Led by their fell champion, the damned archers of the host of the Dread King unleash another barrage on the foe.
The standard bearer and musician are Aly Morrison sculpts from the Citadel c17 command range from 1987.
The champion is a Bob Olley Iron Claw Skeleton Guard model, also from 1987, I picked him up from ebay somewhere along the way, and thought that with his larger bearing and impressive bow he would be a suitable champion for this unit. I'm not too worried that the standard bearer and musician aren't archers, as I've always added models like this to archer units, and no-one seems to mind. Everyone knows that the unit is an archer unit.
I added a fair bit of red to the banner bearer and the champion to help add some colour to what would have otherwise been a fairly drab looking unit.
These archers are also from the 1987 catalogue. They are one of the few sculpts that are wearing some armour, so I made sure I added a dab of orange rust to each of the helmets to help to break up the sea of brown.
No helmets on these sculpts, so hopefully they have thick skulls. These guys are Aly Morrison models and are in the 1989 catalogue. I only have the three of them, and would like to have more some day. Funds permitting!
These archers are also Aly Morrison sculpts. They are from Marauder Miniatures, and are MM50/6 models from 1989.
The Marauder models are a fair bit smaller than the citadel ones, but I don't think they look too bad mixed into the unit. Variety is the spice of death, after all.
The more astute Age of Sigmar gamers amongst you will notice that there are only 17 models here, which is unfortunate for a couple of reasons.
Firstly, you buy archers in groups of ten, so I'm ripping myself off three archers as I'm paying points for them.
Secondly, skeleton archers gain +1 attack when there are 20 or more, so 17 of them do 17 shots, while 20 of them do 40 shots. So if I had another three, I'd be doing another 23 shots; more than double the shots for zero extra points. They hit on 5's and wound on 4's though, so I'm probably only causing 7 wounds a turn, which isn't exactly overwhelming. The range of the ancient bow is only 20", and the move of the skeletons is only 4", so they aren't exactly threatening at long range. However the musician allows them to run and shoot, so they have an effective range of 27", which I think I can make work.
So until I manage to scrape up enough of my hard earned money for another three old lead archers from eBay I will just use some ring-ins. I've got some other skeleton archers lying around that I will use for now. The sculpts aren't as nice, but they can hide up the back somewhere just fine.
And as for making them effective in games of Age of Sigmar, there a few things that I can do to improve them a little.
Firstly the command ability of my wight king Mordini works on these guys, granting them +1 attack. So if I had twenty of them I'd be doing 60 shooting attacks, which is pretty handy. That will do 10 wounds per turn which isn't too bad.
Also when combined with the screaming skull catapults, which reduce bravery by 2 and therefore should add to battleshock casualties, and these guys should be a thorn in my opponents side if I can use them right.
Another thing that might help them is mystical terrain. If I can park them within 3" of a piece of mystical terrain then they can get re-rolls to wound. This would cause another 5 wounds if combined with the command ability of the wight king. Not really something I can count on, but worth keeping in mind if the situation arises.
I think the maximum unit size of archers is 40, so if money was no object and I had that many of them then burning the command ability on them would probably be worthwhile. But unfortunately I don't have 40, so I suspect I will only be using that command ability on these chaps in turn 1, if they are in range and I don't think my big block of skeletons or grave guard will be ready to pounce.+
But I am looking forward to trying them out, and putting some of the theory to practice!
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