Raise the Dead: A Tale of 4 Armies

As the endless shambling hordes of undead infantry shuffling through the pages of the blog, a rattling sound is heard. Something is getting closer...quickly.

Something with pace and power and more than a little weight...

...something that was thought lost to legend has risen again...

This is the Undead Chariot from the Skeleton War Machines boxed set released in 1991 (I think) and bought for me for my fifteenth birthday.

It's a metal sculpt and because I was somewhat of a novice modeller, it was prone to breaking and ended up sitting in my bits box whilst the horses were used to mount various undead champions over time, including one mummy.

The dragon skull on the front was eventually drafted in to an army standard bearer but the rest sat unloved and was ultimately forgotten.

That was until the end of last year when the main body of the chariot and the wheels turned up in the haul I got back from a friend, and when the Warhammer: The Old World hype hit I was motivated to put it back together.

I'd been using the horses to pull Krell, the Lord of Undeath along in a small Celt chariot as a proxy Black Coach and so I've simply transferred the old chariot onto the bases I was using for that

Painted with a series of contrast paints, dry brushes and washes (all of which always work much better on metal than on plastic), and smeared in Blood for the Blood God where a layer of flesh that I'd never previously noticed provides a degree of underfoot comfort for the crew 

  

Speaking of the crew, the chap with a goat's/bull's head and a scythe is apparently called Longhorn, appropriately. The poor charioteer didn't get a name, unlike the other characters in the box.

For those keeping track, the unit champion of my Spearmen is called 'Screamer' and the Necromancer is 'Morbius'. 'Reaper' was the army standard bearer that made use of the big skull, but he's currently been stripped and is awaiting a new role (or a new flag).

I'm really pleased with how this has come out as it's such a cool model and really harks back to my early collecting. It will take over from Krell on Black Coach duties; it has horses, wheels and a bloke with a scythe. If anybody asks where the vampire is, I'll just say that they are standing in him.

In other, less exciting news, I've redone the base of the Zombie Dragon I painted last year to fit with the rest of the army.

I'm not counting the Dragon as a painted model, and the chariot only counts as one, however, it does take three off the Lead Mountain because Id counted them separately last year.

Acquired: 0

Painted: 118

Lead Mountain: 870