Die Hard skeleton unit and refreshing an existing paint job on Morghast Harbingers

I love (almost) every model made by Die Hard Miniatures. I previously painted the best Necromancer miniature in the world (in my humble opinion) and their wonderful old school Chaos Lord and Witch. Their best line of models (once again, my opinion) is their line of undead (both Fantasy and Sci-Fi). One day I hope to own at least two buckets of these models. A while back I took a small step towards that magical day and ordered a full unit of twenty skeletons to paint up as a unit. I recently put the finishing touches to them. 

"I can't believe we survived our run in with the Red Count", Alex the Accordionist tried to say. But somehow all that came out was a dry rustling moan.

Freshly painted Fir Bolg skeletons

Last year I painted the Nightmare Legion. This classic skeleton 'regiment of renown' has seen quite a number of (very modern AoS) battles since. Aside from bringing me waves of happy nostalgia, it also brought an advantage of metal skeletons to light: they don't fall apart when subjected to my rather cavalier approach to transport. With that in mind I tried hunting down more members for the Nightmare Legion. Unfortunately people tend to seriously overprice old miniatures, especially when they know you're searching for them Maybe I'll get lucky and find affordable extra Nightmare Legion troopers, or one of these two units someday. As that day may never come, I decided to find different suppliers for metal skeletons. My fist interesting find was this unit produced by Brigade Models for their Celtos Fir Bolg line.

A group of 22 Fir Bolg skeletons reporting for duty to Nagash.

Operation Dead-Pile in progress, Necromancer and Grave Guard finished

As far as I know every hobbyist has his own lead-pile or plastic heap: the collection of cool models that just had to be bought, but haven't been painted yet. Recently I started noticing a related phenomenon. I have an ever growing collection of models halfway through a paintjob that subsequently never got finished. Now the lead-pile will be there (and grow) forever, but I think this dead-pile can be rectified (and if not, I'll have a bunch more models painted so its one of those win-win type situations). I've called this new activity Operation Dead-Pile, mostly because I was really stumped for a title to this post (ssssh don't tell anyone). Between my regular painting (currently enjoying old Empire Freeguild models) I'll just grab a unit or model that is languishing with a basecoat and some colors blocked in and finish the thing of (quality be damned!)

The trick to finishing toy soldiers is occasionally just forcing yourself to sit down and do the work. Oh no, forced fun, life is hard ;)

Oldhammer fun with the Nightmare Legion and metal zombies followed by a dash of heresy

With the influx of new old models I decided to shove all the other projects aside and have a little Oldhammer fun painting the Nightmare Legion. Now I remember the day my friends and I bought this box set (along with Ruglud's Armoured Orcs, Skarloc's Wood Elf Rangers and some other stuff) at the only store we knew that carried GW in quantity. It was about an hour's drive so visits where confined to birthdays and special occasions. After the others left Warhammer I took over their miniatures only to sell them on years later. Now they are back in my possession. I love this unit, particularly the helmet of the unit champion, and I've been dreaming about repainting them for quite a few years now. Here are the results.

Welcome back to my collection Nightmare Legion.