Maledrakh picks some Bones

Ritual complete, the Undying Lord reached forth a skeletal hand, his hollow voice proclaiming, “I summon thee, Handmaidens of Yoldar. Come forth and dress thyselves in this New Flesh!”

   A pillar of eldritch fire burst from the summoning circle on the ground. The silent green flames burning without heat, consuming the remains of the virgin sacrifices. Atop the pillar; apparitions taking shape, squirming forms gradually coalescing into several young, naked women clinging to each other, writhing. A rising cacophony of gibbering howls, screams and moans erupted, voiceing the eternal hunger of the barren void. Palpable waves of noise rolled across the floor like a horrendous avalanche.

   The Lord basked in the green glow, his deranged batwinged henchman flapping hysterically, incessant cackling drowned out for once. The unflappable skeletal guard looking on, motionless, as the glowing forms seemingly came closer, into focus, becoming ever more …real.

—

Some random older Bones today, all of which have recently been rebased. When I originally recieved the first couple of Bones kickstarters I did not have a 3D printer, and was still using square bases for fantasy minis for the most part. Then came an extended period of trying out different styles and types of bases, and I eventually ended up using 30mm or 40mm rounds for them. I also have a tendency to prep, base and undercoat most minis before stuffing them in a box or a drawer to await painting.

Since I am a bit of a hoarder, this means that I have an …extensive… back catalogue of older minis waiting to be painted. And many of these are on bases that I no longer think fit the minis. This leads me to having bouts of rebasing every now and then, sticking them onto what currently are my go-to bases.

I like to believe that this means I get closer to the ideal base each time. Of course, no such ideal base exists outside of Platos Sphere of Forms.

It also means that sometimes I actually take the step to finish off some of these older minis as well as just rebase. Such as with these.

77558 Undying Lord of Death

—it has an all too human gaze, one that has seen it all…

Sculpted by Bob Ridolfi. This one is from the “Undying Lords” add-on set in the Bones 3 kickstarter.

I made it a 32mm 3Dprinted base.

77001 Skeletal Spearman

This is actually the O.G. Bones miniature. Way before the very first kickstarter, Reaper made and released a couple dozen or so of their most popular minis in this new PVC Bones material. These were cheap and obviously sold well enough that they chose to do a kickstarter to see if they could fund the moulds for some more. The kickstarter blew up. Massively. The rest is history.

This skeleton has the first bones SKU code of 77001. It is currently sold in packs of three identical skeletons. I believe I got this specific model as part of a Halloween gift in a mailorder shipment from Reaper some years ago. I had this model originally slated to be used in a diorama base for the colossal skeleton, but that did not materialise. It has been lying about the place ever since.

Being of the original Bones selection, it is made in the original soft and bendy material. You can see the soft details especially in the face. The teeth are barely there, and the eye sockets are not quite symmetrical. How much of this is because of shallow detailing in the original sculpt I do not know. It took a bit of boiling and pulling to reset the noodle-like spear into a semblance of straightness.

Sculpted by David Pugh

77631 Vorvorlaka

This is the second one of these I have painted, the first one being featured in a LAF painters league entry. I chose to paint this differently, with dark purple to red on the wings.

Nahnah-nahnah-nahnah-nahnah-Batman!

(Sorry I just had to.) This one has a 25mm base.

The Vorvorlaka is from the Graveyard Expansion in the Bones 3 kickstarter.

Sculpted by Bob Ridolfi

77095 Ghostly Summons

and with some light from beyond:

This mini is made in translucent green material. The key to painting translucents is to undercoat them with clear varnish. I used Army Painter Anti-Shine matt varnish spray for this one, back in the day.

I tried to pick out each of the three ladies with a different colour, at the same time trying out using Citadel Contrast on translucents for the first time. The top one is painted with Contrast Darkoath Flesh, I did not really like how it behaved, so I continued with shades: the next one with Citadel Reikland Flesh shade and the third one with Citadel Druuci Violet Shade. The green flames I did in the newly released Citadel Tesseract Glow technical paint.

As I stated above I did not like how the contrast paint behaved, I needed to go over the spots several times. The shades went on as usual, not much of a problem. The tesseract glow really upped the brightness of the green and made it seem much more glowy.

I based the whole thing on a 40mm base.

The Ghostly Summons if from the “Haunts” add-on in the Vampire Pledge Core Set from the first Bones kickstarter.

Sculpted by Julie Guthrie

What foul sorcery is this?!?

These minis were finished September 12th 2020.