Thoughts on the Citadel Skull Kit

[uselesswizard]

Thoughts on the Citadel Skull Kit

Hello everyone! I've had some thought about this kit rattling around in my head for a few days now, and I've finally decided to put them down on virtual paper. 

I don't think I've been more excited for a Games Workshop release than I was for the Citadel Skulls kit that just came out. The converter in me did a little happy dance when I saw the announcement on the Warhammer Community site. 340 plastic skulls are a dream come true, and the variety of skulls GW included in the kit is staggering.

I'm still a little confused by the fact that there are daemon skulls included. I thought daemon bodies evaporated back into the Warp when they were killed, but apparently not. Maybe daemons work differently in 40k than they do in AoS? Although, I believe the Grey Knight Terminator kit included the severed head of a Bloodletter, so maybe my assumption about what happens to dead daemons was wrong.

Anyway, I'm really excited by their inclusion in the kit, and not only because they'll make great base decorations. They're going to make great conversion bitz as well. The Plaguebearer skulls are definitely going to be finding their way into my Nurgle forces, either as decoration or replacing the heads of some of the Plaguebearers entirely.

I have a lot of plans for the kit and the possible conversions I can do with the contents. I'll be adding a reply to this post later detailing some of my thoughts because this initial post is going to be really long as it is.

For those of you who haven't had the chance to see the sprues that come with the kit, I've included pictures of each below.

Sprue #1

Sprue #2

Sprue #3

Sprue #4 (this one makes my OCD really happy)

The detail level on these skulls is good. It's not as sharp as some of the other kits I've seen, but the details are definitely not too soft.

The product listing on Games Workshop's site lists the different types of skulls that are included in this kit.

- 82 human skulls with jawbones;
- 86 human skulls without jawbones;
- 15 human jawbones;
- 60 assorted damaged human skulls;
- 2 giants’ skulls;
- 1 Morghast skull (in 2 components);
- 1 beast skull (in 2 components);
- 4 small horned skulls;
- 4 medium horned skulls;
- 3 large horned skulls;
- 7 bird skulls;
- 2 Chaos beast skulls;
- 6 plaguebearer skulls;
- 6 Bloodletter skulls;
- 10 T'au skulls;
- 5 Kroot skulls;
- 6 alien skulls;
- 21 Genestealer Hybrid skulls;
- 20 Ork skulls without jaws;
- 5 Ork jawbones;
- 7 Ork skulls with jaws open;
- 7 Ork skulls with jaws.

Time to crunch the numbers.

I've shopped around for bulk numbers of skulls before this kit was released, and found a few companies that sell large numbers of skulls. Understandably, they are always in either metal or resin because plastic injection molding is still very expensive to get started.

Secret Weapon - Sack O Skulls - $15.00

Greenstuff World - 100x Resin Skulls - $11.90

Greenstuff World - 50x Resin Ork Skulls - $12.51

Greenstuff World - 50x Resin Burning Skulls - $8.48

Toad King Castings - Bag of Skulls - $11.53

Wargames Exclusive – Human Skulls in 28mm Scale – $12.80

These are all really nice quality from the looks of them, the only ones that I purchased are three of the Greenstuff World 100x Resin Skulls kits a few months ago. This isn't the place for a review of these kits, but I might have to do a short review of them later.

Let's do some per skull price comparisons.

Secret Weapon - Sack O Skulls comes with 50 loose skulls for $15.00. That comes to $0.30 a skull.

Greenstuff World - 100x Resin Skulls comes with 100 loose skulls for $11.90 at current exchange rates. That's about $0.12 per skull.

Greenstuff World - 50x Resin Ork Skulls comes with 50 loose ork skulls for $12.51. That's about $0.25 per skull.

Greenstuff World - 50x Resin Burning Skulls comes with 50 loose skulls for $8.48. That's about $0.17 per skull.

Toad King Castings - Bag of Skulls comes with about 100 loose skulls for $11.53. That's about $0.12 per skull.

Wargames Exclusive – Human Skulls in 28mm Scale comes with 64 skulls for $12.80. That's about $0.20 per skull.

There are a lot of options out there for skulls of humans, and even some for ork skulls. Sure, some of these kits are most specialized like the flaming skulls from GSW, and the skulls with bionics from Wargame Exclusive. For many that may be a significant difference, but comparing the price per skulls, product material, and variety of skull types the Citadel Skulls set blows them all out of the water.

The Citadel Skulls kit comes with 340 loose skulls for $25.00. That's about $0.08 per skull. That's 33% less than the least expensive kit from one of the other companies shown here.

If we only count the human skulls in the kit it's still a better deal. There are 228 human skulls in the GW kit. If those 228 skulls were sold as a stand alone kit for $25, that would be $0.11 per skull.

And the GW skulls are plastic.

If I ever need specialized skulls like the flaming skulls from GSW, I'm certainly willing to pay the extra $0.09 per skull so I don't have to sculpt fire on 50 tiny skulls, but for plain skulls the GW kit has the game locked down.

What do you think?

[TheOtherJosh]

Not enough blood. [emoji6] (Fortunately there is Blood for the Blood God technical paint ....)

[Tzaangor Management]

It's a very cool kit, I think I might have to pick one up looking at it. You could conceivably base an army on skulls, instead of tufts and texture paint... I might base an army on skulls!

[Rogue Explorator]

Happy to hear I am not the only person ruffled by demon skulls.

 

Not concerning this particular kit, as you have said, they are great deko and conversion material, but in general, I really do not like it when demons and other abstract beings are treated as biological existences in fantasy.

There are workarounds of course, as demons lead an allegorical and symbolic existence, so they might leave mortal remains for symbolic reasons. Valkya carries the head of a Slaaneeshi demon prince mounted on her shield because it was the Chaos gods reward for her action of beheading said demon.But all to often, I think, writers and creators tend to get mixed up about the more abstract elements of the settings they work on.

In Warhammer this often happens when the Warp/Realm of Chaos is treated as just a very nasty place, instead of an abstract Realm, where time and space hold no sway. I remember an anatomical drawing for demons in one of the D&D Demonomicons that really made me think "Here is an example of someone who doesn't get that demons aren't just nasty people.

 

But I am getting sidetracked. Skulls! I think a lot of people where excited for this one and judging by some of the uses I've seen the set already put to, I'd say for good reason. I really have to see when I can squeeze the set into my budget.

 

I really liked the little price comparison you did. I thought this might actually be one of GWs most cost efficient releases, this serves as a sort of confirmation. But I think it might have to be, I have found, at least for myself, purchases that do not contain "actual" miniatures are harder to justify to myself, even when I know I will get far more use of it in the long term.

[Davariel]

Excellent, informative review - thanks for taking the time to put this together

I don't see myself buying it, seeing as I still haven't used all the spare skulls I got from buying 2 boxes of skeletons back in 2011 or so, but even so I'm very impressed with the quality of the kit - GW have really hit this one out of the park.

If I ever do get around to building some realm of death themed terrain, I'm sure I'll pick up a few of these boxes!

[MyGeekyPersona]

A great review thanks.  I'm glad that you've mentioned a commercial source of flaming skulls - I need some of those! I've spent an embarrassing amount of money on skulls on bits sites over the years, so this is definitely a must buy for me. 

I agree that the existence of daemon skulls is ambiguous lore-wise, but either way I'm glad that they've included them. 

In the old Realm of Chaos; Slaves to Darkness book there's art showing a blood letter with a skeletal face (even more so than usual) - my plan is to use some of the skulls in this kit to realise this art as a conversion.  With a bit of sculpting the plague bearer skulls could be used as rotting heads too.

Please keep the product reviews coming, much appreciated.

MGP

 

[Kronos]

Cant wait go get mine, kit looks great, and the variety is amazing. Thanks for the break down and review.

[uselesswizard]

Thanks for the kind words everyone.

Phobosftw over on Dakkadakka revealed that the massive skull in this kit looks like it's the skull from a Dark Eldar Clawed Fiend. I've looked up pictures of the Clawed Fiend and it looks to me like it's a total match, except maybe for the size. I don't think the actual model is that large. Maybe it's the skull from an ancient Clawed Fiend?

I find it interesting that the product description on the Games Workshop site doesn't mention what creature the skull is from. They've done this for a few of the other skulls in the kit.

Does anyone know what these skulls are from? Are they Ur-Ghoul skulls?

[Seraphage]

Great review, thanks !

[Rogue Explorator]

5 hours ago, uselesswizard said:

Thanks for the kind words everyone.

Phobosftw over on Dakkadakka revealed that the massive skull in this kit looks like it's the skull from a Dark Eldar Clawed Fiend. I've looked up pictures of the Clawed Fiend and it looks to me like it's a total match, except maybe for the size. I don't think the actual model is that large. Maybe it's the skull from an ancient Clawed Fiend?

I find it interesting that the product description on the Games Workshop site doesn't mention what creature the skull is from. They've done this for a few of the other skulls in the kit.

Does anyone know what these skulls are from? Are they Ur-Ghoul skulls?

It is a bit hard to make out the details of the skulls you have posted (hope its the foto and not the cast quality), but the lack of eyeholes and the three nostril openings would say you are right in guessing Ur-Ghouls.

 

Interesting find on the big skull pointing at bigger Clawed Fiends, but now I am a bit sad they did not complete the Court with Slyth Skulls. There are so many uses for Serbent Skulls I could imagine. I guess it is time to start bothering GW for a follow up kit with even more Skulls

[Galas]

Those Ork Skulls are gonna be directly used to add a Undead-Ork regiment to my Death army! 

[uselesswizard]

11 hours ago, Galas said:

Those Ork Skulls are gonna be directly used to add a Undead-Ork regiment to my Death army! 

That brings up another thought. I really hope that GW will release a kit made up of other bones from various races. Right now, we really only have access to human bones from the various skeleton kits.

I think a kit that contains other types of bones would be very useful for both basing and conversions of all kinds.

[elfhead]

I've had similar thoughts on the daemon skulls ever since the orc big boss appeated with a bloodletter skull on his armour. Maybe the lore on daemons has changed in AoS. I also thought daemons dematerialized when killed or when they lose their grip on reality in some other way.

the price comparison really helps, I'm noe seriously considering Getting this box. It'll go a long way If I just add a skull here and there. 

[metalface13]

17 hours ago, uselesswizard said:

That brings up another thought. I really hope that GW will release a kit made up of other bones from various races. Right now, we really only have access to human bones from the various skeleton kits.

I think a kit that contains other types of bones would be very useful for both basing and conversions of all kinds.

I think bones/skeletons for different races would be awesome. I'd it to convert up an undead Blood Bowl team with zombie and skeleton players from different races.

[BunkhouseBuster]

Wait, what did you say?

On 8/25/2017 at 3:35 PM, uselesswizard said:

The Citadel Skulls kit comes with 340 loose skulls for $25.00. That's about $0.08 per skull. That's 33% less than the least expensive kit from one of the other companies shown here.

If we only count the human skulls in the kit it's still a better deal. There are 228 human skulls in the GW kit. If those 228 skulls were sold as a stand alone kit for $25, that would be $0.11 per skull.

And the GW skulls are plastic.

GW produced something cheaper in plastic than what other folks are making in other materials?  Next, you'll be telling me that Half-Life 3 is coming out next year.

[uselesswizard]

1 hour ago, BunkhouseBuster said:

Wait, what did you say?

GW produced something cheaper in plastic than what other folks are making in other materials?  Next, you'll be telling me that Half-Life 3 is coming out next year.

Well now that you mention it...

[someone2040]

Huh, that's a bit disappointing.

Nothing on your review or anything, but the listing of skulls in the set. I was hoping that there'd be some Duardin and Aelf skulls in there, perhaps other AoS races as well like Ogors and Troggoths.

Bit of a shame there are so many human skulls in there, I would've liked a few more options around for conversions (like Skeletal Aelfs/Duardin models).

Ah well, will have to pop mine open at some point and actually look at what's in there.

[uselesswizard]

I agree with you, it would have really nice to have even more variety in the types of skulls that are in the kit. I think Ogors, Troggoth, Duardin, and Aelf skulls would be great. I also think that skulls from Daemonettes, Pink Horrors, Minotaurs, various skaven, and lizardmen would be cool too. Possible additional kit to be released later?

[Ollie Grimwood]

I like it it's a great set and one can never have too many skulls.

 

On the subject of Daemon skulls, in 40K when some daemons are summoned they will warp a host body to form a physical presence rather then manifest directly as it were. So they would leave a body behind when killed. A similar thing may occur in AoS.

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[uselesswizard]

A Use for Skulls

There are a lot of conversion opportunities presented in the Citadel Skull kit, so many that no one person can come up with all of them. That’s the beauty of our hobby, there doesn’t seem to be an end to the possibilities we can come up with.

There are a lot of different types of skulls in this kit, so I’m not going to be talking about the Human and Ork skulls more than a mention here and there.

I’m currently working on a Nurgle Daemon army, and fortunately I’m building the Plaguebearers at the moment. The Plaguebearer skulls present a wonderful new bit to use in their construction. I plan on taking a couple of the skulls and carving out the back so they will fit on the necks of the daemons. After compairing them against the regular Plaguebearer heads the skulls are much smaller and will take some serious bulking out to look ‘correct’ on the bodies.

The skeletal nature of the skulls will be perfect for creating Plaguebearers that look like the flesh of their faces has sloughed off due to various skin diseases. Adding some Greenstuff to the skulls will add variety to the new heads.

A specific conversion that I’m looking forward to completing is a mostly skeletal face with a distended mouth gurgling the praises of Grandfather Nurgle. I can use one of the lower jaws from the human skulls as the lower structure of the mouth.

Another thought is to use one of the lower jawbones for the ork skulls instead because of the larger teeth. I like the idea of a horribly overgrown and deformed lower jaw that is slowly tearing the disease weakened skin and muscles away from the rest of the skull jaw with it’s weight.

Whichever I end up using I will have to strengthen the connection between the jaw and the skull with some wire which will also give additional strength and contact points for the Greenstuff.

Moving on to other skulls in the collection, the Bloodletter skulls offer some of the same kinds of opportunities. These will take a bit more work to build up the back of the Bloodletter heads as most of those are missing on the skulls, but the effort will be worth it to have a few skull faced horrors mixed into a unit of ‘normal’ daemon warriors of the Blood God.

We also cannot forget the chance to use these skulls as decoration for armor. I mentioned this use in my last Bonelords progress blog post. I plan on using one to decorate some of the bear plasticard armor on my converted Exalted Deathbringer with Impaling Spear.

The Beastmen skulls are a great resource for one of the more common conversion styles found in the AoS28 community, building hybrid skeleton/Nurgle/dryad warbands for Hinterlands and AoS Skirmish. Most of them are too large to look convincing on groups of skeletons, but that’s never stopped a good conversion before. The skulls will also make great decorations for the now very powerful Herdstones of a Beastman army as well.

With some work the Kroot skulls could be used to make Tzanngor skulls. The spines would need to be cut and shaved down a bit as feathers aren’t made of bone and are held on a body by the skin, but some of the Tzanngors have spines growing out of their bodies, so that might not be such a big issue.

You could also use the bird skulls from the kit to make some Tzanngor skulls as well. If you were able to source a bird skeleton you could use them to make animated bird skeletons. They would also make for interesting heads for warpicks, warhammers, or other weapons.

The Tau skulls present less of a use for us AoS players, but the uses for 40k armies are obvious. Base scatter, kill decorations, objective markers, or even a helmetless Tau body sprawled out in death are excellent uses. You could even use the skulls to make servoskulls for a very radical inquisitor, or maybe as the head of a servitor slaved to the will of a Heretek Adeptus Mechanicus Magus.

The Tyranid skulls have the same possible uses as the Tau skulls. I plan on using at least one of them as the head of a leader of a Death unit that I’ve been working on off and on. I will of course shave off the crest bone of the skull before adding them to the leader of the unit.

The Ur-goul skulls present a bit of a challenge as the details are sadly not very well defined. If I use these for a project, I will be using a very small drill to deepen the nasal holes on the skulls. They would make effective bases for building your own Ur-gouls if you were able to strategically use Greenstuff to soften the sharp edges of the skulls and complete the missing nostrils. They’re missing their lower jaws, but the human jawbones could be used to fill in for the missing parts.

The Morghast skull is extremely detailed and could make for some absolutely amazing Death conversions. I can see the skull being used for a head on Daemon Princes or maybe even 40k Dreadnoughts.

The same could be said for the Giant skulls. They could be used as heads for all kinds of machines, monsters, etc. I’ve seen some really cool uses to create Giant zombies. Using them as the head of a Nurgle chaos Giant could also be very interesting with enough Greenstuff work.

The massive skull is one that is kinds stumping me. It could be used as the head of a massive undead or Nurgle beast. I could also see it in use for some kind of Khorne project. It strikes me that the top portion and facial area of the skull could be used to decorate a chaos chariot. If you really wanted to do some work you might even be able to make the body and face of a Nurgle Plague Toad out of the skull.

Well those are a few of my thoughts on the conversion options presented by the Citadel Skulls kit.

Thanks for reading!

[RuneBrush]

Really nice little review.  I picked up a box last week, but due to Blackout prep it's sat on the sofa unopened   I do think it offers up a lot of opportunities for adding some very classical GW flavour into our models.  I can see me using a lot on terrain too.

[Charles]

I think I will pick one of these up, I would really like to convert the blood letters on my skull cannon to look like the are loading skulls into the Maw ?