Twenty Years of Raisin' Dead (Vampire Counts showcase/retrospective)

[Jonathan E]

Christmas 2003 was where it all started, really.

I'd had Warhammer Fantasy Battle bits and bobs before, playing a handful of games with starter set materials or the Chaos Warriors I'd collected because a 3000 point army could be had for a hundred quid (if you spent a quarter of it on a Greater Daemon, and you didn't mind losing a lot). Then the vast majority of it had been car-booted under the auspice of grandparental authority and concern about examinations.1

This, though: this was the year that I had beer money. I'd just turned eighteen, started my first job as a weekend bartender, and didn't have many vices other than goth girls and Jaffa Cakes. And on a beer money budget, in 2004, things were possible. Like, say, slow-growing a Warhammer Fantasy Battle army.

I've been trying to work out why I made the choices I did. I thought it was the White Dwarf article on the Army of Sylvania that influenced me, but a quick fact check shows that came out in March of the following year, and Storm of Chaos must have taken place over that summer. The influence, in truth, was somewhat older.

I'd gotten into Mordheim on release, lured in by the early version shared in White Dwarf and the promise of Necromunda-with-swords that it offered. Like many of my enthusiasms, it didn't get far beyond the starter set, but I did lay my hands on a couple of other warbands. Possessed, which I'd badly mutilated trying to stick bows on the Brethren, and Undead.

I didn't have the latter-day Undead warband. with its fancy-ass metal Zombies derived from their pulse-having counterparts (and their contemporary metal Ghouls, possibly my favourite Citadel ghoul models). I had the original - the front row of metal figures, and a sprue of plastic Zombies I don't know if I was ever arsed to build.

What I was arsed to do, with the rumours of an upcoming Army of Sylvania army list and the presence of a Von Carstein Vampire in my collection already (and also, did I mention the goth girls? I was very much in my "popped collar and swoosh" stage of "fashion" at the time), was Mail Order a few more sprues to test the principle.2

I couldn't tell you which of my Skeleton Spearmen were the first, any more; this unit has fallen apart and been rebuilt more times than I dare to mention. I do recall matching up the Empire Halberdier limbs with the Skeleton hands and forearms so I had some front rank lads with spears down, and some rear rank lads with spears up or even shouldered.

I could tell you that these were probably the first Zombies I did, because they have the silliest poses I could manage with Empire Militia and Zombie Horde regiment sprues. The "Matrix Zombie" with the duelling pistols (he's doing a bullet time lean! he has a trenchcoat! it was 2003!) remains one of my favourites even though, objectively speaking, he's rather silly.



The green base rims are new, indulged in for the Meme after I fell in with the Facebook grogs. I don't know if I like them, but the units are less of a big blob now. The rest of the paint jobs are sixth form quality, banged out in a weekend by an eighteen year old and never touched with a paintbrush again - Stillman be praised!

I also, of course, put my first characters together. The Dregs are long gone, goodness alone knows where those models ended up, but the Vampire Thrall and Necromancer are still with me, integral parts of the collection.

We'll talk about the Skeletons later, when we move on to the second wave of Undead bits and pieces I collected. We'll come to the Necromancer later too, because he wouldn't really have an identity of his own until he had a peer group. But we can start where we should start: with a Vampire.



A few elements are new! The base and greatsword are both from the plastic Empire Captain, and there is a cunningly concealed hole so that he can carry an Army Standard if I'm not fielding my dedicated hero for that. Also, I eventually came back and crudely weathered all the travelling cloaks on my Vampires, just to add some visual depth and grub them up a bit.

Sir Francois Varnard was not, by blood, a native of Sylvania or even of the Empire. In life, he was a Questing Knight of far Bretonnia, his lance and duty set aside in search for revelation in dark places. No place darker, one might think, than the dingy woods and dreary crags of the heartland of the Vampire Counts - whispers there were that Mannfred the Last had returned, and rumours that a hero had already bearded him within his den and failed.

What false Knight could refuse such challenge?

Sir Francois never reached night-shrouded Drakenhof, never gazed upon its seven towers and baleful depths. Sir Francois never made it past Templehof, clinging darkly to the shores of its mere. The wrong castle; the wrong vampire; the wrong man, in the wrong time. Even his name has turned out false, mauled by the clumsy tongues of Sylvanian peasantry.

Varney the Vampire. Varney the Vulfborn. Varney the Vagabond. Call him what you may - his search for the Grail has fallen foul, but his search for glory goes ever on. Bounding ahead of the Army of the Order of the Grand Cross of Sylvania, its chief scout and saboteur has come to relish what he has become, the great error that has made the man a monster. The alternative would be madness, and Sir Varney is not mad. Not at all. Those charges into enemy lines are targeted attempts to break their artillery or headhunt their turbulent priests and interfering wizards. He doesn't want to die in the slightest.

1. I'd like it on record that I was a solid B student even though I spent most of those two years either playing or thinking about WFRP and V:tM. They didn't think to forbid me from role-playing games...

2. Ahh, Mail Order. One understands why GW stopped doing it - the bins full of unsaleable incomplete kits that had one popular part, the price of tin being what it is, the silly sods like me ringing up and trying to get them to cast Morbius the Liche from the 1993 catalogue... but it was really handy for trying out mass kitbashes without committing to a whole regiment off the bat.

[Jonathan E]

Everything Old Is New Again (Vampire Lord)

There have been three Lords Ruthven, over the years. The first Lord Ruthven was the other Mordheim Vampire - the one with the energetically flapping cloak that looked fantastic but was a bit of a bugger to rank up. My original figure was placed so far forward on his base that it took a substantial chunk of pewter flash in the back to keep him upright at all. In these latter days, of course, I've been a clever clogs and (re)built my Skeleton command groups so they make room for him.



I say "original" because he went missing at some point, and this one was scored in a Facebook trade to fill in. The first one had a less rough paint job on the face (it's taken me so many goes to get the skin tone "right" and it's still darker than my other vampires), and a purple lining on the cloak, and crucially still had his delicate little rapier. This one is about to shout "BAT!!" and take to the heavens, I think.

The second Lord Ruthven was sourced during seventh edition Warhammer, when Vampire Lords were suddenly allowed to wear armour and cast spells, and when I wanted a figure a bit more in keeping with my puff and slash Skeletons. The Warhammer Quest Imperial Noble was pressed into service, along with a shield from the old Rutger, General of the Empire figure, that matched the Maltese cross icon I'd used across the army so far.



I tell you, this guy was the epitome of cool when I was in my twenties. The ringlets, the Lemmy 'tache, the eyepatch... although that wasn't there at the start. I added that after a game with my old mate Awesome Mike and his Dwarfs - at one point a Dwarf Lord got into a scrap with Ruthven and, I think, landed a Killing Blow with a rune axe. That feels like the sort of thing that's going to leave a mark even on a Vampire.

The third Lord Ruthven was the rest of that Rutger figure, with an ambitiously converted Winged Nightmare made from Karl Franz's griffon and a poorly sculpted set of hair and moustache extensions. He did not make it back from the army's stay in a shed somewhere on the Channel Islands between 2008 and 2012, and honestly? I can't say that's a bad thing.

We have answered "what is Lord Ruthven" - now we turn to "who is Lord Ruthven?"

Our story begins in Mordheim; blighted, blackened and blasted Mordheim that spanned the River Stir and smouldered with sorcery and sin. It concerns a dying man, and who he was is of no import compared to what he would become. His name was Laibach Ruthven; he was a captain of arms and a master of hounds; by these means and that he came to serve the Count of Sylvania, and with a wound in the throat and a drop of blood his life and his allegiance were bought.

Duellist, huntsman, leader of things who were once men and men who are on the road to ruin in their turn. He served, where others schemed and bickered; he endured, where others were consumed; he rose, where others fell.

When war broke out in earnest, he fought in the vanguard of his master Vlad von Carstein, and as Vlad’s legacy crumbled a captain seized his moment and claimed his prize. It was as captain-general to the widowed Countess of Templehof that our man drew steel against the Dwarfs of Karak Cymru as they threw down the Castle walls; it was as lover of Emmanuelle von Carstein that his heart and his oaths were broken.

Though history does not record it, Laibach Ruthven fought at Hel Fenn, as equerry to Adolphus Krieger, and survived the debacle, fleeing through the Dwarf lines and into the west, out of history and into obscurity and exile.

Some say it’s to the Border Princes that he made his way, to the hills of Geistenmund, where he learned black magics at the knee of a Strigany queen. Others to Tilea, where he charmed and hunted the under- and over-classes of Verezzo for a mortal lifetime and a half, taking the Contessa Margarita di Mara as his consort in blood. Others whisper that he took to Sartosa and the sea, and as captain of the Maiden’s Downfall ravaged the coasts of Ulthuan for a hundred years, scuttling his own ship off the coast of Albion when the High Elves brought him to bay.

Vampires live long lives, and perhaps all the tales are true. It is whispered that the Countess Margarita took up with a Master Necromancer, perhaps that same one who followed Ruthven in the streets of Mordheim, and together they travelled to Albion to raise their lord and master from his watery grave.

Here is what is known. When Mannfred returned, and issued the call to protect the land of the von Carsteins, Laibach Ruthven answered him in battle, riding out against his former liege. Though Mannfred’s army was held to a standstill, Ruthven himself was forced to bend the knee. Thus, as the Storm of Chaos broke upon the Empire, Ruthven was sent forth to meet it as Lord Protector of the Grand County of Sylvania: meet it, or die trying.

Lord Ruthven and his coterie escaped the disaster at Isca Fields, in which mercenaries from Tilea and the royal court of Bretonnia united to return Mannfred von Carstein to an untimely grave. The Carstein Ring, object of Mannfred’s grand design, was never found. Perhaps, somewhere, Lord Ruthven lives still: returned to Templehof to reign, licking his wounds in the Vaults of Tilea, or taken once more to the high seas?

[Kakapo42]

Curious as I am to see the original colour, I am actually quite liking the green base rims. They bring a much needed splash of colour and a sharp pop to what is otherwise a very dark muted palette of mostly blacks and greys.

Interesting choice assigning reconnaissance to a lone character rather than a team. A vampire certainly has acute senses, and it doesn't get much less conspicuous than a lone agent, but on the other hand even a lone vampire cannot truly be in two places at once, and a Hero (in the loosest possible sense of the term) character would make a handsome hostage indeed if captured.

[Just Tony]

Looking good. I'm waiting to see the rest of the force.

[Jonathan E]

Curious as I am to see the original colour, I am actually quite liking the green base rims. They bring a much needed splash of colour and a sharp pop to what is otherwise a very dark muted palette of mostly blacks and greys.

Interesting choice assigning reconnaissance to a lone character rather than a team. A vampire certainly has acute senses, and it doesn't get much less conspicuous than a lone agent, but on the other hand even a lone vampire cannot truly be in two places at once, and a Hero (in the loosest possible sense of the term) character would make a handsome hostage indeed if captured.

Fair point about the bases. There won't be a repeat of the incident with the twelve Black Knights I absolutely forgot were there for two turns, at least.

The issue of reconnaissance and undeath is - there aren't really many other options. Mercenaries? Coin does not buy accurate reportage - the cowardice of the hired blade with a heart to keep beating is well known to us. Peasantry? Perhaps - there was a cadre of volunteer Huntsmen who ranged ahead of the host for a while, but our pledge that no living soul would perish on our Lord Protector's watch was quite a strong deterrent. Ghouls? You'll be lucky to get anything past "snacc."

[Kakapo42]

The issue of reconnaissance and undeath is - there aren't really many other options. Mercenaries? Coin does not buy accurate reportage - the cowardice of the hired blade with a heart to keep beating is well known to us. Peasantry? Perhaps - there was a cadre of volunteer Huntsmen who ranged ahead of the host for a while, but our pledge that no living soul would perish on our Lord Protector's watch was quite a strong deterrent. Ghouls? You'll be lucky to get anything past "snacc."

"Hmph, I cannot say I have ever had such problems with mortals. A few honeyed words here, a glance there, a discrete flash of ankle and coy giggle and normally they'll give an abundance of intelligence just for a chance at a dance or a gift of a rose or a kiss on the hand, never mind any gold changing hands. Sometimes they get so eager it's hard to *stop* them from spilling endless details of their findings.

A pity indeed if it is only The Queen's rightful daughters who can elicit such loyalty and dedication from their subjects, but perhaps it is but one of those tasks that requires a touch too delicate for mere menfolk. Ah well.

Swain! Follow hither, I grow most parched.."


I would have thought that the most obvious choice for scouting would be the children of the night, the wolf and the bat. Both can negotiate wilderness easily enough, are not especially conspicuous in the wilds at night, and have excellent natural senses with which to observe and track. And being creatures of death and darkness allows them to be placed utterly under the dominion of a vampire who can gather information from them directly. It takes some effort no doubt to fully control many such creatures, but I'm sure the necessary mastery of Animal Ken can't be that hard for a vampire bloodline that already has a natural boost in summoning them.

But then maybe there are just some things where you really need a (in)human touch.

[Jonathan E]

These are the Tales of the Skeleton Warriors...

You don't get far as a Supreme Lord of the Undead with only five Zombies, and I had a very clear vision for how I wanted my Army of Sylvania to look, even before the Storm of Chaos rules appeared and set my choices in stone.

The Zombies were going to be Free Company inspired - I forget now if this was before or after the Zombie Pirate kitbag arrived on the scene - and the Skeletons were going to be the proper puff-and-slash Soldiers of the Empire with uniform weapons. Specifically, I wanted mine to be Spearmen.



There's a lot of to-do about spears in sixth edition Warhammer, with the consensus settling around "there's nothing a spear gets you that beats an extra point of armour save for a hand weapon." To that I can only say... yes, but the hand weapons on the Skeleton sprue are a state, and the spears are nice uniform weapons for nice uniformed soldiers. My choice was entirely down to aesthetics and commonality with the Empire range, and to hell with whether it was any good or not. (And then the Army of Sylvania rules came along and made it clear that hand weapons and shields weren't an option - you'd get the spears free, but you were going to get them!)

The Skeleton sprue was important here, because I went hard on the kitbashing with these lads. There wasn't going to be a single tiny Perry scale human hand visible on these models, not even behind the shields. They were going to be Warhammer Skeletons, and that meant big hefty hands and heads that would never fit inside the humans who were ostensibly from the same range.



The first five were built over Christmas 2003, as a proof of concept kind of thing, and once I was happy with those, the Soldiers of the Empire and Skeleton Warriors regiment kits were picked up on one of those long two-free-periods-of-a-Wednesday trips to Games Workshop Plymouth.*

I'm pretty sure I built them all in one long, deranged, glue-fumey session, snipping off boots and hands with increasingly deranged glee, matching the one heavily crooked spear arm to the one puffy sleeve that cut off at the elbow over and over.** I gave my best attempt at the "front rank spears down, next rank spears out, back ranks spears up" look of the regiment, and deliberately built the command group as far back on their bases as I could so there was room for Lord Ruthven's giant swooshy cloak in the front rank.

Good plan, but it backfired slightly as the Empire kit's enormous plastic flag was quite heavy and didn't take well to being located off-centre. It didn't help that I accidentally got the musician and standard bearer bodies the wrong way round. As such, for the first decade of operation, the standard bearer was secured by a base almost entirely filled with pewter offcuts. I'd have a chance to fix all this later, but - we'll get to that in due course.



My second unit of Skeleton Warriors was the one that drove me completely off the rails. By the time I built those, the Army of Sylvania list had arrived, and it brought a hitherto unheard of option: crossbows! Naturally, nothing else would do. I had to have some, immediately, and they had to be built to the same inexpert but consistent standard as my spearmen.

This involved a box of Tomb Kings Skeletons - they were the ones with the open, crooked hands, originally meant to draw bowstrings, which I reasoned would do a good job of holding crossbows. Crossbows which had their stocks cut and very, very, very clumsily restuck around the balled fist of the bow hands from the same kit.

Let me be clear and unambiguous - let me put across something very important here. This was an INSANE choice. When I came back to these figures a decade ago, I marvelled at the patience my eighteen-year-old self must have had to put them together in the first place. Twenty-eight-year-old me was having none of it, and left them in their parlous and disassembled state for thirty-three-year-old me to hastily restore as swordsmen.

Time had passed, you see, and I was less interested in playing the purist Army of Sylvania than I had been. It was more use to me to have access to both spears and swords to play the bread and butter Von Carstein list. However, when opportunity knocked - when thirty-three-year-old me was contacted by a local mother of lads who'd unearthed her sons' stash in the loft and wanted it gone to a good home - I was quick to secure the twenty Empire Crossbowmen, the proper ones with the metal arms, from said stash and hang on to them.



These have metal arms, and there was absolutely no way I was about to piss about with giving them skeletal hands, after the devil of a time I'd had trying to restore the plastics. Neither was I going to fray my increasingly fragile sanity with giving them extended necks. These were going to have the newer, smaller, sleeker Citadel skulls stuck directly into the socket joint, and they were going to like it.

I accept this is the lazy option. Nevertheless, the circumstances of building these - restoring the army in a manic whirl of avoiding-sorting-my-life-out and getting-ready-for-a-very-special-game during the summer of 2019 - meant it was better to get things done than leave them festering forever to be not-done properly. And this lassitude in the matter of hands also encouraged me to mix some plastic Empire sword hands in with plastic Skeleton sword hands and actually build a full block of post-mortem swordsmen at all. Perfect is the enemy of done, and I no longer have the same brain worms I did at the age of eighteen. I have different, all-new brain worms, and those impose different conditions on my hobby activities.

Anyway, here they are. All of them together.



Lord Ruthven's Redoubtable Regiment of Foot dates to the reign of Konrad von Carstein, when Laibach Ruthven first arose as castellan and captain-general of Templehof, and was founded on the promise that Ruthven would make again four centuries and change later.

"A Regiment shall be Raised, that no Living Man need take up Arms in defence of this County while his Antecedents stand ready to do so. Thus your Lord Protector requests and requires: bring out your Dead!"

Traditionally, the Regiment is maintained at four score strong. The First of Foot, twenty-five dead under arms, carry the spear, and are the strong fulcrum around which Ruthven's Order of the Grand Cross of Sylvania turns its line. The Second of Foot, likewise twenty-five dead, carry the sword, and prosecute the battle with aggression, often acting as bodyguard to the Lord Protector himself. The Third of Foot, the final score, carry the crossbow and are a reserve, defending the walls of castle or pickets of camp, taking the field seldom in any but a defensive engagement.

The First have always fought under the escutcheon of the Grand Cross, and indeed double as the footmen of the Order. The Second are a more ragged bunch, with many bearing a black eagle; it is believed the original members were raised following battle with the army of Reikland, and many brought their shortswords and shields into service past the grave. The Third stand under a pennant of plain purple and black, theirs being ever the rearguard and not the van, glory thus slow in coming.

Nonetheless, the common folk of Lord Ruthven's protectorate rejoice to see the Regiment march by, for the historical promise remains upheld by their Lord and master. The muster and draft come only for the dead; it is the lot of the living to toil, but to live. By such means and others is the gratitude and goodwill of the populace maintained, and the protectorate secured.



* Incidentally, still under the same manager twenty years later, and staffed by two lads I went to school with who also wagged off PE to play Warhammer.

** I used to do this a lot. The peak of my folly was the time I broke open an Orc and Goblin army set and built the entire 2000 points in one day. Built-up solvent fumes from that endeavour, and forgetting to put the lid back on my superglue overnight, would probably explain why I decided to speed paint the whole lot the day after, without even stopping to prime...

[Jonathan E]

Carmilla's Masque | Vampire, Dire Wolves, Banshee

With the Skeleton Warriors assembled I was almost in position to start actually playing games. All I needed was some fast stuff, and ideally some cheap fast stuff, which is where the plastic Wolves came in. One box of Goblin Wolf Riders, pass the Goblins on, ten Dire Wolves, done.



Originally, I had twenty of these, but I've no idea where half of them have got to.* I did stretch to a metal Doom Wolf for one unit, for slightly more efficient wizard hunting and posing dramatically on nearby crags.

To sit alongside these and complete my 500 point Border Patrol army, I added some ladies.



I've ended up painting all three metal Banshees for this army, but this was my first and my favourite, the one who's not even pretending to be a combatant. In a moment of synchronicity, my decision to claim her as the ghost of Emmanuelle von Carstein (the former lady mistress of Castle Templehof) was mirrored in the Night's Dark Masters supplement for WFRP, and thus Whispering Nell was born.



Then there's the Vampire. I was quite taken with Marianna Chevaux from the Mordheim range, even if she's very titchy (even by the standards of metal Mordheim models), but I had to do something about her embarrassing pants/garter situation - it was a little bit too boudoir for my taste. Hence the leggings. Just... leave it all dark and boring and have the attention focused on the rich purple gown and the bodice. I spent too damn long highlighting a pair of 25mm bosoms, and yes, that is the sort of thing that turns you blind. And good lord, now that I'm seeing her in the unforgiving light of a macro lens twenty years later, her eyes look awful. They're fine on the table, I swear.

She's had a variety of names over the years - she's been a Carmilla, a Clarimonde and a Margarita, depending on which strand of vampire literature I wanted to riff off at the time. Maybe I was trying to deny the slightly awkward observation that, at the time, I was dating a petite pale goth lass who looked very good in purple velvet, and as such this petite pale goth lass was of course, at heart, a Madelaine.

That first 500 points comprised a Vampire Thrall with Summon Wolves and Earthbind as her Bloodline powers, a unit of 20 Skeleton Warriors with all the trimmings, two units of 5 Dire Wolves and a Banshee. They would go to war, for the very first time ever, against my good friend and comrade Dr. Shiny's Skaven: a Warlock Engineer with all the kit, a unit of about 24 Clanrats with the inevitable Ratling Gun, and... the Rat Swarm.

Swarms and the Undead are a match made in hell - a big block of Unbreakable wounds that have to be chewed through with the relatively small amount of Attacks on offer - even before you blend in the Skaven's ability to throw their insulting amount of "Skeletons die on 2s" firepower into melee.

In preparation for that first engagement, I sat down with my notebook, in which I kept all my army lists and paint recipes and frothy fluff ideas, and drew out deployment maps, working out exactly how far apart the units needed to be so that I could protect the Banshee from Warp Lightning and still march the Dire Wolves to somewhere efficient.

We wrote up a battle report - and it was an exhaustively detailed first-person battle report from the perspective of the two commanders on the ground - but that was twenty years and several email address migrations ago, and the forum where we originally posted it has also gone to the dust, its Invisionfree URL long since forgotten. I don't even remember who won. I think it was me - Shiny is adamant that he has never beaten the Sylvanians - but all that's stuck in my memory is That Damn Rat Swarm. A single base that absolutely ruined my day.

* Actually, that's not true. I think they're in Jersey, somewhere. That's the last place I knew they were.

[Just Tony]

Looks like we are twins with that Marianne Cheveau model...

[Kakapo42]

There's a lot of to-do about spears in sixth edition Warhammer, with the consensus settling around "there's nothing a spear gets you that beats an extra point of armour save for a hand weapon." To that I can only say... yes, but the hand weapons on the Skeleton sprue are a state, and the spears are nice uniform weapons for nice uniformed soldiers. My choice was entirely down to aesthetics and commonality with the Empire range, and to hell with whether it was any good or not. (And then the Army of Sylvania rules came along and made it clear that hand weapons and shields weren't an option - you'd get the spears free, but you were going to get them!)

I'm going to be honest, I've come around to spears lately. My revised stance on them is now "I'd rather have them but not need them than need them but not have them". You can always switch over to a hand weapon and shield in combat if you really need to but you can't switch over to a weapon you never equipped the unit with. I still rate Halberds a lot more, because I will die on the hill that there's nothing a spear gets you that beats an extra point of strength and fighting first because you charged, but spears are still nice to have.

Plus I'm used to thinking in the context of elf armies where I'm usually stuck with spears anyway.

Personally I'm actually very partial to the eclectic mishmash of hand weapons on the Skeleton sprue, but that's because Army of Darkness has left me quite partial to hordes of skeletons with chaotic mishmashes of weapons in general. There is certainly something to be said about a good massed forest of spears.

I'm pretty sure I built them all in one long, deranged, glue-fumey session, snipping off boots and hands with increasingly deranged glee, matching the one heavily crooked spear arm to the one puffy sleeve that cut off at the elbow over and over.** I gave my best attempt at the "front rank spears down, next rank spears out, back ranks spears up" look of the regiment, and deliberately built the command group as far back on their bases as I could so there was room for Lord Ruthven's giant swooshy cloak in the front rank.

Giant swooshy cloaks are the bane of ranked models everywhere. The only thing worse is a giant swooshy cloak combined with giant swirly magic effects that leaves you with precisely one specific combination of front rank archers that only just barely fits the character if a few are pushed to odd angles at the limit of the movement tray's tolerances.

This involved a box of Tomb Kings Skeletons - they were the ones with the open, crooked hands, originally meant to draw bowstrings, which I reasoned would do a good job of holding crossbows. Crossbows which had their stocks cut and very, very, very clumsily restuck around the balled fist of the bow hands from the same kit.

Let me be clear and unambiguous - let me put across something very important here. This was an INSANE choice. When I came back to these figures a decade ago, I marvelled at the patience my eighteen-year-old self must have had to put them together in the first place. Twenty-eight-year-old me was having none of it, and left them in their parlous and disassembled state for thirty-three-year-old me to hastily restore as swordsmen.

Insane it may be, but it doesn't seem too far off my plan to drill out dozens of little tactical marine arms because I have yet to figure out any other way to make the boltguns with their fully modeled trigger grips fit into the solid plastic fists the 1999 tactical squads are modeled with. Sometimes the only way is the hard way.

These have metal arms, and there was absolutely no way I was about to piss about with giving them skeletal hands, after the devil of a time I'd had trying to restore the plastics. Neither was I going to fray my increasingly fragile sanity with giving them extended necks. These were going to have the newer, smaller, sleeker Citadel skulls stuck directly into the socket joint, and they were going to like it.

I accept this is the lazy option. Nevertheless, the circumstances of building these - restoring the army in a manic whirl of avoiding-sorting-my-life-out and getting-ready-for-a-very-special-game during the summer of 2019 - meant it was better to get things done than leave them festering forever to be not-done properly. And this lassitude in the matter of hands also encouraged me to mix some plastic Empire sword hands in with plastic Skeleton sword hands and actually build a full block of post-mortem swordsmen at all. Perfect is the enemy of done, and I no longer have the same brain worms I did at the age of eighteen. I have different, all-new brain worms, and those impose different conditions on my hobby activities.

Honestly after going hard enough to skeletify the hidden shield hands on the spearmen and manually convert skeletal archer arms to handle crossbows I think you've earned the right to cut a few corners here. The hands are really only noticeable as fleshy if you squint a few inches from them to begin with. Besides, precious irreplaceable metal and all that.