The Screaming Skull Catapult

The Screaming Skull Catapult

When the opportunity came along to purchase the remnants of the screaming skull catapult,
 I jumped on it, and whilst there was a fair bit missing from the original kit, it did have the catapult base, wheels and two crew members. The guy I bought it off also threw in two other metal skellies
 and I already had the only real rare part - the skull pile.

The next phase was to rebuild the catapult out of bits from the bitz box.
The first thing to build were the two forward struts, which I constructed out of the skulls from the skeleton warriors kit and topped it off with some spare metal skulls from a much earlier era to match the older metal skeleton crew. The centrepiece was a plastic goat skull to give it focus.

The cross bar was salvaged from the zombie kit, and I had already used these in both banners for the skeleton units, so it kinda made sense to adapt them into the catapult as well.
For a bit of fancy, the two tiny skulls on chains were added at each end.

I toyed with painting the wheels like wood, but they looked really off, so I reverted to bone and it really did give the impression that the entire thing was carved and constructed from all kinds of skeletal remains, from both small and gigantic creatures.

I wanted this war machine to have its own base and bit of terrain, being a much older and sought after part of the Undead army - before it became Vampire Counts, so I made the base out of MBF so I could drill down into it to create the exhumed grave. A spare resin shovel I made over 20 years ago seemed to be wanting to be used, so in it went along with the gravestones.

One of the mising crew was the loader skeleton, holding a screaming skull in his hands. Instead, I had a metal skellie without feet, and I well know this was a big problem with the old metals.
 Fortunately, I had some leftover legs and boots in the bits box, and with a little drilling, the loader could stand. He came with a spear, and I cut it back, originally meaning to convert him to hold a skull, but the arms and hand direction really didn't work, so I used a metal shovel from 1987 dwarf miner sprue to give him a way to load the screaming skull into the bonehand launcher.
The other two crew were in good condition and nice to paint.

After the graves are exhumed, the skulls are piled together and enchanted by the Necromancer. Loaded by shovel onto the bonesculpt hand, the enchanted skull begins its death moan. The grisly severed hands grip onto eachother and the roped sinews retract while the skull columns wail and howl in agony. The arm is released, sending the skull screaming its death howl through the air, bursting into balefire flame before exploding on impact.