Tuesday 18 April 2023

Tomb Kings Screaming Skull Catapults.

A Rare choice option for the Tomb Kings armies, the Screaming Skull Catapults.

With so many lovely and terrifying options for Rare choices in a Tomb Kings army, I sometimes felt that the Screaming Skull Catapult was overlooked. The models are great, but can be a problem to assemble, and being all pewter glued to pewter, they could be fragile. I always liked the idea of having some sort of war machine in the Tomb Kings army, and one which can shoot over the heads of regiments always meant they could be positioned behind the army, whilst the rest of the army didn't have to worry about getting in it's way.

The models themselves are great. The idea is to have a bone constructed, walking, shooting, undead war machines, an idea reused by GW in the Ossiarch bonereapers army. The Tomb Kings version shoots piles of skulls which magically burn fire, and scream at you at the same time! You can also upgrade to Skulls of the Foe, effectivity shooting back the skulls of your enemies, presumably also screaming and on fire as well!

Anyway, back to the models. They were fun to paint. One problem I did encounter was that a second hand e-bay purchase was missing the feet! So to counter this I built up the base with millput to suggest that the Screaming Skull Catapult was partly buried in the sands.

Enjoy :) 

Both Screaming Skull Catapults.
I placed both on the chariot sized bases to make them sturdier.
The first of the two (with feet!).
Side view.
Front.
This one was missing the little beard on the left side skull, so I just added millput to suggest a little mound of sand.
Left side.
Crew.
The crew are the same for both, so I only photographed one set.
The other Screaming Skull Catapult.
Side view showing the buried feet (or rather not showing them!).
Front view.

Left side view.

As the Tomb kings project is drawing to a close, I shall be posting the backlog of photographs of completed items of the next few weeks. I only have one more regiment left to paint. 

Monday 3 April 2023

Tomb Kings: The Hawk Legion of Settra.

 I finished another regiment of Tomb Guard.

This is a regiment of the old metal Tomb Guard miniatures from 2002. I had been putting off repainting these as I didn't like painting them the first time around, and I was not impressed with assembling them nor how the shields kept falling off. So once I had paint stripped them, they were until late in the project.

To overcome the shield problem I added a piece of green stuff to the connection of where the hand grasps the shield, somewhere which is conveniently hidden from view. I have always found assembling and keeping assembled the metal miniatures from this era (later 1990's until about the mid 2010's) to be a little problematic, with the metal added parts falling off during handling.

The miniatures themselves are quite good. They differ from the later plastic Tomb Guard in the design with their Hawk looking head gear, and that they are all one piece miniatures, and this is the reason I designated them to be Settra's famous Hawk Legion of Tomb Guard. There are two types of the design holding the sword upright, and I managed to collect a regiment of the same one, with the skull design on the armour, not that it seemed to matter as much once I had pained them! I also collected all the same shield design, although I did retain the Tomb Captain's very fancy hawk shield.

Painting was straight forward using the dusty paint scheme. I followed the little background there was on them about having turquoise shields, and I painted the armour a little more gold, and less turquoise. I did the extra gold to suggest the elite within an elite nature of the regiment, and as also not to detract too much from the turquoise of the shields.  I'm happy with them, and they were not as bad to paint in this paint scheme as they were about 20 years ago with the old one.

Enjoy :)



20 Hawk Legion Tomb Guard.
Tomb Captain.
Rear view showing the fancy shield.
Standard Bearer.
I never understood the design reason for him wearing a skull helmet.
Drummer musician.
The sculpting on the drum is actually very good.
A random trio of Hawk Legion Tomb Guard.
I think that the same posed miniature does give the regiment the extra look.
Rear view of a Tomb Guard trooper.

Next update will be more Tomb Kings, of course. I have lot which I have finished painting, but as of yet haven't updated on the blog. I am currently painting my final regiment for this army. I am quite keen to move on from this project now, and I have a table full of goblins in need of sorting out and painting.