I recently bought a lot of 50+ older style plastic Citadel Skeletons off Ebay for less than the price of a single squad of 10 new ones, and have spent a few evenings plonking away at them. When I received the horde in the mail, many of the minis were reduced to parts, with many a broken arm and leg. A few were painted, but most were not. All needed thorough cleaning with both knife and with soapy water.

After the requisite cleaning up and prep-work was done, I had enough parts to build 45 skellies with hand weapons or spears -one with battle damage where the arms would be, plus 12 archers. Most of the parts were from the second style of skeletons made by GW in the 90s, but a few were from the older style made in the 80s. Those brought back many fond memories, as I built a box of them way back when.

The original builder of these had also converted a few of them to have, say 4 arms, or battle damaged weapons and many shields were glued to the hands at an angle to suggest the builder did not know how a shield actually is held. No matter. I left these as they were.

Painted in batches of 10, 20 and then 15 over the course of three evenings.

Archers to be painted at a later date.

I used some 30mm lipped “display” bases that I bought in bulk from Reaper some time ago to prepare for the third Bones KS shipment (that is several months delayed, but should soon be in hand, hopefully already in May or in June.)

And, yes, the 30mm bases do take up more space on the shelf and lets fewer models into base contact in game, but they do look so much better than 25mm rounds or even the original 20mm squares.

45 Skeleton Warriors

Warhammer Fantasy Battles, undead faction

Games Workshop, 1980s and 90s

HIPS plastic

30mm bases

Painted so far this month: 49 / 30.  

(which nicely covers the 10 leftover from last month and then some!)

Painted so far this year: 134 / 365. Just 231 to go!