Maciek's undead - Death riders part 2 (215 points)

Rank and file month #3

March was a month of much coffee, little sleep and many work deadlines. Zombies would have been more appropriate subject of painting to reflect my general state, but given time shortages I decided to stick to Death Riders. So here goes my entry for March including: 4 Death riders, one champion (level 10 hero) and one standard bearer for the total of 215 points.

These guys were fun to paint (nearly all preparation was done in December). They did require some assembly after painting (rider, horse, sword and shield) and since they are not the best fit with the horses, this time I pinned and numbered them before painting. This reduced the risk of damaging the paintjob when putting them together. I kept the same dark colour palette as last month with increased use of non-silver metallic colours for the helmet details. 

Just to make my life harder, I gave the champion alternating rows of steel and brass/gold scales. I like how it came out (visible on the back shot) and will be using it in the future for high elf heroes ;-)

The standard bearer was a later addition to the force. It took quite some effort and cursing to put together properly. In its default setting the big crossbar of the banner pole is right above the winged helmet so good luck fitting any banner there. I had to cut, reposition and pin (along two axes) the banner pole at a different angle so that it can take the banner and fit into a regiment. The big helmet wings with tiny attachement points took three attempts to glue on straight. It's a pretty but fragile model, so I will definitely be magnetising it to the movement tray. The banner itself was a quick inking job and will fit right with the skeletons (see my January entry), but I am tempted to replace it with something more elaborate - let's see if I can do that during the "Characters" month. 

Lastly, a regiment shot with combined outputs from February and March, coming together into a full unit.

 

Main lessons from this (and previous) month for me are: painting skeleton horses takes much longer than expected, so best to adjust expectations.  This refers to layering highlights - dry-brush would be much faster, but in my experience is never as smooth. Second I'll still have to work on establishing a systematic daily painting routine for the following months. Despite good progress in first week of March, I had to pause due to work commitments and then paint like crazy in the last week to make up for it.

For April, I will switch from painting bone and will move to something more fleshy, squishy and hungry for brains: zombies!

Cheers, 

Maciek