Exhuming the dead

Despite all appearances to the contrary, I have not actually forgotten what I started here, and have been making progress on this unit of horsemen to compliment my old undead army.

I am in fact, nearly done with them. They are sitting on my desk, all painted up, patiently awaiting the arrival of some new grass I've ordered for their bases. As their entire raison d'etre is to replace some really crappy old horsemen I have in the interest of actually completing my undead army of yore, I figured I might as well use this mailorder-interlude to work even more explicitly toward this goal.

Thus, I have just returned from the basement with the undead cav that are /not/ being replaced. Those that constituted my first serious foray into big fantasy battles, courtesy of the original Citadel skeleton army box:

30 some infantry, ~10 cavalry, and a chariot, all for about $25.00. Those were as they say, the days.

Back then, I hardly based anything. I did briefly glue down the ubiquitous green flock that makes everything look like a putting green, but the majority of my figures from c1992 (and for a long time after, if we're honest) are still simply based on plain black plastic. 

I realized months ago when I decided to finish this army, that it wouldn't entail simply completing the 3 units I have to do, but finishing the bases for all those old models as well. So tonight, while the newly completed skeletons looked on, I dusted off, clipped errant tabs, taped over gaps, and in one case actually replaced a homemade (and none too orthagonal) polymer clay base with a mass produced plastic one. I covered the old flock with glue and talus, and I am doing my darndest to get these old guys updated and completed so they can fall in with the new ones.  The bases however, is where the similarity will end. 

When was the last time you looked at a figure you painted 20 years ago, next to a current version of essentially the same figure. It is a bit shocking. Luckily, they're skeletons. Even an extremely un-practiced and inexperienced treatment of them back in the day manages to be more or less acceptable table top today. If anyone looks close, they'll see the horror of clumsy drybrushing. If they look at all they'll see the peculiar and at times dubious results of my first attempts at conversions. But, I rest easy knowing that all in all, it'll just be a big unit of skeletal toy soldiers, and that they'll be done.

Here are some of the new ones, as of a couple nights ago: