Our thanks to Games Workshop for providing our team with the Deathrattle army set for review.
Wight King on Skeletal Steed
Toby is about to elaborate effusively about the Barrow Guard, and who am I to keep you from that, so I wont be as long here. The build for the Wight King is extremely easy – you stick most of a horse on the scenic base and then use either the King or Lord body & horse head. Job done. A pleasant build, the only bit I had to leave as a sub-assembly was the shield as otherwise the sculpt leaves you lots of access to the detail on the model.
I’ve built the Barrow Guard but haven’t put brush to model yet as the turnaround on this set was uh, quite short. That being said, amazing sculpts and much like the hero they went together like a dream. The downside to this kit as that whilst the build is lovely there’s essentially no build variety beyond the command group. There’s no choice between hand weapons and lances – if it’s not part of the command group it has a lance. For a unit you’re going to want to take in 10s that means you’ll be duplicating poses within the unit unless you convert/kitbash. Bit of a shame, but it is 2/5 models affected by this.
One thing I would like to do is compare new to ‘old’ with the Wight King on Skeletal Steed, so I’ve provided a side-by-side shot. Obviously the new model is on a much larger base, but the horse and rider are not wildly out of proportion with the old kit. The horse is a bit larger, and the king is a bit bulkier, but I think if you built up a new base and stuck your old Wight King on it, it would not look out of place. Frankly, that’s my plan of what to do with the old one, I’ll call it a Wight Lord on Skeletal Steed and feel good about getting two different heroes.
Barrow Guard
Hi, I’m Toby (@badusernametag) and I’m reviewing the Barrow Guard from the new SBGL release. With a burgeoning skeleton horde and a real love of the shambling dead I was really keen to get hold of these kits and see how they go together. I’ve built and (mainly) painted all the new SBGL kits, from Cursed City, through deadwalkers, deathrattle, blood knights and all the Warhammer Underpants nonsense. So I feel pretty well qualified to give these goons a spin. Let’s dive in…
Build
Sprues! Three sprues to make 5 Barrow Guard. So that’s a mighty 12 sprues to make all 20 Barrow Guard (formerly Grave Guard). You get a number of options per base model. So whilst not fully customisable, there’s enough variety to make things interesting. This is pretty standard for most of these GW kits now and I’m behind it. I’ve heard some moaning that you can’t customise as with fully modular kits of old. But my attitude is that if you want to convert and kitbash, you still can and the trade off for the cool and dynamic poses you get out of the base models is well worth it. Great.
All the droogs here can have Glaives or Sword and Shield, with options for a champion, standard and musician in addition. For those of us who are more into building cool models than the rules, it is a blessing that the weapon options have zero game effect. So you can (and I did!) build a variety of skelebros with no impact on your gaming experience. Huzzah! There’s a good variety here. So I wasn’t bored and didn’t see much repetition, even with 20 to assemble (admittedly, I have only built 13 so far).
Now I have big, lumpy fingers, so I was slightly dreading my experience with the deathrattle spears, which for those who haven’t built them, are wafer thin. They have a horrid habit of ‘pinging’ off, snapping at the sight of a stiff breeze. Battlefield repairs aplenty are required when the skeleton horde comes to town. Luckily this is not the case here, with the glaives being pretty solid and swords not too wiffly. Having said that, they are still quite delicate kits. Not Lumineth fragile, but thanking you for some care. I will mention that some of the legs are a little delicate when they come off the sprue, as their integrity comes when they’re fully assembled with the back, so watch out for that. The only fiddly bit is the banner, which is pretty fragile and sadly might suffer the same ‘pinging’ effect as those dreaded deathrattle spears. I beefed up the central part (in between the two flags) with a healthy dollop of super glue and sand, to make it more rigid.
Compared to the other SBGL kits these guys fit in beautifully. They’re thiccer and more heavily armoured than the deathrattle skeletons, with bigger shields and the glaives look decidedly meaner than the (awful) spears. Definitely fit to be the ‘heavy’ infantry of the Undead range.
It’s nice to see that gone are the days of all the undead having painfully obvious undead themed iconography and symbols all over them, as if their living-times blacksmith/liege lord had them pegged as future servants of a necromancer!? The shields and weapons have an old, antiquated vibe to them and the whole aesthetic speaks of time worn martial splendor. You might think that doing robust, ancient looking skeleton warriors would be easy, but they have been kinda goofy before. Not so these. They’re nicely executed. Bringing the aesthetic of Velmourn’s sons through into AoS with style. Personally I’m not into the batwinged helms, so I shaved most of those off. Leaving just a nice pointy hat. But each to their own (Never fear, I have a Heresy Night Lords army, so they’ve all been saved in a baggy to stick on some Sace Marihes later…)
One thing I’m unsure of is the proliferation of flags and drums. Now I love a flag, but as the rules allow 1 banner and 1 musician in 5 and each set of 5 builds one of each, that means to get the most ‘effective’ unit you need to build ALL of them. If you do so you’d lose out on the other options for those poses, which is a shame, as they’re neat! I’ve circumnavigated this issue with a little creative kitbashing and basically only having one command section in 10. But it is a small issue (game wise) that the kit falls down on.
I often do a lot of kitbashing with my models, but with limited time I tried to keep it simple here. Also, with a kit like this, simple is often the way. It’s hard to improve on the subtle grace of a well sculpted skeleton droog with a big choppa! I did do a few head swaps, chopped off most of the bat wings (as mentioned) and built a big ass flag (green stuff, brass rod pole). Did the bases as flagstones (shards of plasticard) to match my other Undead horde goons. One thing I did do was a simple multibase. I’ve got really into these for ‘horde’ armies as they look good on the table and let you make some little diorama centrepieces in your (mainly infantry) army. This includes the mandatory ‘rising from the grave guy’, for which I used the spare torso front you don’t use when you build the champion (B1), a random skeleton torso from another kit, a skull from the skulls set and some spare arms from here. The #ageofmultibasing is real…
Paint
So I am a special snowflake that only paints in oils. This could be (and might be, if there is interest) be the subject of several articles all on its own. But for now, lets just say it involves a lot of wet blending, sloppy washes and expressive impasto, with not really any metallics or drybrushing. My technique allows for me to dial up the detail and level of attention. So one can crash out some models dead fast to a reasonable standard (as here), or spend many evenings carefully blending as the paint dries, for greater detail and depth. This means you can vary speed and detail within an army, as you might with any other technique.
I feel the key to working out a good scheme on any models is what are the predominant features of the model (skin, hair, weapons and armour etc) and emphasising those parts. As well as the features you want to accentuate. As with the Sons of Velmourn that were their predecessors, this kit is actually mainly armour. Despite being skeleton droogs, they’re very heavily armoured. Therefore the armour is king and needs most attention, but ALSO I felt the bits of bone that are present needed to ‘pop’, so those bits stand out.
My existing scheme features orange armour and (very dirty) beige cloth. I imagine they once strode to battle in regal red armour, with tabards and pennants of shining white, but that the long aeons in the grave have sapped the colour and vigour from their vestments. Leaving only a desaturated orange and dirty beige behind. That and it’s a classic Blanchitsu colour scheme!? I’ve continued this here, but did some playing around to improve the orange with some new colours I’ve been enjoying recently. Really playing up that intense de-saturation. The cold tones of blue/white bone and dark grey stone are contrasted with the orange and the beige is shaded with a very green black, for depth. Once properly dried (takes min 5 days) I’ll do some more shading, washes and weathering in dark grey and umber.
It’s a dead simple scheme, but one I can elaborate on easily for more centerpiece and elite units, such as heroes, vampires, zombie dragons and the like.
Orange:
English Red + Medieval Yellow (Mixed)- More Yellow to highlight
Shade with Brown Pink
Beige:
Brownish Grey 2 base, highlight with Brownish Grey 1, shade with Atrament Black
Bone:
Bluish Grey 2 base, highlight with Bluish Grey 1, then Zinc White
Metal:
Base in Payne’s Grey, dirty washes in rusty colours
Flagstones/Rocks:
Brownish Grey 2 base, highlight with Brownish Grey 1, shade with Payne’s Grey
Other:
Base in Payne’s Grey, highlight with something else
Conclusion
Fun kit that is easy to build. Some nice options and dynamic poses despite being ostensibly mono-pose kits. Only one ‘easy to snap’ bit. Great aesthetic that really nails the ‘ancient, faded glory’ vibe. Big fan. Rounds out the range and replaces a very dated kit. Can’t wait to get my hands on the knights and other new kits coming soon…
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