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Last year during a mordheim revival I discovered GW's "new" skaven and it was love att first sight. Finally they actually looked like rats and not mutated monkeys like original mordheim ones.
At the same time I started to see the end to my desert themed space marine army project, witch had a rather strict military style and wanted a more serious looking "badguy" force to match up.
First i thought of orks, but found all of it to be a bit too much on the Pixar-side of things to fit in.
After giving up genestealer hybrids due to the lack of models, I took a deep breath and decided to convert an entire army of 40k skaven. Insurgent style.

First out I tried to build from the clan rat as a base.


But it turned out to be a bit too much gun and little lack of meat behind it. And I was quite certain that I wanted to have bolt gun as basic weapon for the army.
Then I found the Storm Vermin witch immediately felt like the way to go for the basic insurgent.


The thought is that they don't really have their own technology but rather scavenge and use what they find, so ork bolters are mixed with older and newer imperial bolters.


The tactical style of the force will be that of an ork army but lacking the higher T value and the availability of mega armour and such. So a mass army witch totaly lacks the ability to withstand any punishment combined
with the generally low LD, this force would not stand much of a chance in more competitive types of games. Luckily och club plays almost only scenario-games,


This is two troopers from a Assassin pack witch is intended to be the force's most elite unit. The SVD rifles from Maxmini are in this case needle sniper rifles. The blades are of course poisonous and are a symbol of the assassins.


A rouge trader era heavy plasma puts some serious punch in the assassin unit. And of course this is a infiltration unit, and they need every edge they can get to withstand a contact with the SM force.


The unit is led by a hero.



An evil bombmaker is the commander at this date, but a full fledged Warlord with bodyguards is supposed to take over the role.
In our scenario games we have played with hidden IED's equal to battle cannon blasts in strength witch really slows a mechanized SM force down since they need to dismount in order to even detect the bombs.

And here are a few pictures on painted insurgents, from yesterdays scenario session.

Great stuff! May I ask how you worked on the arms position to make your stormvermin holding their weapons so well?

skimutis wrote:

And here are a few pictures on painted insurgents, from yesterdays scenario session.

Love non-standard 40k armies! Great job on the skaven, they look even more fantasic painted

How do you get the GS cloth so good? That is tough to do!

Subbed!
Rawson

The arms are solved by lots of carving and then the ragtag scarfs and cloaks to cover it up. Most hands on the storm vermin sprue's are clenched around the shaft of some kind halberd and there is the most energy spent carving out the U-shaped grip out of basically a clenched fist. Usually the thumb needs to be re-done with green stuff, and often also the fingertips.

The cloth is basically a really thin sheet och GS witch is wrapped around the model, and then gently pealed downwards to give the cloth some natural fall. If it gets to plain just twist the cloth and then peal it down.

At this time there are about 20 finished models but according to a imaginary army roster i will need about 55-60 total. Hard labor days ahead...

Wow, these are fantastic. I was skeptical when I first clicked on the thread when reading the title, but I am blown away. Awesome conversions, and I cant wait to see an entire army of these critters

I love this project, and those hoods look fantastic. The mix of old and new weapons really give them that 'scavenger' feel that you would associate with an army of rats.

Really awesome!

OMG these are awesome!

I really like this project. I know some people are hesitant on the blatant "Fantasy Innnnnn Spaaaaaaaaace!" concept, but you pulled it off quite well.

Love the old school bits-box pieces too. It was one of the things I looked to incorporate as much as possible into my own project.

Great looking force so far, looking forward to more of the skittering desert rats.

Nice gameing table/scenery too.

The mantic games veer-myn models might be a resource for conversion bits.

Wow they are very nice indeed.

Cant wait for more.

Fantastic. I really like these. The bomb maker is a cool model. Really like the two assassins too. The idea that they scavenge their technology makes perfect sense to me.

I am interested in hearing more about the games you play. Are you playing Rogue Trader, Necromunda, current 40K?

The desert terrain you fought over is excellent. The warehouse at the back looks immense. You are so lucky your local gaming group are up for small scenario/character driven games. The shot of the Skaven creeping though the ruined building is perfect.

Looking forward to seeing and hearing more.

Peter

Could you post some more pics of the building, warehouse or what it is,. Looking really good.

The warehouse is made by a friend in the club, and he has made enough quality terrain to start his own thread here. And I think he will...

About the game
The rules we use are heavily modified 2nd edition rules. The background to this is basically that we quit playing 40k about when 3rd edition came out, due to the discovery of the lethal but exiting combination partying and girls and that sort of stuff I guess.
During the military service some of us again felt the need for miniature wargaming but wanted more military substance than the 40k battles of the youth. We found Easy Eight's Battleground ww2 to meet our demands quite perfectly. Much more detailed than GW's games with more tactical depth but still simple enough to play up to perhaps around company sized battles. Since we were squad leaders in the Swedish army our interest and tactical understanding reached about platoon-level combat and there is where we focused. Played both in ww2 and modern setting.

But this game also fell in to oblivion. No miniature gaming at all for lots of years until very lately were a innocent Mordheim revival escalated into a 40k frenzy. Today we appreciate the simple d6 based nature of 40k and the easily comparable stats on troops and weapons. The major change we have made is throwing the typical 40k 2ed turn out the window and replaced it with the Easy Eight turn. Instead of taking turns and moving your whole army at the same time, each unit (character, squad, vehicle tec) has a card assigned to it. All of these cards are then drawn randomly and each unit moves, fires and everything when their card comes up then the next card/unit until all have been played. Overwatch and stuff like that is played out between these turns in a "special fire phase". A hole different game, but a marine still has WS4BS4 and a boltgun still has str4 and so forth. Squad coherency is now half the units LD value rounded up. This gives the squads more realistic formations. All weapons have unlimited range (except melta weapons and pistols) but suffers -1 tohit modifier for each time they double their original range. So you can fire across the table with a bolt gun in theory, but practically it will be impossible to hit anything unless you are a really good shooter. We find this to give much more realistic distances of contact.

Of course this concept wouldn't work form a competitive perspective since the points value went out through the window together with the original rules. But we don't bother since the forces in our scenario games are all about what's supposed to be there according to the story, not about how much points they are worth. We also learned that a unbalanced game (from a points perspective) is not necessarily a bad one.

The latest addition to the insurgents in progress.



The mounted weapon is a battle cannon and the rules for the vehicle will be that of a ork buggy.

Two more with other weapons will form a squadron later on.

A new skaven character. Some kind of black skaven champion i guess. Perhaps a first bodyguard to the coming Warlord?

This is absolutely bonkers... but I love it

I really like the quirkiness of this project. Also, let's be fair, the models look amazing!

These are just FANTASTIC! So much character!

And thanks for telling us of how you play and the road you took to get there. Very interesting =)

The modelling is certainly top notch, but I'll be honest I find the concept a little troubling.

dude..... this army is off its head!! awsome work cant wait to see more!!!

awesome work man! this is amazing converting!

Very cool work. the theme works nicely and the details are great. Keep them coming!

Where did you get the RPG from?

Thanks for all the kind words, really helps to keep this project going! I have given up several times due to the work it takes to make one single model.

Yodhrin: whats troubling about the concept? I'm in no way defensive about this, but very interested to hear your opinion


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Some pictures of the SM force these rats fight in the scenarios.

I love this project. Consider me subscribed!

Really cool, very creative idea with great conversion work.

 skimutis wrote:

Yodhrin: whats troubling about the concept? I'm in no way defensive about this, but very interested to hear your opinion

Sure; it just seems that, when your theme has such an evident RL inspiration, modelling the "other team" as, well, sub-human rat-men, complete with mad bombers, is a little on the nose. I feel like I'm coming off as being oversensitive, but don't get me wrong I'm not condemning you or anything; it just makes me, personally, a bit uncomfortable.

I hear ya. I'm not defending against your point here, but let me explain this:

It all started with the SM force witch I wanted to have a strongly influence by contemporary military. Quite naturally since i'm a army guy off and on IRL.
When I decided for skaven as a "OpForce",we started a discussion within the club on the army structure and tactics and found it hard for them to stand up to a full frontal confrontation with the SM. Left was the insurgent option, witch also felt quite fresh as a concept on the tabletop. The Taliban influence was added last due to the combination of the insurgent concept and the desert themed marines and terrain.

Even if it may come out that way, my intent is definitely not to equalize the afghans with sub-human mutant rats.

 skimutis wrote:
I hear ya. I'm not defending against your point here, but let me explain this:

It all started with the SM force witch I wanted to have a strongly influence by contemporary military. Quite naturally since i'm a army guy off and on IRL.
When I decided for skaven as a "OpForce",we started a discussion within the club on the army structure and tactics and found it hard for them to stand up to a full frontal confrontation with the SM. Left was the insurgent option, witch also felt quite fresh as a concept on the tabletop. The Taliban influence was added last due to the combination of the insurgent concept and the desert themed marines and terrain.

Even if it may come out that way, my intent is definitely not to equalize the afghans with sub-human mutant rats.

I feel the balance works very well in my opinion. They have an imperial guard Tallarn likeness to them. Real desert rats! If you look at historical gaming then you can in fact purchase Taliban miniatures for you special forces to fight against.

But really that's a conversation for another thread. I really like what you are doing here. It's a great mix of ideas and themes. Plus it's all brilliantly executed! I look forward to seeing more!