Are you tired of skeletons, yet? I have more of them as part of the Reaper Bones II Kickstarter. Because they are a little boring to post by themselves, I’ve put them together with repainted old D&D miniatures of skeletons: The Direguard from the Angelfire Set and Orc Skeletons from The Underdark Set.

The Skeleton Warriors from the Reaper Bones II Kickstarter are very basic figures with simple poses, no armor and basic weapons. They were sculpted by Bob Ridolfi. The metal versions are paired with a miniature carrying the same weapons from the Bones “Skeleton Guardians”, so you get one skeleton with rags of armor, and one without.

For the plastic version, they are sold in packs of three identical miniatures as Skeleton Warrior Sword (77242), Skeleton Warrior Axeman (77243), Skeleton Warrior Spearman (77244), and Skeleton Warrior Archer (77245).

Very similar to these skeletons, at least visually, are some of my old D&D miniatures. So when I painted the undead horde, I also repainted a Direguard (#38 Angelfire Set, D&D Miniatures) and two Orc Skeletons (#55 Underdark Set, D&D Miniatures).

Basing and Priming

I did not want to do much work for the skeletons, so I just glued them on 1-inch bases and used a little putty, sand and small pebbles to create the base. I then primed all minis using my usual method of airbrushing with black and white.

Here are the Reaper Bones Skeleton Warriors:

And these are the repainted old D&D miniatures after priming:

Painting

You can say I am somewhat well-versed when it comes to painting skeletons now, having painted over two dozen of them over the last couple of years. I have my standard formula using Vallejo Game Color Bone White for the base coat, then adding highlights with a 1:1 mix of Bone White and Off White on the edges and the skull. Then comes the brown/black wash to build the shadows. It’s quite simple, but effective. Afterwards, I just do a little dry brushing to reapply the highlights.

As I really like the scenery part of basing, I chose to add some bits of vegetation on the bases. So these skeletons are perfect as an encounter on an old battlefield 🙂

I wanted them to have an old look and feel, but not using a completely rusted armor and faded cloth. So I chose to mix some blue into the (iron) metallic color and used a subtle wash to give the metal armor a blueish glint. I imagine that they would wear higher quality gear/materials that would not rust easily. Basically, I painted them as I would a regular human miniature but used a bit more weathering to bring the shininess down a bit.

4 x Skeleton Warriors

1 x Dire Guard

2 x Orc Skeleton