Skaven unit fillers

I had an excellent idea to batch paint 20 clan rats at once. While I must admit that painting the final bits of their bases and ranking them up, finished, one by one at the end was very satisfying, I don't think I'll be doing it again. Working on that many at once sapped my will to paint a little, so in the end I think doing them in batches of 10 or maybe even 5 would get me through them a little better.

Anyways, my first 500 points is now fully painted! I will attempt to get a group shot of them when the lighting is better, but for now I'm moving on to assemble more of the little rats, including making some unit fillers to bulk out the clan rats a little.

The "holes" should look a little better with sand applied to the bases, I hope.

Warpfire Thrower Team, and Rattagantz

The sun was out today and the lighting wasn't too horrible, so I took a few more pictures of what I've been painting.



The Warpfire Thrower Team. Maybe one day they'll get to shoot something!





Warlord Rattagantz! The pose on this guy makes him tough to photograph.

Now these guys are done, it's time to wade through all those clan rats I've been putting off.

First blood with the rats

Well, had the first 2 "official" league games with my rats this week, which makes a grand total of 4 games played with skaven, ever.
First up was against some High Elves. The game was far closer than it had any right to be, due to some decent rolling from me and some fairly abysmal rolling from my opponent (obviously the new warchief dice I was using!). High point was a motley unit of clanrats holding their own against some swordmasters. In the end though, it ended as it always seems to, with the tattered remains of my army routing from the board.
Second game was against a cool looking (no pun intended; they were snow based) Dark Elf cavalry army. 3 units of Dark Riders and some Cold One Knights. I knew I was in trouble but held up a little better than expected, seeing off a unit of riders and the knights before I was finally outmanoeuvred and out shot. Not enough bodies or fire power to really contend with fast cav. Something to keep in mind for future blocks, I think. The other notable point of this game was it was the first time (in a total of 4 games with my rats) that a weapon team hit something that wasn't my own men! It failed to kill anything, but it's a start at least.

So, 2 losses, and unfinished painting as well. Not a very good start, but hey, the only way from here is up!


Here are my thoughts for expanding to 1k:
2 more pack masters, 4 more rat ogres.
10 more clan rats for each unit
Quezla, level 2 warlock with warp energy condenser
upgrade Rattagantz to a Warlord, give him a Warlock enhanced weapon.

So my list should look like:

LORDS
Rattagantz, Warlock Weapon

HEROES
Quezla, lv 2, WEC, Pistol

TROOPS
30 Clan Rats, Spears/Shields, Warp Fire Thrower

30 Clan Rats, HW/Shield, PWMortar

SPECIAL
6 Rat Ogres, 3 Pack Masters
987 points (Enough left over for an Enchanted Shield for my lord, perhaps?)


Adding a wizard seems like a solid choice, both from a fluff perspective and also from a game play one. Quezla is the core of my army, providing all the fun weapons I'll be adding in at larger points values, and a bit of extra ranged spell damage wont go amiss (or more likely it will, with disastrous consequences).
30 Clan Rats should hopefully help me maintain my rank bonus a little longer, and see each unit be that little bit more survivable. Hopefully.
Upgrading mr.Gantz to a lord is for a couple of reasons. Firstly, it's still quite early in the league so whilst skaven lords are not the combat monsters some are, the extra fightiness should help out quite a bit (with the warlock weapon he can dish out 5 strength 5 attacks at a decent I and ok WS). Secondly, bumping him up to a lord frees up some of my hero % points, so I can probably squeeze a cheap BSB into my list next block. Finally and most importantly, the extra point of LD is sorely needed!

Progress!

Slowly creeping towards my first 500 points of painted skaven. More rats have been painted, namely the first unit of clan rats. Not very exciting, but I'm hoping quantity will make up for the fairly basic paint job on these guys.


Finished unit of Rat Ogres. In my next 500 point block I plan to bump this unit up to 6. As a long time Dark Elf player I've never really had the chance to play about with monstrous infantry, and I think a mob of these guys barrelling across the battlefield will be great fun.





First weapon team done!


Up next are my Warpfire Thrower, and Chieftain Rattagantz himself. Then it's back to more clan rats!

Also, a quick note on bases. At present they're just a grey drybrush and nothing more, but at some stage in the future I intend to go back and fancy them up a bit with some flock or something. For now however I'm concentrating on speed over fanciness!

A few more painted

Making some slight progress with painting the horde!
Something a bit bigger than clanrats, anyway.

First rats down. Billions more to go.

Had a busy few days, but now it's time to knuckle down and get on with the important stuff. Painting Skaven!

I churned out the front rank of my spear rats in an evening. Quick and dirty, pretty much just base colours and then a brown wash over the top. I'll put a little more love into the non-clanrat units, but there are so many of these guys I have to prioritise quantity over quality. Took me a couple of hours to get this rank done, but I think I can trim it down now I've worked out what I'm doing with regard to what colours go on first, etc.


Dark green is the army colour, so will be showing up to some degree on every miniature. Clan rats will be rocking a green/grey/brown colour palette, while fancier units (say, Stormvermin) will probably be green/black/bone. I'm going to go back and add some flock to the bases as well, but I'll probably do that in bulk once I'm done with all of them.


I'm not going to get very far painting 5 at a time, so it's time to overcome my biggest fear. [b]Batch painting.[/b] [i]*dramatic music and thunder*[/i]

Slow but steady

Not terribly exciting but slow and steady progress with my skaven. I've tidied up, de-mold line'd, stuck together and based my first block of Skaven. I'm gunna go undercoat them all, and then the painting can begin!
This is what 500 points of skaven looks like. There's quite a few of them.

The loathsome Ratmen and all their Vile Kin

Right, so more Warhammer. No Beards this time. I've had a single proper game with my Dwarfs, and they're about half way assembled, no idea on a colour scheme yet. Obviously the perfect time to start a Skaven army.

8th ed has roused the interest of a fairly large portion of the club, and there is an escalation league starting up. 500 points a month, basically. We've got a pretty good spread of forces at the moment (which is good, as with 40k it's about 80% space marine on any given day). Empire, Dwarfs, Brettonians, various flavours of Chaos, some Lizards, a Vampire horde, and no doubt some High Elves. Dark Elves still have a bit of a bad rep around these parts, so I figured I'd step up and go for it with my Skaven. 500 points at a time should help me from going too mad with buying too much stuff, although it remains to be seen whether I can actually paint a hundred or more clanrats. Yikes!

I've never played Skaven before, though I've always liked their background. All their new miniatures (especially Island of Blood) tipped me over the edge. The plan is for this to be an entirely plastic army (seriously, fuck metal miniatures. I'm carrying this army around in a bucket!), mostly made up of Clans Skyre and Moulder. Maybe some Eshin (or maybe they're there already and you just can't see them). Not a big fan of Pestilens, though.

Here's some background I scribbled up:

Chief Rattagantz. Low ranking general of a low ranking clan, bottom of the pile of filth that is Skavenblight. A rat with big ambitions, though. Called upon by the warlocks of Clan Skyre, Rattagantz is sent forth into the world of men. One of their own is missing, the mad* recluse Iklas Quezla. Rattagantz is to find him, and more importantly, find his work. If the rumours about this Enginseer are true however, Rattagantz may just have found his way to the top of the pile. A few of his most trusted** clanrat warriors, a few "gifts" from clan Skyre, and a few favours he was able to negotiate from clan Moulder, and Rattagants is off to find his destiny, or die trying***.

*yes, even by skaven standards
** by skaven standards, anyway
***by dying, he of course means letting his underlings die whilst he runs away


And here is my starting 500 point list:

Chieftain Rattagantz, Halberd (47 pts)

20 Clanrats, Spear, Shield, Full Command (120 pts)
Warpfire Thrower (70 pts)

20 Clanrats, HW, Shield, Full Command (110 pts)
Poisoned Wind Mortar (65pts)

2 Rat Ogres, 1 Packmaster (88pts)

500 exactly


Finally, some pictures! Nothing painted yet, but a few characters destined to lead heroically from the back.

Chieftain Rattagantz. Removed the back banner and gave him some new arms. The arms attach in a bit of a weird way, and I had to mangle the previous shoulder pads something fierce to get the new ones on, so some greenstuff to tidy him up is in order.



I imagine at some point sooner rather than later I'll want a BSB, so here he is. Gave him a new head to make him a little different to Rattagantz, and did some minor repositioning of his cleaver arm so he'll actually rank up. His back banner isn't the most impressive army flag in existence, but the overall hight combined with the brazier on top should make him stand out nicely on the tabletop.


Finally, the mad genius behind all the warp technology I'll be hopefully using to wreak havoc amongst the surface dwellers. Iklas Quezla, clan Skyre Warlock Engineer. Not sure what to do with the pipe from his gasmask. Might just lop it off.