Well it happened..I finally broke..It's time to get serious with my vague ideas about a 40K Skaven army. Why Blackhand you say? Why spend all that time and money converting and army that is basically Imperial Guard and will get crushed just as easily as your existing guard army?

Basically I am a masochistic glutton for punishment hence my previous army choices i.e. Tau , Daemonhunters and Guard

But why now of all times to start your ridiculous conversion heavy army Blackhand?

I blame those beautiful new skaven models in the new Island of Blood set, sure I won't be able to use the elves and will have to sell them, sure I can't use the two-piece clanrats as I need left arms to do the weapon conversions and sure that leaves me with like 10 usable models out of the entire box but if any of us glue-sniffing, finger-slicing, plastic addicted gamers had any sense we would be forcing GW to create affordable models, sensible rulesets, regular codexs and provide decent online hobby content....

...but well, thats not the world we live in and I want my little plastic rats!!!

Anyhow onto the actual modelling!

So ever since the last release of skavens made them sooo much better looking, and handily matching their hand size to a guardsaman, I have been itching to convert em to a counts-as Imperial Guard army but I was put off by the amount of models I would need to convert to fill an entire army. Thanks to me building an entire Guard army in the meantime I have realised that there is no need to make 100+ rats with flashlights and that I could get away with a few squads of stormvermin riding chimeras hopefully saving a crapton of time and money, yay!

So here is what I have so far, anyone reading my daemonhunters blog will have seen em but whatever, my new skaven havn't arrived yet from Maelstrom



these are my ratling snipers, I will probably end up with a dozen of these as they are a great way to distract opponents



and this guy is my general for now, and he will probably need a gun swap to a bolt pistol but I am waiting to see what my HQ ends up as.

The biggest conversion job in the army will be the vehicles as they have been a huge motivator for the army to finally get built.

So I love the screaming bell/plague furnace, so skaveny and evil looking and the ruined castle on wheels looks awesome. I really wanted this look to go with the army unfortunately I just could not find a way to attach a screaming bell to a chimera or leman russ that didn't look crap.

So what do you do when the base vehicle doesn't suit the crumbling/ruined masonry you want to mount on it?

You make flying castles!




This is probably the roughest mock-up I have ever done but try to imagine that the rats have excised a hunk of ruins from their ancient evil city, mounted a few chunks of warpstone in the base and floated it out of the ground. After a few run ins with the local guard units they have enough scavenged weapons to mount on the block of floating stone and packed a unit of rats into the tunnels inside the ruins then zoomed off the bring death and mayhem in the name of the horned rat!

This particular one is a counts as chimera FYI, and the weapon mounts will be all brass and copper to match the engineer aesthetic that the skaven have as well as plenty of warpstone chunks and braziers of green flame.

Now I gotta run but I hope this gets you guys thinking as I still have a couple of weeks till my ruins of osgiliath kits arrive and I'm gonna need plenty of help designing these damn things!

Feedback very much appreciated

Cheers

BLACKHAND

Edit - Fluff pasted from post below for clarity

The fluff for the army is that a whole clan of Skaven in the warhammer universe decided to create a portal to wherever they thought the Horned Rat lived and unfortunately teleported themselves and a sphere 100 miles wide with them to a an imperial jungle planet in the 40K universe.
They found that while they could live quite happily in the massive city they had brought with them, after a few days spent on the alien soil they would sicken and eventually die. This wasn't so much of a problem for the rats as they also had the hundreds of miles of underground passages and warpstone mines under the ruined city to live in and were still intent on summoning the Horned Rat.
Unfortunately for them the local imperials weren't so happy with a xenos city appearing on their backyard so they sent in the local guard forces to clean em out.. where despite wiping out hundreds of thousands of the furry critters where eventually overwhelmed, at which point the Warlock Engineers of the skaven had a field day with their weapons and vehicles tearing them to pieces and in some cases actually putting them back together!

Regardless, now the skaven had all these shiny new weapons and needed to put them to use but dammit!, to leave the city would mean suicide and while most of the rats were quite happy to die as long as they went down shooting their awesome new guns the leaders of the clan were looking for a plan with a bit more longevity..and of course they turned to the Warlock Engineers.

According to skaven logic, or what stands in for logic, if you can't leave the city to commit genocide, take the city with you! And so the Warlock's blasted out chunks of the city, crammed them with warpstone generators and backward engineered Grav field nodes, piled on the shiny new weapons they had stripped of the tin cans the humans rode in and rode to war!

Well blackhand your insane, thats cool cause sanity is for the weak right?

Anyway flying tanks which are castles...nice but I think you should use Cities of death kits just becaue they are GRIMDARK *insert evil laugh here* and can be combined with each other while the ruins of Osgilath are not as versitle IMO. also there is only one Osgilath ruins kit while there are several different CoD kits.

wasn't that rat a marbo count as before? I think you should leave him/it/she(?) as marbo and just create a commander from the new kits.

Those snipers are looking pretty awesome BLACKHAND, liking the rifles alot.

Good old crazy BLACKHAND. Your ideas keep getting better.

This is a great concept but it may almost work better to loot a tank combining it with Doom Wheel bits and maybe the Warp Lightning cannon........

@commisar Agro - Damn straight sanity is for the weak!!
The reasons i am using Ruins of Osgiliath Vs cities of death is that the match the masonry arch on the screaming bell much better and so when people see them and skaven together it won't be so jarring.
Plus the fluff for the army is that a whole clan of Skaven in the warhammer universe decided to create a portal to wherever they thought the Horned Rat lived and unfortunately teleported themselves and a sphere 100 miles wide with them to a an imperial jungle planet in the 40K universe.
They found that while they could live quite happily in the massive city they had brought with them, after a few days spent on the alien soil they would sicken and eventually die. This wasn't so much of a problem for the rats as they also had the hundreds of miles of underground passages and warpstone mines under the ruined city to live in and were still intent on summoning the Horned Rat.
Unfortunately for them the local imperials weren't so happy with a xenos city appearing on their backyard so they sent in the local guard forces to clean em out.. where despite wiping out hundreds of thousands of the furry critters where eventually overwhelmed, at which point the Warlock Engineers of the skaven had a field day with their weapons and vehicles tearing them to pieces and in some cases actually putting them back together!

Regardless, now the skaven had all these shiny new weapons and needed to put them to use but dammit!, to leave the city would mean suicide and while most of the rats were quite happy to die as long as they went down shooting their awesome new guns the leaders of the clan were looking for a plan with a bit more longevity..and of course they turned to the Warlock Engineers.

According to skaven logic, or what stands in for logic, if you can't leave the city to commit genocide, take the city with you! And so the Warlock's blasted out chunks of the city, crammed them with warpstone generators and backward engineered Grav field nodes, piled on the shiny new weapons they had stripped of the tin cans the humans rode in and rode to war!

Oh and about the Marbo stand in, I played with him in a tournament and found I didn't do too well with him The model may end up as a Stracken counts as since I will have 4 rat ogryn in the army and I reckon that 4 ogryn and stracken may be a fun little unit.

@hobofishamn - Thanks, this is one of those instances where a neat model met neat rules to make a s*&t hot unit

@tim the biovore - Thank you, I believe I am getting crazier in my old age.

@Llamahead - Read the above answer to Agro as to why I want to keep the castle imagery, and I think I will be using predominantly IG weapons so that it is easier when playing against random people at my club. I will have to think of something to do with the Doom Wheel though.....


Cheers

BLACKHAND

Nice to see someone else uniting the universes!! (I am too...)

How will you do this? You mention Ratlings...so are you using the guard codex...would be exceedingly cool if you used a Skaven rule system as your base...

You might want to get some Necromunda (am I allowed to say that GW? AM I!!!!???) Ratskins...as well as the caller...maybe as human slaves or worshipers? And then there is the Caller...also from Necromunda. Also...things like this:

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Warhammer-Necromunda-Skavvy-Rat-/310236955943?cmd=ViewItem&pt=UK_Toys_Wargames_RL&hash=item483b904527

Anyway! As you can tell I am excited! Subscribed!

Great to have you here Manoknok!

The plan is to use the skaven figs with lasguns and special weapons and run them as Imperial Guard, the flying ruins will all be chimeras, leman russ and hopefully in one case a Stormlord

I want o keep them as codex counts as so that I can play them at my local club which pretty much sticks to codex only armies.

Ok, now with fluff it makes sense, I guess if anything can make sense in the grimdark future...

I can't wait to see how this insanity works out!

Ah...I see. Cool at least it gets them out and about!

I guess you could use something like Ratskins as Penal? RatOgres as Ogryns....

Rat ogres are already ordered, they will have a ripper guns made from grenade launchers and ork shootas,

Clanrast will stand in as normal guardsmen

Stormvermin will be carapace armoured vets

Warlocks will be counts as psykers

I will also try and convert the skaven two man weapon teams to heavy weapon squads

Sentinels wil basically be floating towers tron off the side of buildings with lasgun poking out.

Valkyrie/vendettas will be buildings that float higher and have their weapons on the underside rather than the sides and tops

umm..theres more but I forget

Sounds awesome! Looking forward to seeing it develop!

Looking good, will be following this thread closely, i love the idea as well

Hey Blackhand...

Thought you might find this interesting...

http://www.coolminiornot.com/article/aid/216

Manoknok

Love to see what you can do with a Screaming Bell or Doomwheel...

Excellent, you can count on me following this closely, keep it up you've grabbed my interest.

Steve

Thanks for all the comments guys!

@manoknok - Thanks, I've seen the marine rats before. I'm not sure about them as they lose a lot of ther skaven-ness, the ragged cloth , spiked armour and hunched over posture but as one of the very few people who have tried this it still interesting to see his interpretation of 40k rats.

@P4NC4K3 - At the moment I am intending on using the screaming bell for a leman russ with a Commander Pask "coutns as", the horned preist hanging onto the bell and pointing seems like a cool tank commander to me, not sure how I will use the plague furnace parts...

I hope to have some pics up tonight of the master models for my hatches and turrets, I will be casting them in resin so that I have the same look over all the vehicles I plan on building

Cheers

BLACKHAND

Hey Blackhand,

Yes your right...not very skaveny...but one of the few things out there thats in the 'space rat' area...ish.


M

Ok so I have a few pics of the masters I have been working on in while waiting for my models to arrive from maelstrom.

first up is the master copy of my hatch design



Basically a space marine hatch on a piece of christmas decoration glued to the base of a paint pot. Not too detailed yet as I will be casting it, the final versions will have ladder rungs from the leman russ kit as handles.

next is a very early design for my chimera turret.



I will be adding plating where the gun emerges from the hemisphere but I may decide whether I am going with multilasers as the main chimera weapon in my army first. I have always found them to be pretty handy and skaven don't really suit flamers in my mind.

And last is a hull gun,



I'm not too happy with this yet as it provides too much movement for a hull gun but is not good enough for a sponson gun. I will probably end up going with something more angular with lots of plating and rivets.

Well thats as far as I have gotten due to Real Life sapping my will to model but I figure once the minis arrive I will be moving along at a better pace

C&C welcome


Cheers

BLACKHAND

Eager to see more. Love the concept.

Subscribed! I like this idea.

Love it Blackhand... excited about watching this project get "off the ground". (pun intended).

Fly-fly.Kill-kill. Get the man-thing's warp-sticks. Fly-fly.Kill-kill.

Have been fascinated with the idea of 40k skaven since my first RTB-01 marine set and made a couple up with the plastic skaven heads they had at the time. That and the seeming references to them in some of the old fluff. Still plan to do something more with them than the ratling snipers I've been hoarding bits for for my eventual Hell Legion, but in the meantime I'll just kick back and watch what you come up with


edited for punctuation

Lol, I am still trying to decide on the way that 40K skaven will speak in my fluff, I want to keep away from the Ork-speak but I still want the average rat trooper to sound pretty feral and uneducated. The Warlocks and warlords will definitely curse a lot at their subordinates, you know "mangy pus-filled mold eaters" and the like. I amy have to use the "kill-kill-kill" for the rank and file troops as a marching song though

I would have them talk exactly like Skaven in WHFB, since that's where they're coming from innit?

That would be logical, and there for out of the question!

Very cool! I'll be watching...

Ok so we have some minor progress!

I have managed to cast the hatch successfully and have a working prototype for the sponsons which will hopefully work as both the front hull guns on a chimera and the side sponsons on a leman russ.

I have hit a major snag as I am not happy with the effect I am getting on my ruined stone! I initially thought I could carve the stone out of styrofoam then lay on a s"skin" of plaster of paris to cover the bubble look of sliced styrofoam...needless to say it looks crap and is way to time-intensive to be practical, dang.
After a PM to terraformer for a bit of help I thought I could move to denser urethane foam that has no bubbles due to how it is produced and will carve and sand better. But after a week of ringing and googling I have discovered that in NZ this type of foam is ridiculously expensive.

Seriously. A sheet 2.50m x 1.40m x .05m is $450 BEFORE freight!!!

But did I despair! hell no! I asked around and managed to get a 2 foot square piece of styrofoam from a fireplace store that is far denser than normal and has very small bubbles and after a nights work I think I will be able to use it, woot!

I have also made a start on some custom bases for my stormvermin, they will be cobbles, flagstones and ruins to match with the ruined castles and I will be casting them in resin to make enough, this is much slower going then I ever thought it would be and is using up a LOT of GS but in a week or so I should be ready to make my first mold.

In other news my maelstrom order has been split up as GW didn't send all of my order to them :( Which means my rat ogres will arrive soon but the rest of my bits are still weeks away....gutted.

Why am I telling you all this and not posting any pictures I here you say? Why would you do this BLACKHAND why?

I genuinely intended to post pics but my camera battery is flat...honestly!

SO I will get to taking pics tomorrow and will give you all a look at where I am up to in what is turning out to be the slowest PM blog I have ever done

Cheers,

BLACKHAND

subscribed.

You really need to make this happening man! I'm already impressed by the jumping guy with the bolt pistol. And the Storm Vermin with those Kroot guns, that's really neat! I will follow this.

Exciting, very exciting

Subbed. Another awesome sounding project, can't wait to see your pics!

Thanks for all the support and subscriptions guys, I know how annoying a paint and modelling blog can be when it is relatively picture free

So on that note, onto some pics!

First up is a pic of the master copies of my custom bases, they are supposed to represent the flagstones of the ruined city but I am thinking I need to add more rubble to next few I build without making them too unique as it may look a bit strange to have a bunch of different rats standing on several identical piles of rubble.



Here are a couple of pics of my WIP sponson, it will end up with two booms extending from the vehicle that connect to the top and bottom and allow it to swivel...hopefully





Last are a few pics of my 2.0 version of the "chimera", the denser, finer styrofoam is better but as you can see it still has a lot of messy voids around the bubbles which I can only hope will be able to be hidden under a thin coat of plaster of paris...obviously not my first choice but the Great Foam Hunt will continue!







And with that I better go watch True Blood with my Fiance

C&C is welcome as always!

Cheers

BLACKHAND

How about a thin layer of PVA glue to seal the foam , then some textured masonry paint? Or there's a few types of 'stone effect' spray paint used for arts & crafts.

Spackle will seal the foam and is easy to apply.

Your reading my mind Monkeytroll!
I have been thinking about making up a mix of pva, plaster and water then brushing it on.

Spray paint may melt the foam but with a basecoat it could be ok..

Another con with styrofoam is that I will have to cut out the gaps between all the blocks of stone then sand them to get a rounded look..painstaking!

The urethane foam you can cut a line with a knife then run a pencil along it to crush the foam into the shape I want.

Sorry don't mean to bitch more about the foam issue but it's really bugging me!

@Em_en_oh_Pee - I will look into spackle (or whatever we call it over here) in fact I have some hole filler I use to clean up nail holes in walls that I can try, I 'm pretty sure thats the same thing

Yea, didn't realize you were in New Zealand. What you have should be the right stuff. If I remember right, you can put a layer of that down and spray it safely. However, for the effect you are shooting for, you will need to tinker with stuff.

You know Blackhand, those bases are good enough to sell commercially.

Love the progress on the chimera. Who'd of thought that construction insulation board would be so hard to get anywhere on earth in this day and age... but you're doing a beautiful job!

Nice one blackhand, as always, I eagerly look forward to seeing the fruits of your labours.

Recently I've seen latex spray paint for sale in the US. It doesn't eat pink foam and other paint can be applied over it.

Yeah, that's the Krylon H2O stuff. I've fooled around with it a bit, but it's colors are limited and you'll be covering a fair amount of detail with it (though with foam I guess that's not a problem is it?). Meh, think a coat of diluted white glue with do just as well.

Subscribed! Love the idea of 40K Skaven; can't wait to see how the project progresses...

On the issue of the foam, maybe you could get someone to get the foam for you in a different country and mail it to you? It can't be 400 bucks a sheet the whole world over...

Interesting... Subscribed!

@gitsplitta - Thanks man I am liking the bases myself, I think when I'm done I will start taking a set to my local club day and see if anyone is interested.

@chaoticmind - I will ask around about the krylon spray and see if it is available, I think I will try holefiller first as IIRC it has a nice texture which should resemble stone if I do it right.

@masterDRD - I have asked Hobofisherman here in NZ to look around the city he live in her in NZ. I used to live there and I know I bought some there....10 years ago of course

I've been scouring modelling websites in the UK in the hope of finding one that sells it but it's probably like trying to buy sand or dirt, it's so common that no one would think of selling it

Thanks again for all the feedback guys!

Cheers

BLACKHAND

Pink foam is absolutley the best, but it is so hard to obtain. My sheet that I have was found at a construction site I happened to be at, after deciding they were not going to use it I transformed it into some decent scenery

I guess we're lucky in the US. The pink and blue dense sheet has become the standard for building insulation, so you can buy it at any lumber yard or big hardware store at... what, $25 for a 4x8 sheet. Really neat stuff. Our game board is made out of it.

You're playing as Imperial guard? Seems appropriate.

Fluff comment: Personally I think the idea of rat-like races existing in space as standard are possibly more realistic than orks in space. I can think of many ways rats could become intelligent/ mutated/ evolved/ humanoid from contact with alien ooze/tech etc. I find them quite pleasing as a stand-alone 40k feature and not imported from Fantasy.

Also I would love more, interesting alien races in 40K.

Thank you
superscenic

Thank you everyone for your patience....


...THEY HAVE ARRIVED!!!



Yep thats

1x Stormvermin
1x Rat Ogres
1x Screaming Bell
2 x Ruins of Osgiliath

Hopefully this will provide the bulk of what I need for my incredibly trooper- light/vehicle-heavy Skaven list

And since I've waited long enough already I couldn't help but have a play around with one of the Stormvermin



It's a rough mock up but a good example of what I hope to achieve with the project.

A few things I have learnt while salivating over my new plastic crack..

..The stormvermin have INCREDIBLE detail, if this is the way the new skaven coming in december will look then I will probably have to buy some for conversion bits.

...The Ruins of Osgiliath are the heaviest terrain I have seen so far out of GW, sure they may not have as much detail as Cities of Death but they feel less flimsy and are in my opinion are what terrain needs to be..solid enough to last many a battle!

....I am probably going to have to buy another Screaming Bell, my god is it pretty! So many sweet bits, smoking braziers, bells, chains and TWO different crews to be split up amongst my vehicles.


Now I hope to get some work in on this army in the next week but I can't promise it will be as fast as either you or I want! Tonight though I will be happy exploring new sprues and inhaling that new plastic smell

Cheers

BLACKHAND

Cool Blackhand, can't wait to see what you're up to!

^Ditto.

Awesome...it's an idea that I'm sure someone else on the interwebs will want to do as well.
Very inspiring Blackhand.

That Skaven looks great with the las gun. The new island of blood box set is out now, maybe the skaven in it could become part of your army!

Sweet looking ratman there.

Rat Ogres? Why whatever could they be in a Rat IG army?....

@gitsplitta - Thanks man So am I!

@sanctjud - I'm hoping that people are interested, I have been trawling the net for the past year and found very little in the way of 40k skaven. I guess now that the new good looking plastic skaven are out that conversions might be more common, I've discovered that the stormvermin at least are great for conversions with separate arms and heads to save on cutting and GSing.

@commander Cain - I have looked long and hard at the Island of Blood box but the clanrats in the box have their shield fused to their bodies so would be too hard to convert, even the heavy weapon teams aren't really useful for my needs. In the end I would only want the special characters and the rat ogres so I will buy them separately when the box comes out.

@tim the bivore - Hehe, my plan is to run 4 Rat Ogryn with a Colonel Stracken "counts as", chuck em in a chimera and see how they go.


Thanks for the comments guys!

Cheers

BLACKHAND

its good that your order arrived, I shall be waiting to see these rats take form!

MOAR.

This is great stuff! Have you thought about maybe using Chaos Defliers as tanks? I can see it now, screaming bell on legs...

Hey, Tectured paint would stop the foam from melting, its quite cheap and would give a good surface.

TR

TBH I hadn't thought of defilers, I did consider making giant cyborg rats as sentinels and tanks but once I had the idea of the floating ruins I just couldn't turn a way from it! for me the army will be as much about the flying castles as it will be about the skaven conversions

BLACKHAND wrote:TBH I hadn't thought of defilers, I did consider making giant cyborg rats as sentinels and tanks but once I had the idea of the floating ruins I just couldn't turn a way from it! for me the army will be as much about the flying castles as it will be about the skaven conversions

Love it. Stick to it! No offense intended to immygravenimage, but your current direction is just awesome. I am very, very jealous, by the way. Such a unique idea, I wish I had thought of it. Might just steal the idea and make up a few tanks and some guys, just for a display.

Please Do!

I'd love to see someone else's take on the idea

Lol, I wonder if this will become the default way people see skaven in 40k, whizzing around in flying castles....at least it would be different!


UPDATE>>>

I have a friend who has just returned from overseas and following with the rest of his luggage is a set of Hirst Arts molds for castle walls, flagstones and towers. He has generously offered to let me use them to add to my castle superstructures so they should look even better!!!


Cheers

BLACKHAND

My fiance's grandfather uses that stuff and builds epic castles and I am pretty sure he uses dental grade plaster for those. I hear that is best to keep them from getting roughed-up. Normal plasters will chip and whatnot, while I hear dental won't.

Yeah the problem will be to find a cheap source for the dental plaster, knowing NZ it will be relatively hard but I will have a look around...though as they are ruins anyway a few chips and dings may look good.

Apparently you can add powdered grey paint to the plaster when you mix it so the bricks are precoloured to look like stone, any chips would look like I meant them to be there

I was just thinking durability, not look. Chips can look good in stone, but unwanted ones over time might ruin the effect. Depends on how vigorously you play 40k, I suppose.

Good point, I hear dental plaster is lighter than plaster of paris which will become a factor even with a styrofoam core to lighten the load.

Will you have Rat Ogryns?

I have come to love the idea of flying castles.... im just getting back into the game, hoping to run an IP army.... They....Must .....Fly...In.....CASTLES!!!!

TR

ARGH! dammit Blackhand! >.< PM me when you post these things, this is awesome!

Incredible stuff here! Skavens in 40k? An old dream.
I've met Gary Chalk some years ago and he told me he had made one, just for the fun of converting.

I really want to see this flying castle done and the whole army as well.

@fifty - Oh yes, there will be Rat Ogryns. Again I was really impressed with the rat ogryn box, 2 rat ogres with several head and arm options, half a dozen giant rats, 3 "handlers" or whatever they are called, even a little rat in a robe! Thanks to that I will have rats crawling over all my vehicles for sure.

@Tortured_Robot - Me too! I hope I can pull them off to the level of quality I am aiming for, my rats deserve a sweet ride!
Again I would be stoked to see someone else try the floating castle idea and you would be totally welcome to post pics of anything you come up with here.

@Ultra Mortalitis - My God...I'm So sorry...I can't believe I forgot to PM you...Wait you mean you don't check every day to see if I have started a new thread? I think I am offended!

@Hyenajoe - I'll have to look up Gary Chalk but I am assuming he is one of the model designers that worked on the Skaven figs? While personally I think there is probably enough races in 40K, if they were to add another then one based on the new skaven figs would be a pretty good choice. They have a sleek menacing look without the comical aspects of the old models which really appeals top me...hence me taking on a full army conversion I suppose!

Cheers

BLACKHAND

meh, i'm busy and don't have the time to check up on everything.

Aaaw, why did you give that stormvermin a lasgun? The Kroot rifles looked so awsome on the rats on the first page! The somewhat more wooden and shaggy looking guns fit the Skaven better I think.
And those flying fortress things are working out really well! Going to ad some Screaming Bell bitz to them I gues?

Wow nice idea. Can't wait to see more!

Now that I look back on it, I think I liked the Kroot Rifles better myself. Would that be a WYSIWYG problem, though? Count-As Lasgun/Shotgun - shouldn't be an issue, right?

BLACKHAND wrote:
@Hyenajoe - I'll have to look up Gary Chalk but I am assuming he is one of the model designers that worked on the Skaven figs? While personally I think there is probably enough races in 40K, if they were to add another then one based on the new skaven figs would be a pretty good choice. They have a sleek menacing look without the comical aspects of the old models which really appeals top me...hence me taking on a full army conversion I suppose!

Cheers

BLACKHAND

Gary chalk is an illustrator who worked for GW and who's mostly famous for his work on Lone Wolf (the solo adventures serie, and more recently the RPG)

I agree with you, there's no real equivalent to Skavens in 40k (I mean on the general army theme and aspect). They would be a somehow 'bright' touch to 40k universe .

@timonth & em_en_oh_pee - I like the kroot rifles too but as I have already used them as "sniper rifles" I decided to use lasguns as lasguns if only to save on WYSIWYG problems when playing in tournaments (I'm hoping to have this army ready by next years singles tournament and pick up Best Painted again)
I have also ordered a pack each of the GW meltaguns and plasmaguns so that my special weapon troopers will be correct as well.

@Hyenajoe - "Bright"? A race of filthy Rat men who use concentrated chaos energy to power their death machines, spread virulent diseases and warp and mutate their own troopers...yeah I guess they would be a bright touch in the 40kverse

Could have sworn I subscribed to this a long time ago... oh well.

Usually I detest lore-breaking lol, but for the sake of the project and its modelling potential, I'll let it slide (only once though BLACKHAND).

I really like the flying castle idea in terms of modelling potential (*sigh* why oh why don't I play fantasy?)

Good idea with the counts-as weapons. I've found people less than receptive to my lizardmen counts-as kroot...

Looking good!

Can't wait for 'Rat'ling snipers!

It's been a long week so I don't think I will get too much done on the Skaven tonight, I have a had a bit of a play around with the first sergeant model though....





.....Basically cut off his mace/axe thing leaving the handle and skaven hand intact, glued the chainsword on, then some pretty simple GS work, adding strapping around the handle behind his hand and filling in gaps on his shoulders. I will have to scrounge my bits box for a plasma pistol or bolt pistol and hang it on his belt, maybe GS up a holster.

C&C Welcome as always!

Cheers,

BLACKHAND

WOW nice rat sarge, looks good!

Awesome...simple but effective!!

I'm worried about the IG weapons being too jarring when next to the ornate, ragged skaven models hence using the handle of the skaven weapon on the chainsword vs using the complete hand. Once the Gs dries on the handle I might have a go at adding a skaven symbol to the sword where I scraped off the imperial eagle, try and tie the sword in with the model more.

I think that might be a bit of a problem too. Maybe add some scale-like metal plates with gs and some scratches or something.

Maybe even take a look at the vostroyan weapons for inspiration.

If you try and GS a holster for a pistol, first take a look at existing holsters. If you look carefully (or not carefully or that matter) you'll see most holsters housing pistols are smaller than the pistols themselves. The space marine pistol holsters are a perfect example.

So GS-ing over pistols might look bulky, but using existing holsters can look like it breaks the time-space continuum.

Good luck!

SUBSCRIIIIIIIIIIIBED!

You might consider a "break away" strapping system instead of a holster, that would be much less bulky.

Beautiful rat.... which is something I never thought I'd hear myself say.

That is one cool looking sergeant!

Perhaps if the skaven use chaos energy to power there castles, some of the more powerful weapons could do to.

Once I logged into Dakka, I was heading the Index, but upon seeing the Sarge in the blog's thumbnail, I came here instead. He is AWESOME.

@gitsplitta - You read my mind, after Captain Klaw's comments I thought I would use a buckled strap to hold it to his belt.

Commander Cain - I was planning on doing any energy cells ( like on plasma weapons) in the same green as the warpstone I use, maybe I should carve out the energy cell part and replace it with a chunk of warpstone instead?

@tim the biovore - Thanks Tim!

Cheers

BLACKHAND

Looking Great and i agree the straps rather than holsters would be more scaveny.

About the IG weapons, wouldnt it make more sence fluffwize for them to not be covered in Scaven symbols, after all they've just recently been ripped from the still twitching dead hands of guardsmen, not carried through numerous campaigns

Fricken awesome!

and I'll third the motion for straps instead of a holster.

@scottfree - I had a go at carving some skaven symbols into the chainsword and was not really excited by it, there wasn't too much space for a start and it was damn hard to get a decent carved line with a hobby knife.

I am on the fence on adding warpstone to the weapons, it would be unique, and I don't think the Warlock Engineers would have waited very long to start tinkering with their new toys! TBH I think I may have enough work to do without retrofitting a ton of plasma weapons, besides the weapon upgrade packs I ordered are in metal so carving out the plasma coils to add warpstone would be a stone cold bitch.

@Good Green - Thanks, and straps it is!

Just when I think you can't get any more awesome, you do this! I really love this blog, my absolute favourite out of all of the blogs. Very nice work!

BLACKHAND wrote:@scottfree - I had a go at carving some skaven symbols into the chainsword and was not really excited by it, there wasn't too much space for a start and it was damn hard to get a decent carved line with a hobby knife.

I am on the fence on adding warpstone to the weapons, it would be unique, and I don't think the Warlock Engineers would have waited very long to start tinkering with their new toys! TBH I think I may have enough work to do without retrofitting a ton of plasma weapons, besides the weapon upgrade packs I ordered are in metal so carving out the plasma coils to add warpstone would be a stone cold bitch.

@Good Green - Thanks, and straps it is!

Drill through with a hand drill at a few places and use fine file, even the GW one, which I actually quite like, and it might be easier than you think. I would LOVE to see warplasma weapons.

This is looking great! I love skaven, if were to do fantasy i would defiantly pick these guys. I was thinking of making some of these guys and use them for a special unit for nurgle, but they would equally fit into the renegade guardsmen I'm making, gona be watching this with a lota interest.

The chainsword looks really really good actually! But have you thought about using Space Wolf weaponry? I find them a bit more savage then the regular chainswords. In the Space Wolves Pack box set there are a larger number of chainswords then in regular boxes and ofcourse the extra pistols can be used for good to. They all have teeth and amulets hanging from them, might look good with the Skaven? Just a little brainfart of mine.
Apart from that little thing keep going! It all looks really really good!

@munch munch - Thanks Munch, I do my best!

@fifty - I will keep the idea in the back of my head while I work on casting bases and gluing up torsos, if you have read any of my other blogs you will realize that my aversion to cutting and filing metal is less that I don't think it will look good but more that I am incredibly lazy

@shoebox - I've said it before, if you or anyone make up any 40k skaven I would love to see them, posting pics up on this blog would be cool as it helps to see how other people solve problems when converting the same models I am working on. And yes they would suit a nurgle unit perfectly!

@timonth - Great idea about the space wolf swords and if I needed more than two or three in the whole army I would definitely pick a box, even the runes they have carved on their gear would suit the skaven when I think about it.
Keep those brainfarts coming timonth!

Thanks again guys for the comments and ideas, its really cool to see so many different faces!

Cheers

BLACKHAND

Haha no problem, Ive got them from time to time. By the way, the idea with warp stones on plasma weapons sounds great, are you going to include Heavy Weapon team-like models to? I would love to see two Skavens dug in in some ruin working as a team to get some weird warp-stone fuelled gun working. (Like the Fantasy figures.)

Hah! I had the same idea when i saw the new Island of Blood Set, Except mine are going to be based off the 'Nids Codex.

Using the Big Ole' Rats as Hive Tyrants and the smaller rats as genestealers.

AWSOME stuff

Cant wait to see more awesome stuff

I just thought of a potential speedbump... Skaven power everything with warpstone, but since they're now in the grimdarkian age there is no warpstone...

There was abunch in the city that they brought with em. Applying logic to 40k, let alone 40k fantasy hybreads is dangerious territory, I advise extreme caution. Xtremm caution even.

LOL, you beat me to it Whalemusic!

My theory is that the accident that brought them over brought a SPHERE of the fantasyverse with it, including the miles of tunnels and mines beneath the ruined city in which the bulk of the skaven lived. I mean what self respecting ratman would live above ground anyway? There had to be a reason they were under the ruins and I as thinking it was built by a chaos worshiping race which destroyed itself, their centuries of using chaos magic left large deposits of warpstone beneath the city which attracted the Skaven to build their undercity beneath the ruins.

Ah, revisionist fluff, it fixes everything


BTW I havn't been totally useless today, in between watching Finding Nemo with my 2 year old daughter and casting a dozen new bases I managed to get a coat or two of paint on the sarge....





What do you think?

edit : He still needs washes and highlights and I havn't made a start on the plasmapistol as I'm still not sure of it's power source

Cheers

BLACKHAND

A warpstone could be it's power source. Duh!

really love this work! amazing!

Thanks Sageheart!

And yes Munch I know warpstone is the best choice to power plasma weapons, Im still not too sure about converting the dozen or so plasmas I am going to have in the army, Remember how lazy Blackhand can be

Isn't that the purpose of a blog? To show your progress and have users motivate you?

Too true Munch! I'll do a mock-up of the warplasma pistol (thanks for the name fifty!) and we can all decide if it is worth the trouble.

I could always leave it and see if Anung_un_Rama picks up on it like he did on my Tervigon's spindly legs ......

Paint it like warpstone but don't change the shape, they've prised it open, jammed a small chunk in there and put the top back on to contain it. Then for some of the character or important models that you presumably will be adding the plastic ones to, carve them out, shove in a bit of hacked up sprue and paint that the same way. The more important rats get more warpstone therefore more power out of theirs.

all i can say is that one of those head things is going "WAZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZAAAAAAAAAAP!!!!!!"

This Thread is excreting awesomeness

Keep up the good work I just wanna see what you can do with a doomwheel

This blog is getting greater everyday!

Seeing your sergeant I start feeling the urge to give a try at Space Skavens myself...Blackhand, I'm affraid my wife will hate you for this.

That Sergeant is looking very good already! If you paint an entire squad like that its going to look awsome. And for the warp stone, you can cut a bit of sprue up into a stone like shape maybe?

I think it looks alot better now with the base and paint coat. Perhaps a unifying paint scheme like the one used above could overcome some of the visual differences between imperial and chainsword bits.

i like this keep up the good work

Yeah I figured they would still have whatever they brought with them in their city... What I didn't consider is that they brought the whole damn mine with em!

Sarge is looking good so far. I also call for some warplasma concepts to be shown

How do you pronounce Warplasma? Is it War-plasma, Warp-lasma or Warplasma, with the p getting doubleteamed?

@morgrim - Thanks for the labour saving tip but I think the general consensus is that I convert all the plasma weapons into warplasma weaopons

@Bigmek35 - Um, thankyou?

@=scar= - Still not sure of how I will incorporate a Doom wheel, it might be worth buying one just to cannabalize it for parts.

@Hyenejoe - Lol, I had to sell my tau army so I could afford to do this project without my fiance kicking me out!

@Timonth - Yeah that's the plan, I have already had a go with a plasma pistol and a piece of sprue and I think it came out well, I want to get paint on it before i show it off though.

@Captain Klaw - Yep the paint has really helped, plus I like the classic black and red scheme, as you may realize if you have seen my IG. I was pretty stoked with how the resin base came out as well.

@vignor - thanks!

@MasterDRD - I liked the idea of a guard regiment roaring down into a mysterious city ready to blow it to bits then finding it deserted. While they are standing around scratching their heads hundreds of thousands of skaven pour out of holes in the ground and tear them to bits!

@Monkeytroll - not to worry I will have a warplasma test pic up later today.

@whalemusic360 - LOL...umm..I'm going for Warplasma with the p getting doubleteamed? I open it up to discussion though

Now I have to go bake a chocalate cake with my little girl but I will be painting today I promise!

Cheers

BLACKHAND

Well first you've got to master the high-pitched chittering tone. Once you're comfortable with that you move on to the repetitive syllablic mode, and once you've got that you'll find it just rolls of the tongue without thought.



But I'm edging towards war-plasma myself

If you say it like a skaven (make sure no one is around to hear you) war-plasma is the easiest to say.

Ok so I discovered when I went to paint up the Warplasma pistol that I had not ONE decent 0 guage brush left and so the line work on the edges of the warpstone is pretty nasty, I tried using an ancient green ink to fill in the planes of the crystal and reduce the width of the edge highlighting but I think I will need to buy a couple of new brushes and start again from scratch.Next time I will also use a bigger piece of sprue so tat I can have steeper cuts on the crystal as it merges with the casing of the gun, not sure if I am explaining myself very well but I think the pictures will help. Anyhoo here is my first attempt at the Warplasma Pistol....





and the sergeant who will carry the potentially explosive gun in to battle, what an honour!



C@C welcome as always

Cheers,

BLACKHAND

That rat looks like master splinter, with a warplasma pistol.


Anywho, I like it! Agree that It could use with a bit more cuts, but I'd keep it similar size, except maybe if someone more important has one. The plasma guns should be quite interesting.

It was pretty frustrating working in a area about 3-4 mm long, I used a fresh blade on my knife but even then I didn't get the definition between planes that wanted. I think with a bigger piece of srpue I won't necessarily end up with a bulkier warpstone just one with more defined edges that will hopefully take a drybrush of white from a nice new brush and save me a lot of hassle

Oh yeah and the sergeant may look like splinter from this side but he has an eyepatch on the other side, Arrghh me heartys!

What you've done so far looks tremendous Blackhand... my hat's off to you for coming up with a really interesting and unique idea and carrying it off masterfully.

Have you considered trying to hunt down some really small faceted plastic beads on-line?

Thanks Gitsplitta, I needed to find a project as challenging as your Mantis Warriors!

Beads are a possibility but I wouldn't want the warpstone to be too regular, they're rats after all they probably wouldn't spend too much time finishing the facets on the crystals.

would be cool to get some clear plastic whatevers and cut them. Even if you still drybrushed em, it would add some cool depth.

"Brings me some moar warpstone!" that gun is sexy!

Ruling the grimdark future with all the win you bring to the table!

Very nice! Though compared to the pointing hand, the warplasma pistol arm looks kind of dinky. That may, of course, just be the angle of the pic.

I love the warplasma pistol, it looks great!

Don't worry munch its not the final pose, I personally find the plasma pistol too big compared to the rest of the model but hey thats heroic scale for ya.

Just to prove I haven't forgotten the vehicles (and to have a break from the troopers) I thought I would post a few pics of where I am with them.

I have decided if I am going to use a fair amount of dental plaster in the construction I will need a pretty strong framework to build on, so I have a sheet of 4mm particle board which I have cut into pieces the size of a chimera. The dental plaster blocks will be glued onto the top and then the broken masonry and stone will be glued to the underside. I have also found a couple of feet of clear acrylic rod which I will use to suspend the ruins above the base (thanks to the greeting card stand I found in the storeroom at work which is now smashed to pieces in the bin!) Last I clipped apart one of the ruins of osgiliath boxes and divided up some of the bits between the three "chimera" I am building first then I added a few of the choice bits from the screaming bell kit, leaving the bell and the plague furnace themselves to be put on the leman russ counts as I will build later.

Enough blathering on to the pics!









The last pic shows how much of the top of the vehicle the ruins will take up but I will be making acrylic rods about an inch shorter so that the castles aren't too tall.

I'm a little worried about how tall the castle will eventually get but I am hoping that my opponents will be so amazed and impressed they will forget about things like True Line of Sight

Cheers

BLACKHAND

wow, really nice! How big is a skaven footslogger compared to the building? Can't wait to see more!

Thanks Munch! this ones for you...




Now I have a bone to pick with you guys!



You all knew I was buying the Screaming Bell kit for bits...




....But at no point did any of you think to mention that the Bell kit includes....





...this BALL-SHRIVELLINGLY AWESOME MODEL!!!!!



Say hello to my new Primaris Psyker


Oh and heres a quick pic of my WIP Rat Ogryn Ripper Gun, I'll be using ogre kingdom hands to hold them but I am still working on a decent pistol grip for it.



Cheers again!

BLACKHAND

Oh, I forgot the screaming bell kit came with a grey seer! Sorry!

Sweet Blackhand... you get this army done and I may have to fly out to NZ for a game. *grin*

Well, a guy can dream can't he?

Buy me a ticket while your at it!

Well, I might as well hop along for grins.

Any time guys, any time

I can see it now.... the three of us meet in Chicago... I spend a couple of days showing you 'round my home town... they we fly out to LA... spend a few more days hanging out on the beach, seeing the "sights", etc. Then we catch a flight to Hawaii, where we do more hangin' out on the beach and "sight" seeing... about a month later one of us remembers that we were supposed to go somewhere, but none of our tropical fruit drink sodden brains can remember where or why...

I was thinking of using the Dark Eldar Codex for mine.

Now THATS a plan!

...and if we time it right I could miss out on the last few months of my fiancé's pregnancy... no foot rubs, no running around at her beck and call..


...I guess that why they call it dreaming


Automatically Appended Next Post:
@Anpu42 - I'm assuming you mean 40k versions of Skaven right? I would have to look at the DE codex to have an opinion but thats the fun part of porting a fantasy army ove to 40k, anything goes!

And I know I rushed him but I just had throw some paint on the Grey Seer/ Primaris Psyker



As you can see the wash is still wet damn it was a bitch to paint had to do it in pieces than assemble it but its worth it for the level of overlapping details, really is a model you have to pick up and turn around to see all the awesomeness.

Cheers

BLACKHAND

All of this looks freaking awesome!! Love how the ruins are shaping up

Just so you know, thats a plague priest, not a grey seer!

I just checked the gw site. It says that model can be used as a grey seer or a plague priest, depending on which war machine you built.

Munch Munch! wrote:I just checked the gw site. It says that model can be used as a grey seer or a plague priest, depending on which war machine you built.

Not true, considering the kit includes both a grey seer AND a plague priest. So there is no point in using the plague priest as a greyseer and vice versa.

Lol, moot point as I will be using him as a Primaris Psyker...course I will have to find a suitably Skaven name for the new caste.

I figure when the skaven came to the 40kverse the Grey seers found they could no longer talk to their "God", they pretended to for a while in order to keep mantain their dominion of the skaven clans but were starting to get worried. The arrival of the Imperial Guard in their city sounded the death knell for them as the technology the humans brought mean thtta the Warlock Engineers would rise to become the most powerful caste...that was until the Grey Seers found the first battle psykers and realized they had found a new path to power......

I'd try to merge the two (imp guard and skaven) into a new name. Something like Astro-seers maybe.

Bone-Readers
Metal-Rattle Witches <- I'd imagine when the Seers started getting nervous about their lost abilities they would try to cover it up with elaborate and spectacular rituals, and would continue to do so even after finding their new 'gifts' as to not show that they changed their functions. Add in all the newly discovered techno-gadgets and I imagine great clanking mobiles and automatons designed to dazzle the common rat.

Rotshriekers
Rotspeakers
Warpcrafters
Warpstone Seers
Warp Shamans
Warp Wielders


and awesome stuff you've got going on here, can't wait to see how the floating mini-fortresses will turn out!

That Psyker looks friggin awsome! And I really like the idea with the ruins, nice thinking. And at last the Warplasma pistol doesnt look bad at all, it actually looks very good. Keep it up Blackhand!

Thanks for the comments guys

@TiB - Damn thanks man! I like the ideas, I might mix a couple of them and go with "Warp Seers" mixing the "grey Seer" with the new source of their powers (being the warp) with help like that your free to post anytime!

Cheers

BLACKHAND

Subscribed, I like the flavor of this project very much, more pics! Pics! Pics!

@BLACKHAND:

I will as much I can I can brag I'm part of this awesome project now

I had no idea the bell kit had so many truly awesome bits and models. I knew it was good but this is almost too much... almost-

Very awesome tank counts-as.

awsome this is get ideas in my head to start scaven 40K but i have to finish my chaos first

@ambull - Thanks man , I wish I had the skill (and guts) to try a full GS build of a model like your Ambull.

@TiB - For sure! I really enjoy the way the Dakka community gets behind projects with constructive criticism and support, as far as I am concerned my projects do belong to everyone here cause I probably couldn't do them without all the help.

@the good green - The Bell kit rocks! so far I have gotten:

1 x grey seer(the guy from the bell who will be based walking down some steps)
1 x plague priest(my new Warp Seer)
1 x plague censor (mounted on a chimera counts as)
3 x smaller plague censors to hang off masonry)
the masonry arch with the screaming bell itself
3 x plague priests in a group who are going to be cut up and based seperately
1 x rat ogre bell toller, who will probably end up with the screaming bell.
1 x the plague furnace which will be hung from a "ruins of osgiliath" arch and mounted on another vehicle.

I figure I will keep the chassis and wheels togther and sell em on line for conversion..

plus the superstructure of the screaming bell itself which will be cut up and incorporated in all the vehicles to give them a skaveny feel

So yeah the Screaming Bell kit just keeps on giving!

@bigmek - Make sure to leave some juicy chaos bits for the 40k skaven project! spikey bits especially

Cheers

BLACKHAND

This idea is so original, nice job! I'm definetly subscribing

A bit late, but I think just 'Warp Pistol' sounds better than 'Warplasma Pistol'.

suscribed

HadoukenAvenger wrote:A bit late, but I think just 'Warp Pistol' sounds better than 'Warplasma Pistol'.

but that'll suffer from the same pronounciation-issues as Warplasma Pistol. Unless you make a full stop between the two words everybody will just hear 'War Pistol', which is understandable because it's also a plausible, if a lot lamer, name.

What about something like Warpcaster or Warpsparker (that one is fun to say).

That would also make more sense from the Skaven's point of view I think (not really at home in Skaven culture, so correct me if I'm wrong). As most rats won't be aware of the concept 'pistol' it'd be kind of strange if they went: "why what is this strange otherworldly device I just crammed a warpstone in, i'll call it a pis-tol!"
Plus to the medieval ratfolk, to whom a gun would be at most a metal tube spitting a metal ball, a handheld device consuming its victims in swirling warp-energies would seem quite magical and so deserves a more hocus-pocus name.

I think skaven may know what a pistol is as I have seen the new Warlock Engineer from the Island of Blood box is carrying one....

....plus they would have no problem at all with torturing any human captives for information about the new tech they have looted

That said I am always open to new names to add to the flavour!


Edit - One of the many reasons I chose the IG as a base for the Skaven was that the humble lasgun only needs solar power or heat to recharge its energy pack hence the skaven don't need to be familiar with the technology to use it effectively. Heavy bolters I can kind of explain away with the Engineers cramming chunks of warpstone into spent shells and using that as the explosive charge...but plasma coils are too dodgy and prone to malfunction that I have kind of come around to the idea of the engineers using them to power plasma guns of all kinds.

Skaven actually have one of the most steam punk armies in fantasy. Quite a few of their models would look at home in 40K without conversions (the rat ogres for example), with maybe the exception of adding a gun.

They also boast some of the more maneuverable heavy weapons teams like the rattling gun, but they have transferred these weapons to a more dangerous, hand-held versions which they do call pistols. They live under our feet, they hear our words, they wait for us to sleep...



*SNIPED by the original poster!*

You can explain away the use of almost any weapon with the rat-men. Like I mentioned above, they do have "rattling" guns with would be very similar to the heavy bolters in function, I figure.

And what about a Wyrd Pistol for the plasma?

I am currently having a lot of fun with the old Rat Ogre models as I try to find a way to replace one of their hands with an ogre kingdoms Ogre hand holding a ripper gun, one of their arms even have a steampunk cannon grafted on so I may go that route and just attach the guns directly to the arm rather than build a pistol grip. Not sure what I am going to do when it comes to the one piece models in the Island of Blood box, may require a bit more imagination methinks....

I stand humbly corrected.
I thought I had seen it somewhere, but couldn't be bothered to look it up.

I like Wyrd Pistol.

Looking through the range, are you going to be playing assassins in your list? The Skaven have the models for it and seems very Skaveny.

I'm ambivalent about Wyrd Pistol as I only just got used to Warpistol!

I haven't thought of assassins tbh , I am in the process of converting the plague priests from the Plague Furnace into a Psyker Squad. The trick would be to find a unit that the Assassins would stand in for, I would make up one to be a Marbo "counts as" but I have found from experience that I can't use marbo worth a damn

I thought maybe using assassins as...*drumroll*...assassins!
If you let your count-as guard ally with count-as daemonhunters, you get access to Imperial and Death Cult assassins.

How are those plague psykers coming along? I thought I read you had to cut them loose from eachother, how is that working out?

and Warpistol... well it's something else than those sissy Peacepistols, those are no good.

I have no real problem using them as assassins buuut, having played daemonhunters for a couple of years I am kinda over getting my ass handed to me plus it looks like allies are going to get cut when GW finally finishes the new DH codex so I might put assassins on hold for a while, at least till I finish the rank and file troops!

Speaking of procrastinating...

Not much new on the pic front tonight, only had time to cut the three plague priests apart and have a look at how I can give them a psyker staff or laspistol. Heres is a pic of one of the cooler ones, I really like his rotted skull



He needed the most Gs work so I got him out of the way first, he need a whole new foot and a piece of robe, happily I was able to drill out the rope he was holding meaning one of the clanrat flags will fit in nicely!

Here is the Grey Seer from the Screaming Bell, leaping down a set of stairs ready to blast the next pink skin he sees!



I was hoping to use him as the overseer in the psyker squad but I think after reading the codex that the overseer doesn't count as a psyker! and since he is waaay to cool a figure to use as a mere sanctioned psyker he may end up as another Warp Seer (aka primaris psyker)

Cheers

BLACKHAND

Ps I agree TiB, Peacepistols suck!

Wow, rats with guys. I like the concept! I usually lose to Skaven when I play mordheim so giving them guns just rubs me the wrong way, but they do look good ^_^

I especially like the ruins, where do you get the dental plaster?

I have a kilo of plaster on the way from Topmark in auckland, the stuff they have isn't dental plaster but is actually harder so once my friend's castle moulds arrive from Oz I should be able to get into a casting frenzy and get the bulk of the parts I will need for the whole army done.

BTW if you ever want to get into resin casting go see the guys at Topmark they are great to deal with.

Wow! Brilliant stuff. Just checked the website and it seems to be the place to get some things I'm wanting. Plus some help on how to get it done.

Much obliged Blackhand!

Hmm, I was thinking, what would a counts-as deathstrike missile launcher look like for the skaven? Maybe a catapult loaded up with warp stone or something.

Yeah probably some sort of warpstone-powered doomsday device, shot out of a mortar or from a catapult.

Or just a giant plague orb, although that wouldn't really explain why it kills vehicles and necron dead. Acid maybe?

BLACKHAND wrote:I am currently having a lot of fun with the old Rat Ogre models as I try to find a way to replace one of their hands with an ogre kingdoms Ogre hand holding a ripper gun, one of their arms even have a steampunk cannon grafted on so I may go that route and just attach the guns directly to the arm rather than build a pistol grip. Not sure what I am going to do when it comes to the one piece models in the Island of Blood box, may require a bit more imagination methinks....

How about shoulder mounted, Predator (as in the movie) style?

@vent - No worries, the $30 pynkasil starter kit they sell is great if you want to give casting a try, I have a tutorial up on dakka if you want (or need) some tips on method.

@commander Cain - Damn you!, I have seen deathstrike missiles used a couple of times in game and was not impressed, they tended to be fire magnets and get wiped out before they went boom, and was not too interested in fielding one....now you have put the idea in my mind though....

@TiB - ...no really I don't need another project! My initial thought would be to build a missile similar to the IG one and give it a massive warpstone tip, then use some of the screaming bell structure to build a launcher, but again I need to finish the models I have already lined up before I start a new one!

@Arakasi - Thanks for the idea, I'll have a play around with models tonight and see how it looks.

Cheers

BLACKHAND

sweet man those guys are sick (haha get it. get it?)

Awesome! But I think wyrd pistol sounds the coolest.

They look awesome. The Primaris Psyker looks pretty cool and the Warp Pistol fits the Space Skaven brilliantly.

RAAAAAATTTTTTTTSSSSSS IIIIINNNN SSSSSPPAAAAAAAAAAACE!!


Looks cool so far, that warp-seer on the stairs looks awesome.

Also I have to throw my vote towards wryd pistol now

I read through some of your earlier posts and I like the idea of the flying fortressess as count-as vehicles, very skaven-esk.

These are so cool. It's really interesting how such subtle conversions can make Skaven look at home in the 40k universe. Look forward to seeing the Rat Ogres!

Cheers

@bigmek - Yes bigmek, I get it

To everyone else, I think I will bow to pressure and will henceforth refer to a warpstone powered plasma pistol as a "Wyrd Pistol" Lol

Sounds good.

Love the Wyrd pistol.... you could for easily just smacked IG weapon on, i like the effort to go to detail!!!

Thanks guys!

I agree tortured robot, detail is the key to good conversions.

I didn't have much time tonight so I just continued on with the plague monks and grey seer from last night.

First up is the grey seer, I had to cut both feet to reseat them flat and allow me to glue them to the base, he had his left hand free to so I lopped his arm off at the elbow and gave him the axe/pick thing from the stormvermin box,extending his arm and adding the tassle from the handle of the axe gave him even more movement in his stand and I am really happy with how he is coming out.



The next monk required very little work, just drilling out the hands to allow the staff to fit in, and adding greenstuff around the back to fill in where I had to cut him free, and damn did those spikes hurt when I was trying to hold him down to drill!



The last priest need the most work as he was on a lean backward pulling on the rope, I had to cut his remaining foot off, reshape the bottom of the robe glue him down then glue his foot on..very fiddly. I then filled in the back of the robe pretty roughly, it will need a bit of sanding and cutting then another thin coat of GS to add ragged holes and make it look more nurgly and torn. Last I made him a new foot out of GS , and filled in a few more holes around the edge of the cloak. He will need a bit more work tomorrow and of course his hands will need to be drilled out.





Thats all for tonight on the modelling front sorry!

Cheers

BLACKHAND

I'd see if you can make him a flail type weapon, then you can leave the rope there. A pair of rusty blades coming back curved over the model so it looks like he's swinging it, perhaps?

And I love what you've done with the ex-grey seer. It's such a wonderful model to start with and you've only made it better.

Cheers morgrim, as I said I really like the Warp Seer too, its nice to find a GW model with a dynamic pose for once

As for the flail Idea I kind of want to give them all staves to signify that they are Psykers and have them stand out from the clanrats and stormvermin...don't get me wrong I still like the idea of a crazed Skaven swinging around a bunch of rusty blades!

Wyrd pistol seems best to me as well... Your minis are awesome Blackhand, I love them!!

Really like your ability to continue the cloak with Green Stuff. That is so far beyond me it isn't funny...

@Yggrisil - Thanks!

Its all about paint shapers Vent, they are like paintbrushes with a silicone tip. They allow you to smooth GS without pushing it around and makes cloth soooo easy.You can find them in any decent art supplies store.

TBH that part of the cloak needs another layer of GS that will be dragged and torn to match the rest of the ragged cloak and once I get some paint on it the patch job should be indistinguishable from the original.

http://www.games-workshop.com/gws/catalog/productDetail.jsp?catId=cat440004a&prodId=prod890001a

This rat ogre seems particularly suited for your purposes, with grafted weapon, bionic eye etc. Just pop off the spike and attach Ripper Gun = profit.

I hadn't seen that one TiB, he's fairly nasty looking.

I have two rat ogres that I am working on at the moment and today while walking to work I had a bit of a brainstorm and I think I know where I will go with them, stay tuned tonight and I will attempt to get some pics up.

So I had a bit of time tonight to get the rest of the modelling done on the three priests from the plague furnace, finished their psyker staffs and the minor GS on their cloaks.





Since I need at least 4 psykers in the squad I started converting 2 of the overseer rats from the rat ogre box, not too satisfied with them as the arms are from different sets but a ton of GS should fix them, they will probably need their cloaks extended to match the other three but I will work on the arms first and see how they look.



Ok on to the Rat Ogryn!

Now I've gotta say I really like the Rat Ogre box, the amount of bits is fantastic but.... it's old skool.
The skaven overseers are goofy looking with hairy arms and big feet, and worst of all the heads on the Ogres are HUGE!
I realised that if I do end up getting the new Rat Ogres from the Island of Blood they will look crap next to them, so I busted out the GS

I've come around to the tiny heads of the new ogres, I think they make their bodies look even bigger and the musculature more exaggerated so I have sculpted my own version with a hugely muscled neck ending in a normal clanrat head..well you'll see





I extended the collar from the original head and gave it a ring to attach a chain, if I get creative I may add some spiked chain from screaming bell kit.

And this ones fro you TiB!

After an aforementioned brainstorm I decided that if Skaven used to graft weapons onto their Rat Ogres in the fantasyverse that they would keep dong it in the 40kverse so here he is, my first converted Rat Ogryn!





C&C very welcome!

I have made a start on my second Rat Ogryn but would appreciate any feedback that could be incorporated into the design

Cheers

BLACKHAND

Your Rat Ogryn is pure win!

I really like the GS neck and the use of a smaller head, it gives a far better morphology to your model than the regular Rat ogre!

Can't wait to see the second one (with two heads perhaps?)

Now that is pretty damn cool, I like the hose that runs to its bicep, blends it all a bit more into one rather than a straight arm/weapon division.

The size of the head is good too I think, smaller cranium makes it look more like a mindless brute . Maybe the head should hang a bit lower though, again for a more slavering hunk of mutated muscle feel.

And I don't really dig the spike from its left arm, but that's a matter of personal taste. (could easily be fashioned into a drill though, wink wink )

Nice conversion Blackhand! Moving to the smaller head was a good call. Great greenstuff work. I agree withTiB in that the spike is a little out-of-place. In the 40k universe I think he should have something slightly higher tech, unless you intend to make it a "power spike" by adding warp stone.

Have you seen these BH?
http://www.shop.microartstudio.com/nezumi-heads-chem-p-415.html

I think TiB idea of a drill will be an awesome idea! *cough* bioshock *cough*....

Also, just an idea, but an exhausts coming out of his back would look cool, making it look a bit more kinda steam punk/cyborg. Also, having a cyborg eye would look cool, like these orks:
http://www.bigshoota.com/blog-photos/warboss/wb16.jpg

Hey blackhand may i copy thisidea for a penal legion squad? By the way i am really enjoying this blog so far subscribed!

Look, Blackhand could you just stop posting for a couple of months so I don't get sidetracked from my cyborks I joined Dakka thinking it would motivate me to finish some of my stuff off, but my ideas pile just keeps getting added to.

Wasn't sure about the smaller head in the first pic, but looks cool in the others, good choice
I don't have an issue with the spike, they're not going to upgrade everything straight away, but on the other hand a drill type arm would be sweet as

@Hyenajoe - Thanks man, I'm not too sure about the two heads though. There is a two handed arm with the rat ogre set and I did consider converting up a mutant but I'd rather go with high tech grafts then vivisection.

@TiB - On the second Ogre I will be shortening the neck slightly, and I can easily drop it down and hunch it below the shoulder. I do want a different look to each of them as the are mutated skaven ( as far as I know!). The arm with the pipe originally hade some kind of cannon so it was an easy conversion, the second one I have started will have a piece of guitar string that travels round to attach his back and some kind of "device" that will help power the ripper gun. As to the drill arm I will have to look at it, the other ogre has a blade arm so they will match each other and the rat ogres from the island of blood set, If I high tech one I will have to do the same for all of them!

@Gitsplitta - Thanks I wasn't sure if I got the muscles right but fur can always cover up problem areas . I kinda like the idea of a chunk of warpstone embedded in his arm to power the spike arm but these things arn't power weapons they are just close combat weapons so I wouldn't want to confuse WYSIWYG any more than the flying castle will!!!

@Whalemusic360 - I have! and yep they are nice. I thought about them for a while but as yet I don't think I will need them. To me they would suit pilots or drivers of vehicles and I am not planning on having either.

@Shoebox - Ok, Ok, I will consider the drill! I don't think I want to go the full cyborg route on all the ogres but since one of the has to be an Ogryn Bonehead I could perhaps tech one up a little more than the others to represent it.

@indiana1000 - Of course, copy away! I'm kinda glad not too many other people have tried giving rats guns as it means mine will almost be the standard to beat. I'm hoping to see some really amazing conversions pop up now, my only request is that you post pics of your 40skaven up here for us to see!

@monkeytroll - Thanks man , TBH I thought the small head would be more controversial I am glad it has gone off well. And I'm sorry about the frequency of my posts I actually feel a lot of pressure from Dakka readers to keep working and posting..I wouldn't want to disappoint my Fans!

Cheers everyone for the suggestions and feedback, it's a huge motivation for me.

BLACKHAND

Its really looking great blackhand ... keep it up dude!

I like alot. The tiny head looks interesting. The only issue is the pose. I have a strange feeling that he's gonna tip over.

Wow, I've been keeping an eye on this plog but those screaming bell bitz look sweet!
Love the Rat Ogryns! They're not the most point efficient unit, but they sure as hell look pretty

@bear lemarte - Cheers Man!

@Munch munch - He is leaning foward a bit but I am thinking of straightening the spike arm to have him leaning on it, otherwise he is pretty stable , just leaping forward into action!

@mr fluffy - Yeah an Ogryn squad is pretty expensive but I couldn't pass up the modelling opportunities, the new IoB Rat Ogres are so freakin mean!

inho I think the neck on the rat ogryn is a bit to long

@bigmek - It's one of the things I will be changing in the next Ogryn, I won't going as short as the IoB rat ogres otr the ogre on the screaming bell as the heads on them look tacked on as opposed to part of the body but yeah it will not be as extended.

That said I will leave this first one as is so they all have a bit of a different shape and size, I feel that in a unit of freakish mutant ratmen there will be at least a small amount of variation!

Good work as usual Blackhand. I would brace yourself for a pile of my completely impossible ideas that I am prone to thinking of. Ooh the possibilities of a 40k skaven army!

Whats the chance of a giant rat titan?

Bring it on Cain!

I thought that flying castles was about as wacky as I could get but in a game with teleporting alien-robot buildings and walking Daemon tanks I guess I should have known better...

..that said I wish you could alliy daemons to guard so I could model a daemon prince as a Horned Rat Avatar hahahaHAHAHAHAHa...*cough* sorry bout that

BLACK HAND I LOVE YOU

BLACKHAND wrote:Bring it on Cain!

I thought that flying castles was about as wacky as I could get but in a game with teleporting alien-robot buildings and walking Daemon tanks I guess I should have known better...

..that said I wish you could alliy daemons to guard so I could model a daemon prince as a Horned Rat Avatar hahahaHAHAHAHAHa...*cough* sorry bout that

You could in apocalypse.

Love the Rat Ogryn...would be cool to see one with some kind of shoulder-mounted autocannon.

azekio wrote:BLACK HAND I LOVE YOU

I love you too Azekio (in the purely platonic way that two Children of Dakka love one another)


@munch - True I could...might just be something to look forward to modelling after I have finished the main army itself

@ Darth Bob - I'm not keen on the shoulder mounted thing, I'm going for the grafted onto arm thing

Well I hope to get SOME work done on the Rat Ogryn and Warp Psykers tonight but no promises as I am on dinner duty!


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Had time to get most of the GS work needed on the second Rat Ogre, I followed some suggestions for once!

- lowered the head
- shortened the neck, no really I did!
- I tried to remedy the leaning forward pose but I'm afraid that its a result of the way the model is made, the hips lean forward and the back is curves back at the base and curves forward again, giving the torso a real S shape, with out a fairly large resculpt I am kinda stuck with it and would hate to "fix" it only to find the new ogres have the same shape.
- Have added a tiny bit of a "cyborg" element with a "device" that the grafted gun is attached to.

Anyhow you don't come here to here me ramble, here's the pics!











I will be adding a chink of warpstone to the "device" once the GS on the rest of the model is dry to Skaven it up a bit

and a group shot!



C&C is welcome as always

Cheers

BLACKHAND

Edit - Fu$%6n Automatically appended posts!!!!!!!

Love the new Ogryn. This Blog is really great. It's kinda made me want to start skaven though, which is annoying. I have too many projects I need to get on with first.

Really fantastic, going to be a great army.

Can we get some lighter photos? Would hate to miss RO details!

Loving this. I want more tanks though! MORE TANKS!

@grimm - Haha, I know what you mean I have to keep away from the Dakka galleries for the same reason!

@tortured robot - Yeah sorry I have to work on my photo skills or at least finally build a lightbox I'm kinda the king of laziness though

@em_en_oh_pee - Tanks are on the way, I am still waiting on the hirst arts moulds that my friend is having sent to him, believe me as soon as they arrive I will casting like a demon!

Flying castle ruins as tanks. I can honestly say I did not see that one coming.

I will now read the other 7 pages of this thread and annoy you with advice.

............*shakes violently*........... DAMN! Now I want to start a 40k Skaven army.

Okay, so I now skimmed over the rest. BLACKHAND, you did it again! I saw several attempts of Space Skaven but none of them would go as far and just say "they're regular fantasy Skaven who travveled through time and space" so kudos to you.

The Stormvermin looks very nice, but I guess when you' done with this army you'll be sitting on piles of kroot and guard parts.

The vehicles sound like a great idea, I can almost see it before me. I think what would really work well with those, would be if some of the green light from the flying mechanism shines through the cracks on the "floor".

The Ogres look great too.

I'm both loving and hating this blog, i brought 18 skaven on ebay, 8 of which i was going to use for guardsmen (gona get the island of blood mortar for, well, a mortar...). I got them a hour or two before i saw your stuff, wanting to do the exact same thing with them. Now I'm gona have to really think how to get them to be original...

BLACKHAND wrote:



@indiana1000 - Of course, copy away! I'm kinda glad not too many other people have tried giving rats guns as it means mine will almost be the standard to beat. I'm hoping to see some really amazing conversions pop up now, my only request is that you post pics of your 40skaven up here for us to see!

Sure when they're made ill post them up on dakka but for now you'll have to wait for quite a while!

These are looking really good BLACKHAND, could we see an army shot/list so we know what you've got so far?

@Anung Un Rama - YES, your here! And true I think the flying ruins took everybody by surprise

I will end up with a bunch of kroot parts but thankfully a friend donated a ton of excess guard sprues full of chainswords, lasguns and flamers so I should have enough of them..course I have no idea where I am going to find the six lascannons I am going to need but I will cross that bridge when I come to it.

I like the idea of the green glow, I plan to have several cracks in the masonry with rope and metal patches holding the structure together so a green glow will add to that effect. I may even go all out and have rats poking and crawling out of the cracks as well as several chunks of glowing warpstone embedded in the broken rock base of the ruins.

@Shoebox - Don't hate me! My recommendation would be to take the blog as inspiration not competition and watch closely so you don't make any of the mistakes I do! Oh and welcome to the Ratside

@indiana1000 - I will be watching....

@Young Logan - Thanks Logan I will get to a some pics in the next couple of days in the meantime my vague list so far is....

HQ

1 x Squeek Headtaker aka Stracken - Painted

1 x Warp Seer aka primaris psyker - Painted

ELITE

9 x Snipers, built from clanrats and kroot rifles - 5 painted, 4 unassembled.

4 x Rat Ogryn - 2 assembled , 2 not even purchased

TROOPs

20 x Stormvermin, aka veterans in carapace armour 1 painted the rest unassembled.

DEDICATED TRANSPORTS

3 x Chimeras - unassembled

FAST ATTACK

3 x Armoured sentinels w/ lascannons

HEAVY SUPPORT

3 x Leman Russ w/ heavy bolter sponsons, lascannons and battle cannons ( I may do one up as a punisher cannon as the idea of a massive Ratling cannon is getting to me)

So as you can see I have a ton of work ahead but the amount of interest I am getting in the project is really helping to keep me cuttin plastic and sniffen glue!

Cheers,

BLACKHAND

Can't be everywhere BH. I need a vacation from time to time.

QFT! My last vacation was a month off with the Flu...

..and guess where I spent most of my time..

..thats right, on Dakka

I spend a week in my parent's house in the Black Forest and then I went to GamesCom in Cologne.

BLACKHAND wrote:
FAST ATTACK

3 x Armoured sentinels w/ lascannons

What are these sentinels going to look like? Hi-Doomwheel bicycle like?

Your second rat Ogryn is confirming the success of the first one! This blog is awesome!!!

If you want to use the doomwheel you could use the Elysian Tauros profile, seems to fit the best imo.

Keep up the great work!!

Okay, so I was thinking long and hard and as usual nothing came of it but a few crazy ideas. You could have a doomwheel type structure that is being pedaled by a rat ogre (like the spinning wheels for hamsters ) with a whacking big gun on top. Depending on its size it could be anything from a leman russ to a baneblade! It is also a shame that you could not have a few small bases covered in rats to count as tyranid ripper swarms as it would look very cool! For the sentinels counts as, maybe more rat ogres augmented with stolen tech to make them stronger and faster (although they may just look like ogryns). Well that is my thoughts for the day. Love your work so far and hope it stays just as good as now!

Uh oh, I should have explained my ideas for the sentinels before I posted that huh?

So first off, while I like all the warpstone gubbins on the doomwheel I am not a fan of a giant hamster wheel as a vehicle, my rats are cruel and vicious not domesticated mice running in a wheel!

My plan for the sentinels where basically the top of a tower, complete with crenellations etc, floating around with a lasgun mounted in in a window.

Simple , WYSIWYG and doable with the hirst arts moulds I hope to have use of in the next few weeks.


Its a step down from the cyborg/rat sekelton I was first considering but I wanted to keep them in the theme of the other vehicles and get them finished by next years tournament!

Sentinels could be screaming bell frames?

Umm, I could buy 3 $85 kits for the sentinels orrrr I could make them out of $6 worth of high strength plaster

guess which option I am leaning towards

So your spending $255 then?

LOL

I love the Rat Ogers. They're AMAZING!

Thanks LeBaron, they scrub up nice too!



and here is a pic of everything I have painted so far, minus the Rat Ogryn and a couple more priests that are nearly ready for paint



not the best shot I know , but the lightbox is going to have to wait till the 40skaven project is done

I think it's brilliant how you worked the power crystals into the models. It takes that Skaven crystal fluff and works it nicely into a power source for the 40k world. Nice job, mate!

WOW I love the rat ogryn

Man, I'll have to start my own project soon.... or I'll be tempted to Float Rats in castles!!

Awesome work/

BLACKHAND wrote:Umm, I could buy 3 $85 kits for the sentinels orrrr I could make them out of $6 worth of high strength plaster

guess which option I am leaning towards

Okay, 'something reminiscent to screaming bell frames out of icecream sticks' then.

I like it. I didn't at first but rats with lasers is growing on me.

The ogre looks great painted! (maybe rats in a hamster wheel was a step too far!!)

This is looking like a superb and well thought out army. I'll enjoy watching this one flesh out over time. Keep up the good work sir!

Love the ogre!

Have a couple of suggestions... the head is usually a focal point of any figure (human nature), yet the rat ogre's head is kind of lost in the sea of brown that is his upper torso. You might think about adding some contrast to things like his nose, teeth, mouth and eyes... perhaps even doing something to make the shackle stand out a bit more.

This is really coming together. I do think you need a whiter highlight on your warpstones though, they don't look really gemmy yet.

Been lurking on this thread for awhile, and I have to say, you've done some brilliant work, BLACKHAND. But do you have an army list yet? And will you be playing this army as a "funny-looking Imperial Guard army" or will you use "Skaven tactics + lasers"?

Awesome stuff this has really made me want to go back and reinvigorate my Fantasy Skaven the new kits look really nice......

I were a bit worried how the rag ogre would look with that big neck. But painted it looks alot better than the unpainted! I say you have succeded in making a great looking model!

BLACKHAND wrote:Bring it on Cain!

I thought that flying castles was about as wacky as I could get but in a game with teleporting alien-robot buildings and walking Daemon tanks I guess I should have known better...

..that said I wish you could alliy daemons to guard so I could model a daemon prince as a Horned Rat Avatar hahahaHAHAHAHAHa...*cough* sorry bout that

Horned Rat Avatar counts as Warhound?

Blackhand, seeing the fast evolution of your army, I'm curious to know what time you're spending on it every day (and the amount of sleeping time thats remains ).

Do you think of using abomination-pit themed creatures in your army? (in addition to the flying castles?)

Excellent concept. Love what your are doing with these.

Thanks everyone for the comments, I don't have time before work to reply to everyone so I will try and answer the questions and suggestions.

@Morgrim - No icrecream sticks I promise you will be satisfied with what I come up with...no really!

@Gitsplitta - Good idea, I will revisit the Rat Ogryn and add some contrast to make it's head pop...wait that doesn't sound right..

@TiB - I am still working on my method for the warpstones, so far I have been doing goblin green - green ink - white drybrush, maybe I need to follow the drybrush with a bold line of white on the extreme edges.

@Darkvoid - I have a rough army list on the last page, and as for skaven tactics I have never played them in fantasy and so have no real idea how that would work. I have had middling success using my guard and the 40skaven list I am building is very similar so I hope to move to the rats and still win a few games, that said I am a modeller first, player second

@Llamahead - the new kits are so much better than the old that they almost look like a different army, the heads especially look so much more realistic and vicious.

@TiB - I have spent the night thinking about the horned rat and I have a plan for the model just not for the rules. He definitely suits a Daemon Prince as I love the look of the verminlord and would have him copy that imagery and fluff him as an avatar of the horned rat (the real horned rat is a god after all) but I have no idea how I would work it into the army except in apoc as previously suggested. I was not planning on something as big as a warhound as that would be a years work in itself

@Hyenajoe - Lol, I spend a couple of hours a day in the week and 4-5 hours a day in the weekends. The trick is to have several models being GS'd at a time so that one is always dry and ready to work on. The reason I am going so fast is that I have to start the next few papers of my management certificate next week and I wanted to get as much done as possible before I had to add yet another demand on my time! Would you believe my fiance has not yet force fed me my models?
As for hell pit abominations I am not too keen on their imagery, not a fan of jabba the huts on wheels, I may yet do my take on them but it will be after the "main" army is done.

Thanks again everyone means a lot to have everyone watching, I hope to have pics up this evening of the last two Warp Seer which will make 5, the smallest amount I will need to field a psyker squad!

Cheers

BLACKHAND

Looking great again!

Why must you people rub your talent in my face?

Why do I keep coming back to see it?

Why must it be so damn AWESOME?

HadoukenAvenger wrote:Why must you people rub your talent in my face?

Why do I keep coming back to see it?

Why must it be so damn AWESOME?

We may never know.

Munch Munch! wrote:

HadoukenAvenger wrote:Why must you people rub your talent in my face?

Why do I keep coming back to see it?

Why must it be so damn AWESOME?

We may never know.

If it helps my perfection in all faces of my life upsets others as well, its a burden I have learnt to live with


I havn't had time today to get much done, other than be a smart arse, but I did get some paint on the last two Warp Seers as seen here



and here is a shot of the whole squad, still missing an overseer that I will have to whip up out of bits but I think I will concentrate on the second Rat Ogryn and some of the Stormvermin first, oh and I will be painting a Grey Seer rune on the skin flag, slightly changed to reflect their new status as Warp Seers.



C&C welcome

Cheers

BLACKHAND


Automatically Appended Next Post:
HAHA, 10,000 hits, always a nice milestone to hit

firstly the warp seers look kickarse and congrats on the milestone!

Nice work there.

@bigmek & Tim - Thanks guys!

To the rest of you....SHAME ON YOU!

You knew I was working hard on the 40skaven...I was getting along nicely...nearly ready to start an assembly line of Stormvermin in order to get the entire 20 that I need done....

...and then you had to suggest converting up a HORNED RAT!!!

Thanks to your "suggestions" I have spent the entire evening drilling, carving and sweating in order to make a start on what will hopefully be a cool centrepiece to the army.

To anyone thinking I would be mad enough to build a warhound sized daemon-god..No! just NO!

I have decided on a daemon more VerminLord than Horned Rat, because I like the image in the Skaven army book , It's one of the first daemons I have seen without spines, armour and rotten flesh while still being sinister and its significantly smaller than a warhound

No pics tonight as it is surrounded by scaffolding holding it upright while the epoxy sets, for anyone interested it is based on a lead model of venom from marvel comics.

More to come tommorrow!

Cheers

BLACKHAND

The Rat Ogryn is great: love the warpstone twixt bicep!

Manoknok.

BLACKHAND wrote:To anyone thinking I would be mad enough to build a warhound sized daemon-god..No! just NO!

you know you want to...

Very cool looking warp seers! Looking forward to the horned rat...

This is chock full of awesome. One thought: could you use the Renegade Guard list with them to overcome the "What to do with my Horned Rat" dilemma?

I hope so Graven , I think I may just write up two lists one with the verminlord one without and just try each opponent on a game by game basis.

So here is the Image I am working off



And here is the base model I started yesterday, I had to cut of the legs at the knee, and took his venom head off.



And here he is after the epoxy has set on his lower legs and with a skim of GS on his chest and back. Unfortunately the venom costume markings were etched as well as painted so I have to fill them in.



Last is a VERY wip of the head, I am hopefully addinig more angles to it than in the original pic to give a bit more flair,



Now I just need to get hold of some recurved and curled daemon horns!

Yeah, like its gonna be that simple

As usual suggestions are welcome!

Cheers,

BLACKHAND

Ooh, scary.

Very inventive and well thought out models.

The idea to use a spawn figure for a vermin lord is genius; what head space were you in to come up with that?! Lateral thinking...

I tip my hat to you good sir; keep up the great work!

@Tim the Biovore - Thanks Tim I can always count on you

@Bishop - Cheers! The base model was actually a lead fig of Venom and TBH the with the whole rounded head and long slavering tongue he was on his way to become the most psycho-sexual slaaneshi daemon prince ever, I'm glad this idea came along so that I didn't create a model that would end in my fiance leaving me


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I mean does this guy look slaaneshi or what?

http://i176.photobucket.com/albums/w193/p1x4r_2007/Bowen%20Designs/Full%20Size/Venom%20by%20Ryan%20T/IMG_2253.jpg

Holy mother of earth!

Those are some really awesome models!

You do not disappoint my friend.... well, except the close up of the head, unless you specifically sculpted it to be blurry. *grin*

Try bits for some the big Circle Warbeasts from privateer maybe for horns?

I really like all this, especially the psyker squad. Really nice work overall.
And now, I have a reason to buy skaven models too... To tell the truth I'm not completely sold on the background you mwrote (no offence), but I still love the idea of ratmen in space.
So when I get resources, Ima make a Hrud army!

...Probably with the Ig rules, as you did.

Hey... I just had a thought... there's a curvy horned skull doodad for the ork bikes... I have several of them, when I get home I could take a photo & you could see if there's enough there that you could use it as a basis for your sculpt. It's meant to be mounted in front of the handlebars so it's pretty big. It'll require some fiddling... but it might get you most of the way there.

I don't get it. He has a Venom figure, but he cuts off the head. How is he now gonna suck your brains out through your nose?

Duh! It's obvious that Venom have enough muscles in his throat, to jump up on your face! He'll have to become a facehugger.

On a different note, don't you think the Callidus' Neural Shredder looks like it has warpstone in it?

@Gretar - Thanks!

@Gitsplitta - I took a bunch of pick of the head but the camera would focus on my fingers every time! Once I get the head on the body I will be able to take better pics as it will be freestanding. On the Ork bike part I will be most interested to see it.

@inmygravenimage - Does Privateer Press do bits? if so I will check em out.

@Saintspirit - Cool, as always I have a standing invitation for anyone trying 40skaven to post pics or links up here as I would love to see other people's interpretation of the idea.

@Anung un Rama - I know, I know I felt sacriligious as I snipped off the head, I almost left the lower jaw and tongue to incorporate into the VerminLord but it was not long enough to match the skull length.

And I 'm hoping by the time I'm finished he will have no problem eating brains...or forcing swarms of rats down throats ...or rotting people into bubbling messes...


Cheers

BLACKHAND


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I had a quick look at the ork bike on the GW site, The skull itself is good but the horns are like cow horns where I am looking for segmented horns like the ones on Bloodletters or the ones growing out of the chaos terminator helmets.

Try this...

The first one is just because they offer one shot showing the size compared to a penny..
http://cgi.ebay.com/Dark-Oxidized-Bronze-Bighorn-Ram-Skull-Pendant-Aries-/370418465241?pt=Handcrafted_Artisan_Jewelry&hash=item563ea939d9#ht_500wt_928

The second is (I'm certain) from the exact same mold, but is half the price. (actually it was the cheapest one listed)
http://cgi.ebay.com/Gold-Plated-Ram-horn-Skull-Gothic-Charm-Skeleton-/350298987140?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item518f725a84#ht_2675wt_1137

Still expensive... but just how badly do you want your rat thingie?? Gut-check time!

Lol, They would be perfect for what I am doing but I am confident enough in my GS skills that I don't think I will have throw down that kind of cash, you have to remember that with the exchange rate I would be able to afford another screaming bell with that kind of cash

I think in the end it will be a case of buying a daemon or two and slicing off their horns.

Spoil sport!

*thbbbbbbt!*

And yes, you're modeling skills are quite up to the task. Just thought I'd tempt you with a short cut...

Awesome as always, BLACKHAND!!

Still going strong mate, keep it up.

Privateer press do indeed have a parts store:
https://store.privateerpress.com/index.asp?PageAction=VIEWCATS&Category=68 (Circle stuff)

Some ideas:
https://store.privateerpress.com/ProductImages/circle/units/DR-3098-D.jpg

https://store.privateerpress.com/ProductImages/circle/locks/DR-3107-E.jpg


https://store.privateerpress.com/ProductImages/circle/units/DR-3051-B.jpg


https://store.privateerpress.com/ProductImages/circle/units/DR-3118-C.jpg

I was thinking of these

a nice goat looking skull

https://store.privateerpress.com/ProductImages/circle/solos/DR-3055-C.jpg

A whippy rat-like tail for him

https://store.privateerpress.com/ProductImages/legion/beasts/BL-3161-B.jpg

they don't really have the type of horns I am thinking of and the two parts above are ones I am going to try to sculpt with GS first but thanks for the alternative to GW parts, its always nice to have options!


Unfortunately I have not been able to get to my painting desk tonight so no update but I have been sneekily sanding the GS work I did last night when my fiance isn't watching so technically I have still been working on the 40skaven, technically

That's a cool site graven... nice that they make bits available (I remember when GW used to do this).

Those are good choices Blackhand, should be a relatively simple task for you to add the horns & modify that skull to suit your purposes.

"Skweeek skwwweek Skweeekkeeeee!" ("All hail the Verminlord!")

Using this Venom model is a good point! Can't wait to see more (I guess the whole model will be fully assembled and painted 'til next week-end! ).


By the way, I really like the way you paint your skaven, do you use army painter or something like that?

With faceted crystals, I've found they take to layering a lot better than drybrushing. A base of goblin green, mix of that and white edge highlight, then extreme edge highlight in white perhaps? With your wash in the middle or at the end if that works. Since they are reasonably sharp edges then the highlighting would be pretty easy, just run the brush along the sides so not really taking much longer.

@gitsplitta - The PP site is great huh? I had to log off pretty quick or I was going to start ordering bits for random projects
As for the skull I'm still going to try and build the part I need out of GS as I am rapidly running out of funds for this project :(

@Hyenajoe - Well. maybe middle of next week, I am starting my study up again this week
When I paint my models I basically just use GW foundation paints and their brown wash, I know it's lazy but I find at my level of painting it works just as well as several layers of paint.

@morgrim - Yeah I have found that drybrushing, especially on the small crystals, is too messy. I have moved to a goblin green - white highlight - green ink method. I like the way the ink is working as it is quite dark and makes it look like the facet has cut deep into the dark heart of the warpstone.

Cheers

BLACKHAND

Ok so I didi some actual work tonight, GS'd the lower legs, still have to sand them and do phase two but they are looking better. I have decided to cut of the right arm at the elbow so that I can straighten it up a bit, I need a better angle for the glaive (read halberd) to sit at, eventually I want the pole of the glaive to extend behind the right shoulder and balance the tail coming out under the left elbow.

You will see what I mean tomorrow...

Speaking of th tail I made a start but its in the very early stages, just a rough GS base over the armature.
I also made a start on the head of the glaive, nice big curvy sword like in the picture in the army book.

I would have had pics for you but my fiance used the entire camera battery taking pics of our daughter dancing...cute, but slightly frustrating

So pics tomorrow I promise!

Cheers

BLACKHAND

I just found this thread and was shocked. I had just started my IG/Skaven army, mine will be nowhere near as converted as yours. Hopefully mine will still look pretty good. Plan is to use clanrats as the basic gaurdsmen, plague monks as officers and special characters, and stormvermin as vet squads.

I was wondering if you where planning on putting squad markings on yours.

BLACKHAND wrote:
@Hyenajoe - Well. maybe middle of next week, I am starting my study up again this week
When I paint my models I basically just use GW foundation paints and their brown wash, I know it's lazy but I find at my level of painting it works just as well as several layers of paint.

BLACKHAND

What wash do you use? GW or home-made? I don't care if it's lazy, it really looks great!

Vermin lord looks good

@seafox , Cool hope you post pics! How are solving the clanrat left arm problem, having them fused to the chest made it near impossible to have them holding a lasgun hence me using stormvermin. My plan for squad markings was to keep banner bearers in each unit and give them unique runes on them. I may give each Stormvermin a rune in white on their shoulder or somewhere to help with keeping them in the right units, its the part I hate most about IG, trying to find which model goes in which unit as I take an hour to set them up on the table

@hyenajoe - I use good ol' Devlan Mud, I haven't tried any others to be honest :S

@young Logan - Thanks Logan!

Cheers

BLACKHAND

This amazing Skaven army of yours not only forced me to finally join Dakka Dakka, but also start buying GW's rats. I will receive my first box of Stormvermin in 2-3 business days. I also wanted to know where you got the Skaven head you have on your sergeant with the first plasma pistol, I like the calmed look rather than all screaming most of the heads have.

So far I've taken the lazy road with the clanrats and just have them sitting in the right arm. The Catachan lasguns fit nicely with the butt of the gun resting on their shoulder. The Cadian lasguns have to be mangled a bit so I'm going to have to modify them somehow. Considering I have 30 of them to make only a few I'll take time to move/make the left arm. I am using their shields.

One of my plans is to make a few Imperial guardsmen P.O.W.'s that will move with my squads not part of, but more like a marker of how high and how much space a guardsmen takes up. This is in case I run into a rules monger that complains about how short the ratmen are.

As for pic's I tried to link over the pic's from facebook I have posted to here but that failed. So not sure how to get the pic's posted now. So far I got 3 rat's painted.

@Collector - Welcome to Dakka! I'm humbled to know it was my rats that brought you here. I promise you will enjoy the stormvermin they are a beautiful kit, as for the heads on the sergeants they both came from the stormvermin box, the calmer one is the alternate leader head.

@seafox - I have seen a version of the rats using both Cadian arms, including the shoulderpad and it doesn't look too bad, just a bit too futuristic for me. All it needs is the left arm carved off with a hobby knife, I didn't even see any GS so it's simple conversion.
I never thought of the size being issue, especially with the stormvermin being bigger than the average Guardsman. I was more worried about entering my army and a tournament and getting pinged on the 70% GW parts rule as my vehicles will consist of plaster and custom cast parts with only the ruins of osgiliath parts GW...who knows I am good friends with the tournament organisers so I will probably scrap through.
As for pics I am sure there is a tutorial on uploading pics to Dakka, it's as easy as facebook that is for sure.

Cheers guys


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Ok I have pics!

first up is where I got to last night





GS work was started on the legs and most of the other work I got done was on the glaive....


...but the real fun stuff I did tonight, I think I will let the pics do the talking







So I cut and reposed the arm and GS'd the elbow join. I added a staff to the Glaive, it will receive a ton of GS runes and wrapping and a globe at the tip.
I also decided to GS the skull to the neck so I could make sure it was in the right scale, it also helped me decide to add a lower jaw for balance.
I have sent an email around to some friends begging for horns for the Verminlord and I hope to have some in the next few days, just in time for the rest of the work on him to be done...in theory.

Well thats all i've got tonight, but I hope its proof that I'm still workin' away!


Cheers

BLACKHAND

Awsome Blackhand! Looks terrific!

Now for the excessivly big horns....

BLACKHAND wrote:

Well thats all i've got tonight, but I hope its proof that I'm still workin' away!


BLACKHAND

Dakka is watching you!

Looking good, however....any news on the floating castles? ID ID ID

Okay. That looks pretty cool. What are you using him as again?

To make things nice and clear I started my own thread with my Skaven. It has a link back to this thread.

My Blog: http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/0/314920.page#1893989