Thirdly you’ll be fine for gluing the grave guard version together but the skeleton version will be pretty spindly and will have a narrow join at the middle making them prone to breaking (again, not insurmountable but take care).įinally the DRS bits are just a little bit bigger all round than the GG so your finished models will be a little long in the torso and short in the leg (or vice versa) compared to what you’d expect (similar to the look of the new Kruelboyz – it works for the Orcs because it makes them look apelike and brutish but I think it might not be quite right with skeletons). You could work with this and build your versions in the same way but you’d still end up with GG leaning forward (and thus slightly shorter) and upright DRS (and thus slightly taller) which would reduce the visual impact of the different heights that you’re looking to create. I’d also note that there’s a difference in posture between the two kits, the GG are leaning forward whereas the DRS are (roughly) upright. Some of the cloth from the DRS could be cut away but most of it would have to stay and would get in your way a lot as well, potentially making it quite hard to line things up. You might also end up with so much cloth around the legs that the grave guard looks like its wearing a many layered kilt or dress. The DRS torsos have a lot of extra cloth, chainmail etc which will hang down over the GG legs and you’ll likely have a bit of a struggle to avoid them pushing against each other. In principle I’d say it’s a good idea and I think it would probably work but I can see it being challenging. In the meantime any comments, suggestions or feedback is very welcome. Now we’ll have to see how they look with paint on them. Standing next to a skeleton warrior they certainly look a lot more businesslike and imposing than their predecessors did. My solution in end was to steer into it and give him a tall, bat-winged helmet to really labour the point, and on the whole I think it works. That said it’s always easier to appreciate these things when someone else does them, and criticise them as failings in your own work – and that’s exactly what I did with him at first. The same can be said of the first one, and indeed the stock Games Workshop skeletons – indeed the very awkwardness of the new models is one of their great strengths, placing them neatly in the uncanny valley and emphasising their inhuman nature. The first thing that struck me here is that his proportions are very odd and his stance somewhat awkward. Still, I persisted, and here’s the result. Games Workshop’s two-handed weapons are always a horrible nightmare to assemble even if you’re using the right parts in the right places, going off-piste tends to turn into an exercise in which the entire lexicon of swear words gets worked through at least twice. Pleased, and perhaps overconfident, following this success, I went on to try making one with a great weapon. For the first one I went for a straightforward sword and shield arrangement. I wouldn’t call these an entirely unqualified success, I think on a second attempt I could make improvements, but overall I’m pretty pleased with these. Could I, I found myself wondering, mix parts from the two kits to make bigger grave guard? In the flesh the size difference is even more noticeable. Keep in mind also that the hunched pose of the Grave Guard actually emphasises his size here, bringing his face closer to the lens of the camera and making him look bigger than he is. Hardly the imposing undead champions they claim to be are they, not when the new boys tower over them in every respect. Here’s a quick reminder of how the old grave guard look alongside one of the new skeletons (taken from the Cursed City box). For those unfamiliar with the various ranks of undead soldiers in Games Workshop’s ranges the skeleton warriors are the rank and file, the grave guard are the elite wights – yet although the old grave guard models have held up very well to the passage of time, scale creep means they are now a lot shorter and less imposing than the newly released skeletons. A couple of months ago when the Soulblight Vampires range was released I toyed with the idea of using the new skeleton warriors to kitbash grave guard.
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