From TeemuL: A Fistful of Skeletons [Heresy] (121 points)

One of the many sideprojects I have (I guess I don't really have any main projects:)) is this Warmaster army. I have painted couple of bases before for the previous Challenges, here's one example: Heavy Metal. In December I heard there might be other players in my area, so I decided I need to paint couple of more units to my army. I need some character at least to lead an army, but with these I have enough units for a very small army for a small battle to learn the rules. I guess. There are six bases of basic skeletons with handweapons and shields including two command bases and one base of cavalry. I have now six cavalry bases in total and some archer units from earlier painting sessions.

These are all painted with Contrast paints excluding the metal areas and freehand skulls on the shields. Basing is simple and traditional, goblin green everywhere, then some PVA glue and green sawdust and they are ready to battle on the legendary green grass graveyards of Khemri... I understand the gravestones kind of underline the fact, that these are undead from the graves, some skeletons are still emerging from underground. But why there would be battle in the graveyard? Happily this seems to be a human graveyard and all the warriors were buried with their green shields (with skull motifs) and red shafted weapons! I mean how ragtag they'd look like if they were just random unarmed people from every race in different coloured rags? No Necromancer would never accept a chaos like that!

I must say they look rather nice, grouped thightly together like this and seen from above. Quite pleasing, I'd say. And still enough details and size to actually paint them. And they can be painted in reasonable amount of time, too. Hmm... What would be an ideal "scale" for a wargamer, I guess that is a question I must ask myself (and everyone else on the internet forums). It would be much simpler, if all the miniatures would be the same size, don't you agree? :)

Here they are from the side. As you can see, they are not nicely glued to the bases... They were painted by previous owner and I stripped the paint. I tried to be clever and not remove all the basing material, believing it would make it easier to hide metal bases. Yeah, you can see. The sawdust is so light, it doesn't really cover any gaps, I need to be more careful with the next batch and add some filler to the edges. Additionally some of the strips are not in 90 degree angle, but leaning a bit forward, something I noticed too late. Or was too lazy. But I believe they look quite ok on the battlefield.

Finally a closeup of the hand painted skulls and some bony butts. Geoff has made an observation that necromancy is heresy and I will follow that idea and claim 20 bonus points for Heresy circle (which is next to the Violence circle where I were).

There are 4 cavalry models, 3 points each. And then 89 skeletons in total (I have counted two half skeletons as one full) for 1 point each. 101 points from the skeletons and 20 bonus points, 121 points!

Additionally 90 skulls on skeletons (some are too hooded to count) and 3 on banners plus 83 hand painted skulls on shields and banners.176 skulls in total.

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Oooh, Barks will be very pleased with this entry, Teemu. Wonderful work here. Tomb Kings were my first Warmaster army way back in the day and I think you've done a great job on these boney fellas. I agree, 10mm is a wonderful scale to work in and it just works so nicely for close-ranked units, giving a terrific sense of mass. Also, nice work on hand painting all those skulls on the front ranks' shields - this will please Skully McSkullface to no end. 

Well done Teemu!

- Curt & Huck