Rat Ogres: a time for muscle

It was time to consider what was missing from the Skaven force.

Clanrats: check
Weapon teams: check
Cannons: check
Wheel thingy: check
Big muscular things with tiny little heads: d'oh!

Ok, it was time to whip out the Island of blood sprues and play with what lies within. With little clanrats, no-one is ever going to notice if you have two identical rats; with rat ogres it is a different matter and their were only two poses in the box set. Solution: out with the saw, hobby knife and green-stuff and roll up the sleeves.

I still have a few spares left over from a giant kit I used once, so I took the giant hand holding the human and sliced it onto the upraised arm of one of the rat-ogres. The problem with this is that the giant has nails whilst rat ogres have claws. The solution I went with was to cut plastic off a blister pack and fashion what I could. The other chap has his head repositioned so it points forward. That looking at your shoulder thing just did nothing for me.

For the guy who had both fist pointing down, I decided to cut him at the elbow and have his arm pointing forward. This looked a little daft, so I added some chains and skulls from marauder horsemen. The remainder of the messing about was bending and reposing of limbs. I had to raise the guy holding the chains because they were dragging on the floor.

Next up was to add some putty. Lets face facts all of the shoulder joints are pretty rough and need some work. The remainder was making my poor cutting and joining look a little less rough.

Mulg in red; he does not look happy about it

Lets face facts, Mulg the ancient is not a happy troll...

So angry is he that he has had runes carved in his own back. He focuses his rage through these runes.

With this in mind, I was carefull to keep that anger evident when painting him.

I was asked to paint this chap for a friend at my gaming club and was grateful that I was able to go down a red skin colour route. The worry was that by painting him blue, he just looks a little too peaceful. I have tried to accentuate the anger in the red by highlighting up through orange. I went lighter still with the trolls veins by adding vomit brown into the mix.

I tried to paint bright green into the runes after completing the painting of the model. In hindsight this was a mistake and I ended up daubing on patches of bright green in the rune vicinity and then painting the rocks back on. Oh well, you live and learn.

I quite enjoyed painting the club. I elected to maintain this as a well worn light coloured wood. The advantage of this was that it would accentuate the skin. I therefore choose to keep to a colour scheme very similar to the skirt that the troll wears.

Hope you like him..

(please excuse washed out photos, I clearly got the camera settings wrong)...

Skaven Warp lightning cannons: Two, because one is just not enough.

Last time I posted I was desperately trying to work out how to paint the inside faces of the frames. If only I had the advice of the blog-sphere and painted the beast before I assembled it.

Another problem area was the green shaft of the cannon barrel. I managed to paint some lightning bolt effects, but it would have been a lot simpler if I had painted before assembly. The remainder of the painting was relatively simple, but I had not realised just how much metal-work details there was to paint. 

The wood colour is my go to combination of scorched brown, drybrushed bestial brown. Edge and prominent wood grains are carefully picked out in vomit brown and then a mix of Vomit brown and fortress grey. I then place a few washes of various colours before picking out the significant grains again.

Clicking on the pictures should give larger versions.

Since the cannon crew are just used as wound markers, I have fixed one to each of the cannons and then based up the remaining four.

All of the Skaven in this army dress according to their relative status. The cannon crew are very low ranking and so have a very dirty looking rags. The clan rats have a beige rag outfit and characters wear white.

I hope you enjoy the pictures.