Some Old Lead Undead

[Mat]

Well this first post will be a little light on, but I am planning to paint up my old lead undead horde, and have made a start, so thought I should start a thread here.

Eventually there will be over 100 skeletons, war machines and characters in the army, all metal and mostly from the late 80's. Models include:
The Nightmare Legion (about 30).
A Zombie Dragon.
A Corpse Cart.
Undead Chariots.
Screaming Skull Catapults.
Armoured Skeletons.
Undead Samurai.
Skeleton Archers.
Undead Cavalry.
A few characters (a Necromancer, a Vampire, Morbidus the Liche etc.).
I've had most of this lot since it first came out, and have added to it over the years thanks to the occasional ebay purchase. I still have a few models to collect to complete the collection, but have stopped for now (thanks mainly to insufficient funds, but also due to the fact that the lead pile is getting a little overwhelming, and I want to work on reducing it for a little while).

I was a bit undisciplined and painted one up. I was planning to finish my Imperial Guard models before starting the undead, but, you know, sometimes you just have to paint what you feel like painting!

Anyway enough rambling, here is the first cab off the rank: a C18 Undead Samurai "Ne" from that pivotal year 1985. The year Doc invented the Delorian Time Machine, and the year that the Terminator went back in time to kill Sarah Connor. Coincidence? I think not! Yep that's right, Doc from Back to the Future is actually Arnold Schwarzenegger! Ahem.

Anyway, a painted miniature.

More pics on the blog.

 

[Mat]

I managed to get a second model for this army painted up, bring the undead horde up to a massive two models!
Li-Che is a spell casting support character for the undead Samurai, acting as an advisor, mentor and sitting on the council of three, who govern the actions of the unit.

I had originally painted him/her up as a test model, but changed the robe colours in to fit with the rest of the unit.

I'm trying to paint these models using only about five pots of paint, mixing where I have to, and using brown washes and the like to shade where necessary. I'm hoping this will give them a fairly organic look.

The bases are another thing that I haven't settled on (not only because they're round!). I would like to experiment with some crackle medium to create a cracked, dried mud look that is similar to the resin bases that I use on my imperial guard army. I will keep painting up bases like this for now, but might change them down the track.

And here you can see the growing undead horde in all it's mighty glory!

 

[mbh]

These are great. Old school charm

 

[daddyorchips]

very nice!



agfsgfsdhfdhafgh

 

[littleleadperson]

Nice work. I'm a massive fan of the eighties and early nineties undead ranges.

 

[The Fat Git]

A good start. Round bases? You're not using them for, gasp, Age of Sigmar?

 

[Mat]

Thanks everyone. I'm hoping to have another member of the horde done in a couple of days.

A good start. Round bases? You're not using them for, gasp, Age of Sigmar?

I actually might! It ticks a few boxes for me actually(ducks for cover...).

Narrative driven.
No point values.
Use pretty much whatever models you want.

The background isn't my cup of tea, but I can stick to the old world.
Of course this can all be done on 20mm squares too so I may change this down the track.


Edit.
Another member added to the horde. Undead Samurai Chi armed with a yari.

A couple more pictures are on the blog.

 

[Mat]

Just a bit more of an update here. There are a few more pictures on my blog.

I painted up another five of the samurai, so that unit is coming along.

Also I have done up my first character, who I have named Necromancer Valignano (one of the Marauder undead characters).

So the horde is growing ever so slowly...

 

[Micha]

I´ve never seen any of these models, didn´t even know there were undead samurai, let alone from Citadel. Anyway, nice painting. The Necromancer is great, very nice OSL and smooth paintwork.

 

[Mat]

Cheers Micha. I don't think the undead samurai got a lot of mileage, as most people (at least in my area anyway, which was basically me!) were more into the undead of european origin.
I'm mixing it up a little in this army, having collected most of the samurai (I still need two more) who will fight as a separate unit alongside the more conventional undead. I'm planning for them to be a bodyguard type unit for the necromancer.

In other news, I've repainted the first of my Nightmare Legion models; Ennio Mordini, skeleton major hero and all around bad guy.

Back in the day he was a fairly formidable force, managing to survive most of the black powder weapons that were aimed his way by my mates Dragon Company dwarves before charging, killing a few and being cut down by Prince Ulther.

He is suffering a bit from his third coat of paint, and I really should have stripped him to get some more detail in areas like the teeth, which is basically a big blob rather than individual teeth like it was originally sculpted. I was thrown by the chainmail, which is still very detailed and not clogged up at all. I thought I didn't need to strip him because of this, but I suspect there is quite a thick coat of old enamel white on this guy's bones that the chainmail didn't get. But such is life, I'm still happy with how he turned out and have way too many models in the painting queue to worry about things like this. Perhaps one day I will come back to him. The eyes are a little bit freaky too, and could do with some more attention some day as well.

These days he is still doing his bit to make sure that the forces of Death do their thing. I will use him as a wight king with black axe, which basically means he is a choppy hero who likes killing other heroes. And makes nearby skeletons better in a fight. Nice.

As usual, more pictures in the blog:
Linky link

 

[Mat]

A few more models...

Morbius the Liche:

A Casket of Souls made from C17 Skeletons.

A couple more Undead Samurai:

Including the unit champion Anko

Armoured Skeletons with Great Weapons (that will count as Grave Guard):

Including command group with Champion from the old Chariot box:

And my Vampire from the Night Horrors blisters:

"Alas Poor Yorick, I shall use him to cast a spell":

More blurry phone pictures and questionable commentary in my blog.

 

[ZeroTwentythree]

Great painting. These old undead sculpts have really grown on me, with time. (Would love to start collecting them myself, if I could afford it.) I really like the casket too.

 

[Mat]

Cheers 023!
I must confess that I do lurk on your blog from time to time, and have used it for inspiration when painting these up. So please keep up the awesome work!

I love that skeletal ogre unit that you are working on, and look on with envy wishing that I had one.

In other news, I've added a pair of screaming skull catapults to the finished box.

I also added an overseer with whip to make sure those skulls keep flinging at the enemy at a suitable rate of knots.

He is from the skeleton chariot if he looks familiar. I'd like to get that painted up soon too, but I'm still trying to decide what would be a good base for it.

More pictures in the blog...

 

[Niko]

I love your painting ! Brilliant !

 

[Fimm McCool]

Whoo! Inspiring me to get on with my own skellies. Lovely stuff!

 

[Mat]

Whoo! Inspiring me to get on with my own skellies. Lovely stuff!

Awesome mate. Glad to hear it. You haven't got a couple of spare undead samurai lying around have you? I only have 18 of the 20 they made.

I love your painting ! Brilliant !

Cheers Niko!

So I have completed another unit.
Well, mostly completed them. I only have 17 and really need to get my hands on three more.
But the skeleton archers for this army are done.

Here they are, complete with a Bob Olley champion and the c17 command standard and musician.

A closer pic of the three amigos. I'm not fully sold on the brown banner. I think I'll change it to something less boring. Brown isn't a very inspiring colour after all.
It reminds me about that joke about the admiral who asks for his brown pants when he sees he's been surrounded.

Using a low flying carrion for target practice...

Only three of these chaps.

Marauder miniatures archers. A bit smaller than the rest, but look the part.

I have three ring-ins at the moment. I forget the manufacturer, but they will do for now.
If anyone has a few archers like those above that they would be willing to part with then please let me know, otherwise I'll start scouring eBay again.

But that's it for now. Another unit taken from the lead pile. I just did a quick tally, and I have 92 undead models left to paint (95 if you count the three archers I still need to get). Horses and riders count as one model, right?
Under a hundred to go! Woot!
Cheers!