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.

Skaven warp lightning cannons on the workbench

My Skaven force is toy heavy..

I guess that that reflects my approach to playing Skaven. It might not follow the current meta game, or perceived wisdom on how to win, but it does make the game great fun. It is not unusual for me to kill more of my rats own than my opponent..

So this is reflected in my approach to the warp lighting cannons. Two is the maximum I am allowed, so I start with two!

There are times when you just dive into a model project and then only hit the blog-sphere when you hit problems, This is one such project.

If I had taken the time to look around the blogs, I would have known that painting the warp cannon first before assembling is the only sensible way to go. As it was, I discovered, like dozens before me that if you assemble first, you need a gynaecologists skills to paint the details on the insides of the frames....

Never mind, lesson learnt...

I built in a very conventional way. Although the very upright construction may help me spot every enemy, it just does not look right. The Engineer in me screams out that it will just topple over after the first shot.

The crew are just there as wound markers now, so I will fix one crew member to each of the machines. The remaining four I can fix to bases. If the chariot base was a little bigger I would consider a nice little diorama, but no options are available with such a large footprint on the cannon..

Skaven Doomwheel; completed

When last we looked at the progress on the Skaven doom-wheel I had painted the two large wheels, but had not pulled anything together.

I was desperate to create the impression that this machine was not only travelling at considerable speed, but was also a little out of control!

The original idea was to have the wheel flying through the air after climbing a take off ramp in the form of a shield of a terrified opponent.

However, when I started building this together it was obvious that the base was never going to be big enough to let this arrangement fit on the base and enable it to be used in a game. The wheel would simply just hang off the base far too far.  I changed it to have the wheel hitting rocks and bouncing into the air, but now it is assembled it looks like the Engineer is trying to pull a wheelie, which is much cooler and doomwheel like...

A whole was drilled into the smaller wheel, which then sits on a paperclip, which passes through the base and loops on its underside. You can see the top of the paperclip projecting upwards through the rocks on this photo of the unpainted base.

I originally started painting the rat that came with the model as its assistant driver, but I was just not happy with the look of the model. It was just far too static for a fast moving model like the doomwheel.

 I would much rather have this rat hanging on for dear life. This meant that I had to make a rat from scratch. To achieve this I took the body of a night goblin and added a right arm, tail and two legs off the clan rat sprue. 

The right arm is  that of a goblin archer, with half a bow.

The flag was attached last, just before I mounted the assembly onto its base. It was a little rushed because I was hoping to take it to tournament the next day. Accordingly I am not that pleased with it and I may have to go back one day to revise this..

The intention was create the look of speed and to reflect the crazy - devil may care nature of the Engineer and remainder of the crew. I believe that I have achieved this, I hope you do too.

Skaven Doomwheel on the workbench

I painted so much so fast in May that I needed some time away from the brush and daylight bulbs. It has been a couple of weeks since my last post and I guess it is now time to climb back on the wagon. But whilst I am doing so......


I recently put together a Skaven doomwheel as part of my Skaven army for the Legionary show. I had such fun, I thought I would share the experience.

I chose to only part assemble the model before painting so that I could get the brush to all those hard to reach places.

These were then base coated black and the wood painted with scorched brown followed by a dry brush of bestial brown and vomit brown. I then carefully painted the raised areas of the timbers near the edges with fortress grey.

I chose to then wash each plank with a different wash, including red and purple, to create some variety. The grey was then re-applied. 

I managed to drop the center piece whilst painting this, which broke off a length of the cable. This I had to replace with a length of guitar wire. See if you can spot where it is..

A little later and the centre is painted..

I put some work into the centre bit and the crazy skaven pilot of the doomwheel. The eye looks a bit strange when viewed in this shot, but since you will never see him from this angle when the outer wheels are added. The guys fabric colour matched the remainder of the arm, but I just knew he had to have a leather hat and gauntlets. It just felt right.

 There is a lot of bronze in this section, but it does not get over powering too much.

Next up I assemble him..