I think it could be kinda neat to have a kit that turns the bronze age themed skeletons into medieval ones. It could have skulls with nasal helmets and kettle hats, as well as weapon arms with medieval swords and axes, and a couple heater shields to go with them. Honestly, a sprue of just heater and kite shields would also be pretty cool.
medieval skeleton upgrade kit
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@Chainface Not really sure why you don't just ask for a full set of medieval skellies and get some armored bodies to boot, but it's not an unreasonable suggestion and I think has been proposed before.
You can already get sprues of heater and kite sheilds, just not from WA so those might not be a bad idea for later, (like Victrix does them on thier own seperate sprues with boxes for each, you could use the heater sheild box to equip 2 WA skellie infantry sets if archers are added and the kite sheild box would cover 1 infantry and cavalry set of the boneheads, and thats just Victrix I am pretty sure a couple of other companies have them as well).
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Yeah, with how many digital undead kits they do, I think it's pretty clear they like to do skeletons. I'd love some saxon-styled armored skellies, personally. Chuck armored skellies into sprue games if you haven't already!
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@timbus the thirteenth I think Norman skellies would be a better all rounder undead set than saxons, that said we are limited to one entry (mine was "basic armored torso body sprue" for General Accoutrements) that said I am sure there are at least 5 or 6 armored skellie proposals with diffrent cultures in mind. (outside of European armies, skellie samurai and ashigaru would be welcome addition to a couple of tables)
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The main reason i suggested an upgrade sprue was because I assume it would be easier and quicker to bring into production. Personally I prefer the largely bare skeleton design, so armored bodies aren't really a priority for me.
Hypothetically they could then separate the bronze age bits onto a separate sprue and keep the bodies on their own sprue. This would make it easy to package different skeleton types, with each box including a couple body sprues and then the head/weapon sprue for whichever era. This would also make introducing new skeletons from different cultures easier as well I think.
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@Brian Van De Walker honestly i think saxons would be slightly more useful, since if it's just sword arm and head swaps to fit to the standard bodies, you could use nasal helms and the round shields (which can be handled via the existing dark ages shield sprue) to represent a whole host of different groups across the medieval period, not just saxons.
heck, you could even toss in extra heads with the helmets used in the dark ages army builder set, plus maybe a few late roman ridge helmets, letting you use them as goths, huns, etc as well.
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honestly, I have basically no clue what the difference is between saxons and normans, lol. all I want is scale mail and curved swords, which to me is classic 'armored skellies' look. Its definitely one that exists though
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for skeletons, mostly the use of kite shields instead of round shields.
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I think the debate between norman or saxon skeletons is kinda beside the point. In my theoretical sprue scheme, the norman skeletons would be in the medieval skeleton army builder set, while the saxons would be in the dark age skeleton army builder set (which could also include, among others, late roman helmets and weapons). The only difference between the two sets would be what shield sprue is included, and which weapons/heads sprue is included. The overall setup would be similar to the regular dark age army builder set, but with skeletons. Existing bronze age skeleton heads and weapons could be expanded to fill out a full sprue of bronze age options.
My focus on the medieval skeletons is mostly because of the fairly recent knights/serjeants/peasant sets that were released for barons war.
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@Mithril2098 you get the vision.
@Chainface yeah sorry, I didn't mean to hijack the thread. I think the issue is that skeletons specifically are supposed to lag about an era 'behind' wherever they're being used. so bronze age skeletons fit the dark ages, dark ages fit medieval, and then medieval skeletons would more fit the renaissance. so for 'medieval era skeletons', I'd kind of want them to lean more towards the dark ages. but also I'm a huge dork for undead, so it probably doesn't matter to the average person lol.
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Not to hijack things too much, but not sure I'll ever see a better opportunity to mention that the default Wargames Atlantic skeleton kit is an excellent source of skulls and bones to decorate bases and scenic bits with: just chop the arms and legs apart at the joints and mix into the basing flock or whatever. I chopped a few of these skellies up for bones to scatter around inside a Lost War haunted tank, for example.
For medieval skeletons, you can grab a box of WGA's foot knights, to head-swap some helmets, and weapon-swap from spare arms. Though to be fair, the default swords and lances would probably work just fine for medieval/dark-age skeletons, simply by swapping out the shields and Greek-style helmet for bits from the knights kit. They aren't wearing much in the way of armor, but they'd otherwise look great.
You might also get some mileage from bashing together the foot knights bits with a box of WGA's zombies, for more fully-armored undead: simple head swaps, and the ocasional arm swaps, would go a long way there.
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I will say that skeletons are almost always coming a massive horde, so if you need to kitbash them together, you're going to be spending a Very Long Time doing so. With that said, I wonder if an upgrade sprue might work better on the medieval kits rather than on the skeleton kits, just in the interest of maximizing their usage.
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I think for armored undead certainly it would be a good idea to have it be an upgrade sprue for the regular medieval kits.
For the unarmored ones, basing off the existing skeletons, and just releasing weapon arms and heads to match the medieval period would be best. As i said before they could go on to use this method for other time periods as well.
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The more I think of it, the more I think that, if I were to need to build an undead army right this minute, for a Dark Ages, Medieval, or Renaissance setting, I had mostly only WGA kits to work with, and I had a wish to burn on it, I think I'd save the wish for a rainy day, and simply grab some boxes of WGA historical figures of the appropriate product line, and a box of WGA zombies and a box of WGA skeletons, for the heads, some arm swaps, and the occasional zombie body.
Rough up the shields and some weapons for weathering and decay/corrosion/battle-damage, apply rust, dust, mud, dirt, and decay effects liberally to the metal and cloth bits, and call it finished.
It's a your-mileage-may-vary kind of thing (as usual), but honestly, when we're talking about the amount of armor that soldiers from these periods of history are wearing, the only things that are going to set an undead horde apart from a living army are...
- Any human faces you'd see (vs. the undead versions); unnatural skin colouring for human faces (deathly pale skin, dark eyes, black lips - the usual gothic corpse-paint thing) will go a long way towards selling those as zombies, ghouls, or vampires. Zombie faces and skulls are even more explicitly undead. There's not a huge difference between those dark-age helmeted zombie heads, and skulls!
- Postures - slouching or lurching poses, clawing arms, lolling heads on broken necks. Some of these can be handled with zombie arms and awkwardly-placed helmets and heads; mix in some of those zombie bodies, one for so many armored bodies, and you'll get even further.
- Weathering, like grave muck, rust, nicks and dents in helmets, swords, shields. Most of this is just a routine part of painting up the figures, and most of the rest can be mechanically achieved with an Xacto knife and file, a can full of rocks to shake bits up in, and/or a cheap coffee grinder.
- The usual Warhammer schtick of slapping skulls and spikes on pretty much everything from shield devices to war banners and more. This can be omitted easily enough, but a little creativity and some of those spare skulls and bones from the skeletons kit can get you a lot of mileage here. (If I were feeling ambitious enough to splurge a little on bits, I believe the WGA Baron's War peasant levy and the WGA fantasy villagers probably have some Grim-Reaper-worthy scythes, pitchforks, flails and the like to mix in with the weapon bits to help "sell" the undead gimmick, too.)
And, we're not even limited to the dark ages/medieval/renaissance thing here, either: default WGA zombie and skeleton bits can go a long way toward "selling" as an undead army most of the WGA historical kits from the ancient Persians up through the Imperial Conquests Afghans and Boxers, through the world wars, into the Pulp Adventures moderns like the operators, using any of the above tricks to help with the illusion. Same thing with the Death Fields and other sci-fi figures, and the Classic fantasy human kits, and probably some of the demi-human kits (such as the halflings) as well.
Again, YMMV, and almost any WGA upgrade sprues that might appear would be a treat for me, but WGA has really provided us with a great resource in the zombies kit for building a variety of undead armies with some simple arm-and-head swaps, and the skeleton kit is useful for adding some skulls to the mix. Just about everything else rests on how you assemble and paint the bits, but that's a lot of the fun of this hobby.
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