New Miniatures Review : Mantic Skeleton Regiment

28Feb/100

New Miniatures Review : Mantic Skeleton Regiment – part 2

As promised here's a painting guide for skeletons using the new Mantic figures.

This is the 20th figure that was missing from my previous post. Here's a shot of the front and back of the little chap and you'll see that he's quite nicely detailed, but not overly so for a rank and file figure.

I always undercoat skeletons in black, I think with undead its a matter of personal preference as there's plenty of ways (especially with modern washes) to paint quickly and effectively from white (and probablly other colours too).

I started with boltgun metal on all the areas I decided would be metal - and one that wasn't, mistaking the ribs at the front as some sort of armour at this point! Oh well I'll fix that in a sec. Get a nice thick coat on here and then wash it with Badab black a few times to give it some depth. If you like you can use some Devian Mud to give it a really grimey feel, but I'll be using that later anyway so saved the drying time till then.

Next is a base coat of Calthan brown on all the bone areas and also any leather you might want to paint (I missed these for a couple of steps its easier to do them now, I did the boot and the various straps).

All the bone areas are generously coated in Bleached bone now, leaving Calthan only in the deeper areas.

Ah, the boot is painted now! Anyway, this is where the magic start happening. Several generous coats of Devian mud make the skeleton start to come alive. I've coated pretty much all the painted areas here and continue to add more coats to the boot and the bones as I see fit till it looks how I want it to.

When finally happy with the washed colours I waited for the paint to dry then went back to Bleached Bone to highlight some choice edges of the bones.

This chap will be joining my existing Vampire counts army that has a green colour scheme running through the rank and file units. So the tunic gets a coat of snot green as a base now.
Following the theme of all the other colours on this model, I washed the tunic in Devian mud once again. When dry I highlighted the tunic carefully with goblin green.

The other colour in my army's scheme is red. I haven't decided what device this new unit is going to have on their shields yet so I've just prepared the flat space using Mechrite Red. The sword sheath is also red.

...and to finish, a bit of Blood red to highlight the foundation red. I've also used Mithril Silver to pick out the gouges and scratches sculpted onto the shield.

So this chap is pretty much done aside from his base and shield. Till the rest of the unit is ready this wont get done as I prefer to try and do these details in one go so they look reasonably regimented when completed.

Having completed a Mantic skeleton I wanted to put him in a line up with GW skeletons of various types so you could compare the size and look.

From left to right:

An old regiment of reknown skeleton trooper, a gift from an old GW Brum colleague (thanks Martin!).
A plastic skeleton spearman (painted from white undercoat) from the previous Vampire counts plastic regiment
Our new friend
A throne guard from the old Warhammer Quest expansion pack I use as a Wight
A classic skeleton warrior I managed to get a unit of similar looking lead figs for

As you can see our new chap is roughly the right size to join my army - there's a fair amount of variation in the figures anyway. That said the Mantic skeleton is more in line with the Lord of the Rings sculpting mindset, the head, hands, feet and weapons are far more realistically scaled than GW's traditional heroic emphasis. I think I shall enjoy getting the rest of the unit done and joining my army - gotta love hand weapons and shields in warhammer at the moment!