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
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