Review: 77239: Skeleton Guardian Spearman from Reaper Miniatures

I was briefly at AdeptiCon this year. I went to check out the vendor hall. Several companies, including Scale 75 and Games and Gear, were there. , I wanted to save myself shipping and handling charges as I order their products through +RK Berry .

Reaper Miniatures was also in presence. I backed their Bones 2 Kickstarter and received my figures. I noticed that I made a mistake on my order, and have been trying to work with Reaper to correct that issue.

Because of that error, I did not have all of the new figures produced for the Kickstarter. So while at AdeptiCon, I picked up several packs of the skeletons.

Skeletons are one of those miniatures where I can always use them. You can paint them up in different styles to represent different fallen Empires or paint the bones themselves different colors to represent different types of monsters.

This guy comes in a nice three pack. That's a link to the Reaper image itself.

The figures are tall, long boned. There are some mold lines and the Bones material is a little more difficult to remove if you're not careful. I say this because there isn't a lot of resistance to the material. Push to hard and you'll cut right through it.

I didn't bother. They were for table top play so my worry was minimized.

The details are a little soft. This is most noticeable on the edges of the spear and around the shield itself.

The figures are also 'bendy'. In pictures to follow, you'll note that it's the same figure, but the stance is slightly off on each. I used a lot of hot water to get the spears into something resembling 'normal' and could probably have done more work on that later.

The good news is that the material is soft. If you want to do conversions with bits, especially Games Workshop, that tends to provide overage of such? You won't have any problems. I wouldn't recommend anything metal though unless you're going to have that weapon in a downward position.

For me, the good news is that they have what I'll call 'Old School' aesthetic. A belt, but not dozens of belt pouches. A buckle, but not dozens of bands. A weapon, but not covered in chains or other miscellany.

I primed it with Games Workshop Imperial Brush on Primer. Did not have great results. The bottle wasn't mixed enough despite much shaking. I glued them onto the round bases that I received with the Reaper Kickstarter.

Not too sure about that. These figures are 'tall' and the bases added a lot of height. In addition, I have this far away dream of one day using my figures in Reaper's skirmish game Warlord, and they use square bases. Still, the price was so inexpensive if I want more I should be able to afford it.

I then mounted them on some blocks with blue tack. I don't have to touch them that way and there is less chance of rub off. Because I have the Games Workshop complete miniature paint case (or at least the last one before the Technical Paints and the Hard Edging Paints came out) and bending is a problem due to back issues, I find the Games Workshop case easy to access so used them with one exception, an Army Painter shader.

For these I tend to go with 'layering'.
1. Mid Tone: Something that isn't the brightest or darkest color I'll be using for the part in question.
2. Shade:Often I'll use a wash to darken parts of the figure.
3. Layer: One or more layers that are progressively lighter and occupy less space on the miniature.

Bone: Zandri Dust
Clothes: Steel Legion Drab
Spear: Dryad Bark.
Metals: Boltgun metal. (For some reason I have a lot of the old metallic range.)
Leather: Mournfang Brown
Base: Charadon Granite (this bottle will soon fade from the world, one of my few remaining Foundation GW paints)

Bones: Army Painter Soft wash.
Clothes: Reikland Fleshshade
Spears: Agrax Earthshade
Metals: Nuln Oil
Leather: Agrax Earthshade
Base: None

Bones: Highlight 1 Ushabti Bone, Highlight 2 Screaming Skull
Clothes: Highlight 1 Tallarn Sand, Highlight 2 Kraak Stone
Spears: Highlight 1 Gorthor Brown, Highlight 2 Baneblade Brown
Metals: Highlight 1 Ironbreaker. Highlight 2 Runefang Steel.
Leather: Highlight 1 Skrag Brown, Highlight 2 Deathclaw Brown
Base:Highlight 1 Dawnstone, , Highlight 2 Terminus Stone

Due to their 'clean' nature and lack of various pieces of bric-abrac, these were a quick paint job. If I wasn't having some health related problems, I could probably have knocked this out in under an hour. I might also have went with some more highlights and might have tried to age the metals a bit more.

The Skeleton Guardians weren't available from the Reaper's webstore last I looked, but was available to view here.

Is there something else you'd like to see mentioned in future reviews? A scale shot with the figure next to other figures? More WIP?  Different style of paint jobs? I know the camera work leaves much to be desired so if you have a site with some good tutorials, lay it on me.

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