time a miniature gets painted, a Kitten gets their Wings, so it’s all good.