Fully Painted: All-Metal Skaven Army

Posted by Comrade on January 12, 2021
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Hark, dear reader — do you hear? The bell has tolled thirteen dolorous peals, signifying the completion of the great task which I set before myself two years prior. It is time to share with you my newly completed Skaven army in all its creeping, coiling, loathsome glory!

Regular readers will know that collecting and painting up a Skaven army composed of the old-school metal figures that I coveted as a kid is a goal that I’ve striven toward since the middle of 2018. I certainly took my sweet time with this project, chipping away in bits and pieces between several 40k projects and a couple other fantasy endeavors. Now it is time to show off the fruits of my labors!

Keen-eyed readers will immediately notice that this isn’t a Warhammer-sized army. It’s true — I collected and assembled this army primarily to play mid-sized skirmish games like Dragon Rampant and Saga: Age of Magic. Most of the unit sizes are in multiples of 6 and 12 figures, which align well with those rulesets. With a little work, I can probably reconfigure this lot for Warlords of Erehwon or Kings of War.

For those who want to catch up on this series, here are links to past entries:

I’ll share some detail shots a little later in the post, but for now let’s run through the units in the big photo above.

A. Warp Lightning Cannon – what’s that, a plastic model? Yes, it’s true. Purists need read no further. I have included just a handful of plastic models in this army … mostly larger models. In this case, I acquired this Warp Lightning Cannon nicely painted and finished, so it was an easy one to include.

B. Packmaster and Giant rats – barely glimpsed behind that hill!

C. HQ units – various beautiful old models including Thanquol, Lord Skrolk, and the “Middlehammer” version of Deathmaster Snikch, plus a few more.

D. Weapon teams – Warp Grinder and Warpfire Thrower

E. Crossbow rats – these are monopose metal figures from Heartbreaker Hobbies’ wererats line.

F. Poison Wind Globadiers – possibly my favorite individual Skaven models, and strangely pricey these days due to the fact that they’re still a valid unit choice in Age of Sigmar despite being available only as metal, 20-year-old sculpts.

G. Weapon teams – Ratling guns x2

H. Rat Ogres – another pair of plastic figures, also acquired nicely painted and ready to play.

I. Clanrats – gorgeous old figures from Jes Goodwin’s C47 range. Here’s a closer look!

J. Skaven Slaves – Another batch of metal models that are rather pricey these days. Just basic slaves with spears and leg irons.

K. Stormfiend – The newest addition to the army, I acquired this plastic model nicely painted a few weeks ago. I like the idea of a single Stormfiend lumbering at the rear of my army, hissing and clanking and ready to exploit a break in the enemy’s line.

L. Plague Monks – featuring a custom banner vinyl banner

M. Stormvermin – the classic Skaven shock troops.

N. Gutter Runners – eight sneaky assassins plus their leader, Veskit the Executioner

Now it’s time for some close-up photos! I borrowed a nicer camera to take some macro shots, which really give the sense of a mass of chittering rats surging forward on the battlefield.

Note: All photos should be clickable, so you can view slightly larger versions if that is your desire.

Miniatures photography is almost as fun as actually playing games with these guys!

More pics below showing the spear-wielding guys at the vanguard of the assault.

I had a lot of fun acquiring and painting up some of these nifty character models. Here’s a closer look!

Now back to the rank and file! Imagine this gnawing horde charging at you across the battlefield, slashing the air with their rusted weapons and chittering in their foul rat-pidgin.

After I took these fun new photos, I realized I had missed one model: my Doomwheel! It sat ignored and unloved on a shelf while I was gleefully arranging these pics. Oops! Here it is, lest it get overlooked.

This army project was a real joy to tackle over the last few years. From researching to acquiring the models to painting up the units, I learned a lot about the Oldhammer-era history of this fun fantasy faction. I am pleased to report that I ended up with the exact army that I wanted, beholden to no particularly game or ruleset or army list or special rule.

I hope to do a similar post later this year for my dwarf army, with lots of nice photos and group shots — stay tuned!

Painting Skaven: Vintage Metal Clanrats

Posted by Comrade on January 1, 2021
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I must admit, I was saving the best for the last when I embarked upon a journey two years ago to paint up a Skaven army featuring the vintage metal figures that had so inspired me as a younger person. I knew the last batch of figures I’d be painting would be my beloved clanrats: those scrappy fighters who make up the bulk of most Skaven armies.

By this point, I’ve already painted Stormvermin and Plague Monks and Gutter Runners and weapons teams galore to give my army some versatility. All that remains is that solid core of warriors. OK, maybe not so solid — these are Skaven we’re talking about, after all.

I knocked these guys out in the waning days of 2020, so although this blog post is dated January 1, 2021, these figures represent my output in the previous year. Most of the sculpts are from the famous C47 range of Skaven sculpted by Jes Goodwin in the late 80s and early 90s. I adore them as examples of how Skaven looked and behaved before the lore had been fully developed.

As with the other units I’ve painted up so far, I did 12 of these guys. Twelve is a number that is well suited to both Saga: Age of Magic and Dragon Rampant, which are the two rulesets where I’m most likely to field these guys.

I’m particularly enamored with these figures, as they’re armed with a hodgepodge of weapons and armor that really represents the essence of the Skaven to me — grab whatever’s handy, strap on some armor bits looted from a still-warm corpse, and rush back into battle!

Now we’ll walk through some close-ups of the various figures in this unit.

On the right in the photo above is Throt the Unclean, an early example of the zaniness that infests the Skaven range. Look closely and you’ll see he is sporting a third arm! Interestingly, Throt lacks a tail, which suggests to me that the arm was grafted onto his body to replace his tail. Neat detail!

The standard bearer is a bit of a slapdash effort. I painted him up and realized I didn’t have a suitable battle flag to affix to his standard. So I dug around in my bits box and found a couple clipped off tattered robe bits from some Nurgle models. A bit of repositioning and they can do an acceptable job as some flapping rags to inspire the Skaven warriors.

I love the variety of weapons on these figures. On the three figures above, we have four distinct weapons: a pick, a dirk, a morning star, and a butcher knife. Plus two shields! And that duel-wielding Skaven is wearing like one-quarter of a suit of ill-fitting armor.

These figures date back to an era when models were created based solely on how badass or awesome they looked, rather than how they might conform to a set of wargame rules. Ah, the glory days! Bless you, Jes Goodwin.

As with many early Warhammer figures, these models are loaded up with satchels, pouches, scabbards, scrolls, vials, and other accoutrements of battle. I particularly love these details because it makes these guys look like raiders and battlefield scavengers. They’ll lop off your hand in combat, but they’re just as likely to pause and yank the rings off your fingers before loping back to the melee.

I sprinkled on some rust effects, nothing major, just a hint here and there to suggest that these blades and armor bits have seen better days.

Astute Oldhammer fans will probably notice that, strictly speaking, not all of these figures were sold as “clanrats” back in the day. A few are slaves, or warlords, or whatever. I acknowledge this, and dismiss it out of hand with a stern yet friendly admonition: once a figure has crossed my workbench, it loses all trappings of its former life and becomes precisely what I wish it to be in my army. Thus, these are clanrats.

With the completion of these 12 figures, I’ve officially completed the last unit in my all-metal Skaven army. I have a few single figures left that I’d like to get around to painting, but in general this project is complete. I will do a wrap-up post later in January with some photos of the whole army (including some recent additions that haven’t yet been seen by my blog comrades). Stay tuned!

2020 Year in Review: The Year of Fantasy

Posted by Comrade on December 7, 2020
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I’m preparing to close out 2020, and as I often do, I took stock of my painting and hobbying for the year and found something surprising and unexpected: I painted exclusively fantasy figures for the whole year. No sci-fi, no Warhammer 40,000, nothing with a laser gun or energy sword. Wow!

This is almost certainly the first time this has happened in my gaming career. I’m not sure precisely how this came to pass. The pandemic certainly had something to do with it… in terms of games played, I mustered just four sessions — only two since March of this year.

Another factor was the anticlimactic arrival of Warhammer 40k’s much anticipated new edition. The pandemic meant that my game group couldn’t gather to try out the new game, so the arrival of the new edition was basically a non-event, at least for me. I still haven’t played a game of 9th edition, actually. Ho hum! Here’s a picture from the last time I played 40k at our end-of-the-year apocalypse game in 2019.

For 2020, I managed to get in a couple games of Saga: Age of Magic early in the year, before all this pandemic stuff turned the world upside down. Those early games got me excited to revisit my all-metal Skaven army as well as my beloved dwarf army, which I built back in the early 2010s and have been augmenting periodically over the years. Both armies fit nicely into Üthdyn, our homebrew fantasy setting that we have been tinkering with for a few years.

I find that a strong narrative framework always helps me get “in character” and plan out my painting and hobbying. Üthdyn was the spark that lit my torch through the long dark of 2020, it seems.

I’ve organized a few posts from the past year so you can read about my work on my Skaven and Dwarf armies, if you wish.

Skaven

Dwarves (or Dwarfs, if you prefer)

So although 2020 was a thin year for actual tabletop gaming, I still managed to make a great deal of progress on two beloved army projects. I am very close to actually completing my Skaven army…just one last unit of clanrats that I’m finishing up right now. After that, I’ll call the army “done,” although I still have a small pile of oddball figures that I’d like to add as time allows. But it’ll be nice to officially finish the army! I’ll be sure to take some glamor shots of the whole rat horde and share them here.

My dwarf army is in great shape and I have more than enough units to play most any game that comes across my table, from Saga: Age of Magic to Open Combat to Dragon Rampant to Song of Blades & Heroes, maybe even all the way up to Kings of War! But the allure of the bearded chaps means that I have plenty more unpainted dwarf models to work through. It’s been a real joy to discover and paint up some of the newer models that have come along from producers like Scibor and MOM Miniatures, as well as old favorites from the class Warhammer Citadel range. With a simple and consistent paint job, you can tie them all together into a cohesive and formidable tabletop army.

So — more dwarves in 2021, I think! I’m hoping to clear my palette by early 2021 as I am expecting the arrival of the Into the Abyss chaos warriors that I backed on Kickstarter. Stay tuned!

Terrain Day!

Posted by Comrade on October 25, 2020
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In October, after a long gaming drought owing to the pandemic and, more locally, the wildfires in Oregon, my game club got together for not one, but two meetups. Both were conducted in open-air locations using masks and physical distancing, for which I am grateful.

The first was a bits swap – our second annual bits swap, as it happens. It was a ton of fun and I snagged some very useful tidbits for my various projects. I also unloaded some choice pieces from my collection that will no doubt be put to good use by other, more creative minds. Ha!

The other event was a terrain day last weekend! I love getting together to build terrain and swap tips & tricks with my fellow gamers. I’ve hosted and attended a number of these over the years, with various groups of friends, and they’ve always been veritable fonts of inspiration.

In this case, we had a purpose behind our gathering: we have resolved to build a Frostgrave table! Starting with a modular template (12 inch squares of pink foam), each player will contribute a few tiles to create a highly customizable layout.

John had done the heavy lifting by acquiring a boatload of pink foam and cutting some tiles and scraps for us to work with. We also put his Proxxon hot wire foam cutter to good use. It was a fun afternoon of chatting, chopping, and chortling.

We all got a good start on the terrain and left with a pretty good idea of where this particular project is headed. My first tile took shape at the terrain day, and I continued working on it in the weeks to come. Here’s the progression from basic idea to finished product.

I think we’ll have the pieces in place to play our first game of Frostgrave on the new modular table by Christmas. Stay tuned!

The Fires of Progress

Posted by Comrade on September 22, 2020
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This post is part hobby update, part real-life interlude. Come along, if you wish, and see how Comrade’s Wargames has been enduring the last, apocalyptic days of summer.

Some readers may know that I live in western Oregon, an area of the country that is beautiful, lush, and quiet — most of the time. Every now and then, wildfires come calling. This is the western United States, after all, and even though western Oregon has a reputation for being gray and rainy, the fact remains that most of Oregon’s climate is dry for a large part of the year. Global climate change is only worsening that trend, I’m afraid.

So, wildfires caused by lightning strikes in the foothills of the Cascade Mountains blew up on Labor Day weekend, fanned by an unusually strong wind system, and quickly grew to thousands of acres. These fires were unique because they began moving toward the Willamette Valley, home to the largest population centers in Oregon. Oh hey, I live there too. Right here, where the purple arrow is pointing.

So things were pretty dicey for a few days. Smoke and ash blanketed the entire valley, including my home. Here’s a look at my neighborhood on the morning of Tuesday, September 8. It looks like something out of a Resident Evil video game.

And here’s the accumulated ash on the hood of my car.

We watched the news nervously for a few days, and had our go bags prepped in case we needed to hit the road. But the fires stayed mainly in the forested mountain canyons and never ventured down into the major cities in the valley.

The air quality, however, was another story. For nearly two weeks, the air in my neck of the woods was worse than what you’d typically see in someplace like Beijing. Of course, the smoke and ash coincided with a visit from my mother-in-law, so we had to spend the entire visit indoors, with the HVAC running full blast to have a modicum of comfort.

Being trapped indoors for a week gave me an opportunity to putter around with another new hobby: food preservation! I have a little backyard garden, more of a garden patch really, and I was excited to try my hand at canning some food for storage. The tomatoes here came from my garden, and the peppers were a gift from my friend and fellow gamer John, who moved into a new home that had a backyard garden overflowing with produce (courtesy of the previous owners) and graciously allowed me to harvest some crops.

Take a look at my haul from John’s garden. Wow! Every color of the rainbow. What didn’t get pickled and canned has already been consumed by my family.

I am terribly proud of my meager pints of preserved tomatoes and peppers, and I plan to increase my garden space next summer. Please do me a favor and check back in 4 months to make sure I haven’t gotten botulism after popping these bad boys open.

Between fires and being trapped indoors and all this food prep, you might think I would have had zero time for my miniatures hobby. Incorrect! In fact, retreating to my workshop/office became an important daily ritual for me during this fairly stressful time. I managed to finish six of these fantastic chunky resin dwarf models from Scibor Monstrous Miniatures.

They are really tremendous sculpts, full of character, and perfect as elite warriors, thanes, sergeants, or lords.

For my army, they will hit the table as hearthguard, sworn bannerdwarves to King Nicodemus, the Anvil of Dawn. Huzzah!

See? I managed to squeeze in a bit of a hobby update amidst all this real-life stuff. There will be more to come soon, as the Year of Fantasy marches on!