Royal Heralds

I finally got my hands on the new Tomb Kings kits, and built a much-needed battle standard bearer for my army, and finished painting the herald from my previous post.

 

 

My plan for this herald is to function as a bodyguard for the king, utilizing the Sworn Protector special rule, which allows her to take any hits delivered to the king. She's equipped with the Armor of Destiny and a simple shield and hand weapon, which gives her a 3+ armor save and a 4+ ward save to (hopefully) tank any hits aimed at her king. The king, meanwhile will forego the more expensive magic armor in favor of a better magic weapon like the Ogre Blade to dish out some damage.

 

 

When building the herald, I was planning to place her on the king's left side, and made sure her flowing fabric fit between the skeletons, but it was a happy accident that her cloak fits perfectly behind the king's cape when positioned on his right side. 

 

 

I've been eagerly awaiting the Royal Heralds kit since it was announced. I had built Selketta and his archers with a scorpion motif, and this new battle standard seems like it was tailor-made for him! 

 

 

Of, course, I can never build anything "stock," so I immediately started to customize the kit. I separated the banner components...

 

 

...and flipped the banner top around, replacing the scarab icon on the back with a large skull.

 

 

To tie in the standard with the rest of my army, I added a proper "banner" hanging below the main icon. For this I used a pair of Ogre Kingdoms banners, cut in half and glued together.

 

 

The bottoms were cut up more so there banner wouldn't have the same tears repeated across it, and I covered the join on the front and back with modeling putty.

 

 

I struggled a bit with how to connect the banner top to the flag, and eventually settled on using a portion of the iconography from the bone dragon, with some styrene rod to extend the banner pole.

 

 

Something I've noticed with the new kits (and I pointed this out when I discussed the bone dragon kit) is that all the proportions are much smaller. Here you can see the skulls from the new herald's banner compared to the skulld on the banner in the Khemrian Warshpinx kit.

 

 

Nevertheless, I used both– the older skulls hanging to fill the void between the connecting piece and the scorpion claws. The newer skulls were added to the ends of the banner's crossbar, with small caps taken from the handle of an old Chaos Marauder axe.

 

 

On the back, you can see how the connector fits in place, and I filled in the blank spot with a classic skeleton shield icon that had been trimmed to match the shield icons in my regiment.

 

 

As for the herald himself, similar to the Sekhar conversion, I chose to replace the fleshy hands and feet with skeletal bits. I cut a pair of feet from a skeleton horseman and inserted pins into the legs. (I also sculpted bandages over the exposed skin on his calves and stomach, but didn't get any photos of that until the final images.)

 

 

The pin went through each foot and into the base (in the case of the left foot, into the bit of ruin that he's standing on).

 

 

For his right foot, I cut and bent the toes a little, and added some card to elevate him. The pin would be cut off before attaching him to the base. I held off on attaching him until the end so I could be sure of the final position of the banner.

 

 

The Royal Heralds kit comes with four really nice heads but, again, they are too tiny compared to every other head in the Tomb Kings range, so I opted to use a skull from the Tomb Guard kit with nice, readable features.

 

 

I wanted to tie the headdress in with the scorpion motif, so I used a bit of scorpion carapace (from the Necrosphinx kit) to add some volume, and mounted the stinger tail on top. 

 

 

But... In the end, it looked too much like he was wearing a dildo hat, so I got rid of it. I was planning on having crossed scorpion swords on his back anyway, and after seeing those in the final assembly, a stinger on his hat would have been overly redundant. On another note– The hand holding the banner was replaced with a skeletal hand from the plastic Grave Guard kit, and the banner pole was pinned into it. 

 

 

The styrene rod extension for the pole was trimmed to the right height, and I continued the wrapping the rest of the way up to appear as though the wrapping on the pole was unraveling.

 

 

I used a pair of Skull Forge Scenics scorpion swords for his weaponry, fixed together and attached to the back of the cape. I plan to equip him with the Phakth's Blades of Justice, which is a pair of swords that grant the wielder an extra attack for each rank in the enemy unit.

 

 

Since both of the herald's weapons were on his back, I needed to figure out something to do with the model's free hand. I couldn't find any spare open or pointing skeleton hands, so I cut one from a chariot crew kopesh, and had him holding a flying scarab from the Sepulchral Stalkers kit. I sculpted some extra beetles on his forearm, and it looks like he's unleashing some flesh-eating insects.

 

 

Here's the final assembly. The model is super top heavy, and tips forward at the slightest touch, so I doubled the magnets under his base to make sure he stays securely on his metal movement tray. I also took care to make sure his cape could rank up with the other models in the unit.

 

 

And a comparison with the skeleton regiment standard. An army standard should be larger and more imposing than a unit standard, and I think this one succeeds in that regard! 

 

 

'Til next time!