Comrade's Wargames

You may have noticed my new Skaven Doomwheel in action earlier this month in our game of Dragon Rampant. This was a model I’ve coveted since the old, clunky metal version debuted in White Dwarf decades ago.

I hadn’t intended to acquire one for my all-metal Skaven army project, but I stumbled across an assembled Doomwheel on sale for a mere $16 from the good folks at Mindtaker Miniatures. At that price, I couldn’t say no.

Now, acquiring it pre-assembled was both a blessing and a curse. Assembly and model-building is one of my least favorite tasks (as I noted in my Six Pillars of the Hobby post from last year) so I always try to outsource it whenever possible. But the Skaven Doomwheel is such an intricate model that I probably would have opted for sub-assemblies if doing it from the box. Oh well! Restriction breeds creativity, as I always say.

With that, I rolled up my hands and got to work. I started by spraying the whole thing a rusty brown — with so much rusted metal and exposed wood, I figured rusty brown would be a good starting point. I followed that up with metal for the blades, gears, and other metallic bits. After that, a bit of detail work and weathering (not too much — after all, my goal was to get this thing finished in time for our Dragon Rampant game, and the fact that I’d acquired the model pre-assembled meant that there was a limit on how much interior detail work I could realistically accomplish).

Here’s what I came up with.

It’s a really cool model, but I really manhandled it over the course of the painting process. I ended up pausing to spray it with clear matte varnish no fewer than 5 times to keep the painted parts safe from repeated handling and touching.

In general, I’ve found that these new-generation Skaven war machines represent big improvements over the older metal models. I can get away with having a few larger plastic models alongside my metal infantry hordes, right?

And here’s a look at the Doomwheel in action (before I’d attached the banner, oops!) from our Dragon Rampant game.

It’s a basic and serviceable paint job, I think, which is great, and the price was right.

I’m already moving on to the next unit on the list for my vintage metal Skaven army. Up next: Skaven slaves! Stay tuned for more…