If some of your skeletons have weapons with reach, they can all have a go.

Spooky and scary.

15 skeletons if you include yourself

Werewolf bar mitzvah

I love that you used the Skeleton artwork from the 1993 Monstrous Manual

Character concept: skeleton necromancer who has to keep casting animate dead to stay alive. Or maybe has an object that keeps casting it on themselves from time to time.

Boys become men, men becoming wolves

RATTLE THEM BOYS!

can skeletons not have bows?

I believe Japanese culture has a type of undead that is brought back to life by a talisman on their face

I've never _not_ dreamed of having my own skeleton army.

Army, for sure. For conquering. _Furtive glance at red leather jacket_

8 base to base, 5 with halberds.

Anyone else see this and immediately look up if Alecto The Ninth was out yet?

What a thrilling idea

By default, a skeleton has a short sword or a shortbow in every edition I know about.

5e rules – you don't end your turn when attacking and can move through allied squares. Iirc it counts as "difficult terrain" for movement distance or that could have just been a homebrew things So step into square, attack, step out and end turn.

Does Animate Dead give them a sword and bow? And arrows?

that's one of those mechanics that's there for brevity but kind of makes no sense within the physics of the world. this necromancy spell happens to come with a conjuration effect. also the skeleton just can't pick up the weapons it was using in life because reasons

Mechanically, the monster: skeleton has those two attacks. How works in the lore is... Vague. I prefer to think the god of death supplies every corpse with those weapons.