WIP: Clanrats

Still cracking away at the clan rats. Doing a couple ranks this time. My intent is use every brown and most of the grays I have on these rats. I am just kind of grabbing handfuls and laying down the fur tone I want to work with at the moment. I didn't get as far as I would like with these guys by today, but some of that is because I used some of my painting time for Dust Warfare.

In trying to lay down the base for these rats I have found that, because I am using snow flock, if I go too light on the dry brushing of the sand, it tends to not add enough contrast. Everything kind of blurs together is a mass of dull light-color and am white. That being said, I am not sure I am bringing the color up high enough, and struggling to find the happy medium. Until I get something I like better, I am basing the sand with VGC Charred Brown, followed by a dry-brush of VGC Earth, and finally another dry-brush of VGC Cobra Leather. This color progression is illustrated in the photo below, going from right to left.

While I was waiting for the initial coat of Charred Brown to dry before dry-brushing I went ahead and started blocking in the base color for this grip of rats fur. I also started laying down the flesh-colored parts on a few of the rats before I ran out of time.

The running out of time part is tied into me taking my usual painting time to get my second game of Dust Warfare in. I wasn't in a huge hurry so we played a big 300 point game, wherein I am sure rules were butchered, misread, or ignored out right. I really like the Dust rules set, and the models remind me of playing with the plastic army men I got in a bag when I was younger. I am extremely enamored of the SSU, as I have always been a huge fan of heliocopters, probably based on the countless hours of Airwolf my older brother subjected me to.

Which leads me to my only point of contention with Dust. I need more stuff from them, specifically the rule book to play the faction I want to play. It is almost like the reverse of GW, where they have given models for the game but not rules. I can't decide which is more consternating. I fear that for Dust to really get legs with my local play group there needs to be more options than "either or", and really the only games I have seen do well with the folks I play with had at least four factions.

In the meantime, David Morris has been nice enough to let me use his models, and has been an excellent teacher. My SSU guys sit ideally by until they have rules and I can start zooming over the table with my choppers, Airwolf theme blaring in my head. Oh, and after grabbing this bad boy I will at least know the basics for when it is that glorious time:

Thanks for reading,
T

Skaven Clanrats

Over the Memorial Day Weekend my younger brother and I decided to pick up the Island of Blood set and learn how to play Warhammer Fantasy Battle. My vitriol toward that product has diminished over time, although I will say, despite any information given by Games Workshop or unscrupulous game store owners, you cannot in fact a play a game of fantasy from that box. Despite that major let down, my younger brother rolled a die, unable to choose between rats and elves, and ended up with the High Elves.

Admittedly this had me concerned. I paint so slowly that the notion of doing a horde army almost killed any chance of me getting into Fantasy before it began. But, despite a couple of set backs, we still were (are) waiting for the new 40k rules, and didn't see a whole lot of point in playing another battle under 5th.

We did muddle through a game after getting some army books, and had a great time. In the few games we have played he continues to hand me my butt (Stupid griffon!) but there is also a fairly large points disparity between the two forces. We are enjoying ourselves immensely, and have decided to attempt to put paint to our forces, at least for the time being.

This actually works out well. In just one short week it will be all 40k all the time in my local play group, and I am sure I will catch a learning game or two, however I am content to sit back. An entire edition of 40k has come and gone, where the army I love most, Dark Angels, sat with sup-par rules and didn't even get a new model. To say that I am ecstatic that Dark Angels are rumored to be featured in the starter box, as well as one of the early armies to be released is an understatement. But even still, I think I will save my enthusiasm for when it actually happens. I am OK being a little late to the 6th Edition party, and love the idea of starting off with a new book and new models.

In the interim, rats, and plenty of them. My brother and I have decided not to get any more models until we have finished what we have, which is the stuff in Island of Blood. He has a let less models than I do, so I needed to get cracking. Also I will tire of getting griffoned to death every time we play, so I will want to start padding out my ranks and getting some more pointy-teeth and claws on the board. I needed to start slow, so I just did one rank, well kind of, I will probably have no idea who all goes where when it is all said and done.


The models themselves actually paint up fairly quickly. And I struggled with not over complicating them. They still took a fair amount of time, because I wanted to add some extra touches like the glowing eyes and all the rust. I want my have my rats feel like you could get lock-jaw just looking at them, but didn't want to over do it so they looked like blogs of red-orange. I went with the snowy bases because I have had the flock lying around forever. Also, having been through three long winters where I live, I am beginning to equate winter and snow with a certain degree of misery, apropos for Skaven.



There are some techniques on the snow flock that I need to improve on and refine. I also need to find the setting on this new camera that makes the pics a lot less yellow. But this is the start of one of my rat squads, packs, nests? I have no idea...

If there is interest I would be glad to do a tutorial of how I did them, although the next group I do will have lighter fur.

Thanks for reading,
T