At the time I pretty much only played Dark Elves (I was and guess still am very mono army when it comes to collecting!) in fantasy so it was my first proper experience of using a different army. I got them all as new releases hot off the press and painted them up in record time, having them live for their first few months in the GW display cabinets down in Poole.
If I remember correctly the army was finished in several months and saw action in a few games to moderate success. The only part of the army which is missing is a casket of souls. It was the centrepiece of the army but its use was short lived. Back in circa 03/04 (if I remember correctly) I left it behind at my local GW and when I came back to collect it... it had disappeared never to be seen again.
So without further ado, here is the army!
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In the army we have a unit of skeleton warriors, some horsemen, a liche priest, tomb swarms, ushabti, charioteers and the Tomb King and a Tomb Prince with the battle standard.
I went for a very simply unifying colour scheme for the army. Blades were silver but any other metal was painted gold, a bronze (brazen brass perhaps) base, a predominantly shining gold colour with flesh wash and highlights with mithral silver (ah the good old paints!)
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The Ushabti are fantastic models and in my opinion still the best ones in the Tomb King range. They have so much character and really scream Tomb Kings for me. I'm not sure if the fluff has always been as it is now, but I love the image of them being the Tomb Kings bodyguard in life and then becoming this in death. I always thought they were statues came to life back in the day!
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The heads of the ushabti portray various Khemri gods. Cac't recall which are which though!
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The other main colour in the army is the white. It would have been glorious and bright back when they were all living, however now the colour is faded and dirty with age. The skeleton swordsmen all have the Khemrian helmets and the swords. If I recall correctly you didn't get many in the box so I had to borrow them from wherever I could!
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Here we see the Prince and the King in all their splendour. The gems are all bright blue and red often in alternating sequence. Sadly the photos don't do them justice but they look wonderfully shiny in the flesh!
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The bone in the army is painted to be bleached by the Khemrian sun. No drybrushing, everything was highlighted by hand (it probably drove me mad).
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Here we have the tombswarms, another model for me which have so much character and importantly... are very easy to paint! A little bit of blue black highlighting and they are pretty much done!
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Here we have the Liche Priest with lots of red in his armour and weapons to signify his seniority. I always felt the Liche Priest models were some of the weaker ones in the Tomb Kings range. I'm not sure if they had different sculptors to the Tomb King models, however the casket of souls priest was much better.
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A close up photos of the skeleton light horsemen. On the banners hanging from the icon I made an attempt at some Khemrian hieroglyphics.
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A close up of the skeleton warriors. They were one thing really lacking in my army, I only managed to paint 17 of them and clearly got a bit fed up of painting all the bone!
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The combined Von Carstein and Khemrian army! Perhaps they need a Nagash to lead them...
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I couldn't resist adding a quick Praetorian photo at the end. I've been getting to work on a couple of Taurox and am very much liking how they are progressing.
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I'll get back to some more Praetorian posting soon, but still to come there are some Dark Elves, a few Bretonians and a Battle Fleet Gothic fleet...
Thanks for reading, as always comments very welcome!
Lovely too see yet more of your collection! Impressed that so much is fully painted!
ReplyDeleteExcellent Stuff. Nice skellingtons.
ReplyDeleteMost impressive and beautiful work!
ReplyDeleteJust beautiful, mate!
ReplyDelete