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Okay, I'm a hard core "builder" but a very laxidasical painter. Most of my models have never even been within 24" of a can of primer, much less sprayed by one. My 2012 New Year's Resolution is to get my unfinished models painted. I'll be breaking that omnibus resolution into smaller "vows" which I'll put into separate blogs. This, my first, will cover my vow to paint my Skaven army.

As the staff at GW Seattle Battle Bunker can tell you, I've a LOT of Skaven. I roped the staff into basecoating 180 of the buggers (two x50 slaves and two x40 clanrats) during the summer "Hobby Apocalypse" where the staff were tasked to help get customers' stuff painted or built. That still leaves me with a lot of rats with a lightish brown color to them. To fulfil my vow, the rest of my rats will be painted before undertaking any new projects. Now, I'm not stupid and I don't plan on letting burnout kill my enthusiasm so I've some smaller ongoing projects which I'll attend to once a week just to keep my sanity (or what's left of it) intact. I'll post those projects in my Modelling Workbench blog just to keep everything separate and on track.

If you start to see my slip on my vow (such as not posting updates to this blog at least once per week), don't be afraid to spam my inbox with PMs.

First pictures (i.e., evidence of me actually doing this) should be posted sometime Sunday evening.

Thanks, and I hope one or two of you get something out of this.

That's quite the task ahead of you.

Good luck.

Okay, here's the first modest shot of my progress. Not a lot to see, I know, but it's only the first day of the year.

I've started on this unit of Skaven Slaves because the color plan I'm using is simplist for them. Once my skill improves a bit I can move on to more interesting models. I'll see if I can get a close up of a slave tomorrow so you can get a better idea of what I'm doing with them.

Ah, the wonders of painting a horde of skaven! I bought a set of them a couple of years ago and still have not finished them!

I shall be keeping a watchful eye on this blog, mainly to see a nice army of skaven get some paint but also to make sure you don't slack off!

Cain

Commander Cain wrote:...to make sure you don't slack off!

And that's what this blog is all about.

Breotan wrote:

Commander Cain wrote:...to make sure you don't slack off!

And that's what this blog is all about.

good luck! it took me over a year to get all mine done.... it was a a truly daunting task!

I love skaven, will be keeping my eyes on this

Okay, here's a brief update. As I stated earlier, I'm starting off with two units of Skaven Slaves and pretty much doing cleanup / putting a second coat of paint on these guys. The initial paintjob was done for my by the GW Staff at the Seattle Bunker as part of a "Hobby Apocolypse" and I very much abused the privelage.

So, what have I done and what still needs doing? Well, I've recoated the robes, wood bits, and much of the metal. I've got to do touchup work on the metal and then do the body parts with Tallaran Flesh to get them all cleaned up. Here is the paint plan:

Flesh/Fur - Tallarn Flesh
Top clothes/Hoods - Fortress Grey
Main clothes - Dheneb Stone
Metal - Mithril Silver
Wood - Calthan Brown
Metals washed with Badab Black then rest of the model washed with Devlin Mud. Teeth and eyes hit with Skull White and either some blue or pink for rat eyes - haven't decided yet.

After all the basecoat work is done on these guys, I'm going to put them aside. Why? Because I want my whole army to have a consistent look and to do that I want everything base coated before I move on to washing them with Devlin Mud and drybrushing/detailing. I still have an entire unit of Slaves that are pure Tallaran (no real basecoating done) and I think I'll grab them next just to keep things consistent and make sure I don't just leave stuff undone. That reminds me, I still need to magnatize them. :/

Today (Friday, Jan 06) is going to be my hobby/special project day this week. It's because the Seattle Battle Bunker is holding a "master class" painting class/tutorial and I think I'd benefit from that more than using an evening smearing paint on rats. I'll be converting guns for my Necrons and possible working on my Mordheim Skaven as well. I'll update my workbench blog with details on that. I'll resume work on painting my Skaven army this Saturday when I have a full day to dedicate to them.

Anyway, for what it's worth, here are a few pics of what the slaves are looking like:

And that is why I stick to 40k, so many models!!!

Goodluck

Okay, I'm almost done with those two Slave units. I just need to touch up some of the metal bits on a few rats and then it's off to start my Clanrat units. Again, I'm starting with the two units previously painted because those also have parts that need "cleaning up" as well as some places where something was painted with the wrong color or no color or such. I won't be posting any more pics of the slave units because you honestly can't see what I've done unless I show some before/after stuff and that really isn't worth anyone's time.

The paint plan for the Clanrats is nearly identical to the slaves, except for one item:

Top clothes/Hoods - Mechrite Red

I will have pics of the Clanrat unit later this evening or tomorrow.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
And now here are a few quick shots to show the Clanrats unit that I'm doing next. First shot is of the unit. There are ten fewer rats than in the Slaves unit so that's a bonus. The second and third pic show what I'm doing as far as touchups. Mostly putting paint where there is only Talarn Flesh or cleaning up boo-boos and such. These are "before" shots. I'll take an "after" shot once the unit is done.

Ill be interested to see how this goes xD love being nosey to other skaven players things, especially while I have a 229 model painting list infront of me still o.e

I rearranged my Clanrats so one tray is holding the rats that are almost fully armored and the other tray has the rats with the "hoodies and scarves". I do this mainly to speed up cleanup after the game as well as to help remember which unit holds which characters. The net effect of this is that I'm painting three rats from scratch in addition to the rest of the unit. What I find perplexing is that I was frustrated as all heck when I was doing my Necrons and they were just Boltgun with some black and a little green for accent. These Skaven have a far more complex paint plan and far more models, yet I'm quite mellow about it all. I could paint these all day if I had the time to do so. I don't understand why this is, given that most people start slamming their faces into the desk when they put a tray of rats in front of them.

In any event, I'm done with the red (hoodies) and brown (wood), leaving me with the Deneb stone for the robes (linen) and Mithril for the armor. Deneb is next for painting but I don't expect to get much done tonight due to the Master Class being taught at the Seattle Bunker. Still I'll have a few of them done today and then I shoud have both units done with Deneb tomorrow and ready for Mithril on either Sunday or Monday. I haven't decided if I want to do my Plague Monks after this or dig out my unpainted slaves/clanrats and do them up while I've got this set of paints at the ready.

Okay, the base coating is nearly done on my Clanrats. You really won't be able to tell looking at pictures of the whole unit but here is a side-by-side of the Warpfire Thrower. You'll notice that instead of having both be Clanrats, I opted to make the "porter" a slave. Seemed more appropriate that way.

Nice job so far man, keep up the good work!

Looking good! And you're more mellow abot it becasue they're closer to yur optimal skill level, meaning you enjoy these more then your Necrons. Trust me, I play High Elves in WHFB

Great start, I've been considering a skaven army again myself, but just can't get excited enough about fantasy. Though I really want to get the FW vermin lord model.

I do however propose that the title of your blog should be changed to new years rats-olution.

Ratsolution would be good except I've got four Fantasy armies and five 40k ones that need to be done. Skaven are just the first and once I've got this army finished, I intend to move on to something else. I'll asses and decide when the time comes.

As far as the rats being closer to my skill level, I don't know. The Necrons were only boltgun & black with some green as an accent. Nothing complicated at all. Why they drove me up the wall is just something I can't figure out. Meh, I've sold those and my new necrons will be based on Tron when I get around to them. I plan on practicing glow effects on other stuff before I get there, though. I really want them to look nice.

Still working on the other unit of Clanrats. Here's a shot of the Poison Wind Morter. I don't like the colors as much as I do on the Warpfire Thrower but hopefully it'll look better once the washes are on.

Nice start, makes me want to start painting the last 2k or so of the 5k of Skaven I have.

Good too see your still sticking with it¬¬¬

Hahah the madness that is painting Skaven! I once painted 2k worth of Skaven in 2 weeks.... That kind of stuff is never again.

But I will be watching this blog closely. Consider me subscribed!

So, I've basecoated two units of slaves and two units of Clanrats, including weapon teams. I decided that before moving on, I'd finish up the last of my troops. I went into the Seattle Battle Bunker and sorted out what I had and found that I could make a third unit of both Clanrats and Slaves (oh, yay) so those will be my next project. I still need to cut movement trays to size so that'll be my off-day project.

I'm also making a smaller unit of Clanrats (24 of them) to serve as the summonings from my Dreaded 13th Spell. Da-da-dummmmm!! Problem is, I'm short a Clanrat. I'll get it sorted out. I've decided that my summoned rats will be a slightly different scheme than the regular ones with the hoodies being red/purple and the robes being green/blue.

Anyway, here's the pic of what I have left for rat troops.

Okay, I missed one day of work due to my Phantom Titan arriving (had to inventory pieces) as well as my Rat Hounds (pics at a later date). That meant yesterday was dedicated to work that I was supposed to do on Wednesday. Because these Clanrats mostly come from the IoB set, they had slota bases and I needed to hit the underside with a dremel in order to be able to put a 3mm magnet in. 166 rats later, I was sore from holding that stupid power tool. :/

I also discovered that I needed to come up with two more banner bearers for my Clanrat units. I took two gongs from the plague monk rats, filed them down to make them thinner, and glued them together in a conversion to make a standard Clanrat banner. For my Dreaded 13th rats, I went with the cheapo banner from the plague monks set and pinned it to the top of a spear. Spells just aren't steeped in the intracacies of heraldry after all. So, here are pics of what I did.

Part way through my last tray of Skaven Slaves. I should (hopefully) have them base-coated midway through next week. That will leave me with one tray of 40 Clanrats and one tray of 24 Clanrats (for my 13th spell) to do and then I'll be able to move on to my Plague Monks.

So, I'm running a few days slower than I had expected. I got caught up in things at home and didn't make it to the Bunker over the weekend and that means I didn't paint over the weekend. Still, I've only the weapons, shields, and furry parts left to do (which means I've done the clothes). :/

When this unit is finished, I'll show off all three slave units side by side.

Looks great! So many models lol good luck!

Okay, after so many delays the third and last unit of Skaven Slaves is done. I've still got a 40-figure unit of Clanrats to do in the current Clanrat color scheme followed by a unit of 24 Clanrats in a special scheme to represent the Dreaded 13th Spell. That should keep me busy for the first half of March at least. After that, it's onto the Plague Monks. All 45 of them. Fortunately there's only ONE unit of those.

Real cool looking. What clan are they? I like Clan Skurvy.

Breotan wrote:Okay, after so many delays the third and last unit of Skaven Slaves is done. I've still got a 40-figure unit of Clanrats to do in the current Clanrat color scheme followed by a unit of 24 Clanrats in a special scheme to represent the Dreaded 13th Spell. That should keep me busy for the first half of March at least. After that, it's onto the Plague Monks. All 45 of them. Fortunately there's only ONE unit of those.

I think they look great and done like that

Sorry about not posting sooner. Weather has been cold and rainy in Seattle (duh!) and that really made me not want to go to the Bunker on a bunch of days that I really should have. Excuses aside, I've now basecoated the third full Clanrat unit as well as the Doom-Flayer weapon team that goes with it. Here's a quick pic of the DF:



I'll try to get a shot of all my basecoated units together so you can see what I've done so far. Next up is my last unit of Clanrats, which is my 24 "13th Spell" unit that will be done in slightly different colors and won't have a weapon team.