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I am subscribing to this, I love skaven as an army And your doing a great job painting them,

Keep up the good work.

The paint job is very basic now and will stay that way till the whole army is done. After that, I wash it all with Devlin Mud and go over it with a very basic highlight to pull out raised surfaces. Once that's done, I will color the base bevels, seal & dull coat, and flock. Hopefully it will turn out like I'm imagining it.

Okay. Time to show you that I haven't just been posting pictures of the same tray of rats over and over and over again.







And, because you've all been so patient with me, here's a shot of all the paint set Marines that the Seattle Battle Bunker guys had to clip out to put into the big "Paint a Marine" box so they could run demos. Yes, that's what 200 Tactical Marines look like.



As for what I'm currently doing, I'm part way through my 24-rat unit of "13th Spell" Clanrats. I am saving the clothes for last as I've yet to finalize a color scheme for them. The rest should go together pretty quick. After that, I'll probably turn my attention to my Plague Monks.

So many vermin and space marines!

Anyways, good luck on your work with the rats! Skaven can be a pain after the 100th dude

Nice to see another skaven blog. You're considerably further along the way than I.... Am eager to see my ranks swell like yours!
I'l definatly be back to see things progressing here. Keep up the good work.

Here are the 24 rats for when my Dreaded 13th Spell goes off.



This is the phases my color test went through. At first, I went with blue and green to make them stand apart from the rest but someone said, "Oh, you're a Seahawks fan." and then I realized that they really did look a little too much like the Seahawks. I swapped the hood back to red to make them better match the rest of my clanrat units but the red, silver, and blue made them look a little too patriotic if you know what I mean. So then the robes switched to green. I was okay but they looked a little too christmassy. I then used gretchen green instead because it was more yellow-green and less... festive.



In the end they aren't as special as I wanted them to be but they match the look of the rest of the army and that's a good thing.

Great work
The U.S Patriot rat gave me a good giggle!
Do you have some way to base these quickly? I'm counting approx 250 rats there, gonna be a long afternoon with the pva! hehe.
Oh and I like the green you ended up with, thats the kind of green I'm wanting my plague monks to turn out. What paint did you use?

For the 13th Spell clanrats, I used the following plan...

Flesh/Fur - Tallarn Flesh
Top clothes/Hoods - Mechrite Red
Main clothes - Gretchen Green
Metal - Mithril Silver
Wood - Calthan Brown

The metals are to be washed with Badab Black then rest of the model washed with Devlin Mud.

Quick update. I started my Plague monks. Primed black and airbrushed with Gretchen Green. I started painting the staves and noticed a couple of errors. First, I didn't do the spacer for the three rats that don't fit behing the Plague Furnace. Second, I've a Plague Monk that lost his little banner somehow. What's more worriesome is that I didn't catch this earlier. :(

I for one am very impressed with the speed you are bashing this Skaven

Johnny-Crass wrote:I for one am very impressed with the speed you are bashing this Skaven

I am really not. I've been a massive slacker these past several weeks. Here is the unit of Plague Monks now fully base coated. I should have had these done mid April but I've been really lousy at doing these guys for some reason.

I'm not doing any Skaven this week, concentrating instead on catching up on my Masterclass work at the Seattle Battle Bunker but I'll have something else from my army to start with next week. In the meantime, here is a quick shot of all my monks together.

I'm currently painting a Skaven army. I basically paint them to where yours are, drybrush on some highlights, and slop on the Earthshade wash. They end up looking very good.

Also, a trick is to prime black and then spray at about a 60 degree angle from the top, all the way around. This creates a natural highlight and works well with Skaven bacause they will have a "dirty" underside.

Keep it up. And nice Sicarius.

Updates, man? I'm one o' them "Skaven-lovers", and this thread is apparently the place for us to be

Sorry about the lack of updates. I am currently half-way through my unit of Stormvermin. They were going along fine until I ran out of Mithril Silver and had to beg and beg and beg till I found a fellow who was willing to give up a pot. I'll be posting pictures (hopefully) next week. In the meantime, you'll have to be content to know that the Rats are still there, ready to be finished with their basecoat. After that, I'm thinking Rat Ogres.

May I be so impolite and ask you where you got all these rats? Did you get them all at retail price? Or were you gonna do a "Bank Job" thing, but held the map upside down and ended up in a GW warehouse

I dont envy you mate, that many rats isnt good for metal health, which is why my skaven are just points boost with big toys to keep model count down.
Only blocks i have is 50 slaves and 2 lots of 50 clanrats.
Granted ive got 40 stormvermin and 40 monks, but its still a low count for skaven i guess.

That is a lot of rats! Nice clean base coats. That will make your life so easy once you get your washes in place. Keep up the good work!

Since you have so many to wash, if you find you need more Devlan "Magic" Mud, I've found Army Painter Strong Tone Ink works great. It is basically identical to Devlan Mud and it is amazing, no joke.

I am going to be watching here, too, because I'm painting a bunch of ratlike minis, too, though for Brushfire, not WFB.

I've (hopefully) got plenty of Devlin mud for this task. Hopefully.

angel of ecstasy wrote:May I be so impolite and ask you where you got all these rats?

I've got the rat half of seven of the Isle of Blood starter sets. I didn't buy seven sets, I bought two, traded the elves for rats and bought three more rat sets off eBay. The monks and vermin I bought as bits and got some nice deals. The "machines" I bought from the store.

Now this is impressive! It's a mammoth job! An I commend you for that! I can barely be bothered painted a single model

I love the colours being used!

When are the next updates coming! Subscribing to this!

E40KG

That's quite a lot of Skaven, I admire your patience and pity the poor soul who has to face them on the table top!

This puts my mini mountain of unpainted models to shame.Well done staying motivated mate.

I've got a banner bearer to make for my Stormvermin and then get it painted up. Once that's done, I'll update with pics of the unit.

Once the Stormvermin unit is done being basecoated, I'll take inventory of what's left and go from there. I'm rethinking if I want to do the Gutter Runners next or the Rat Ogres. I've also got my Rat Wolves (Wolfrats?) unbent and more or less posed the way I want them so they're also a candidate for basecoating.

Edit: I just realized that I still haven't done the three base filler to sit behind the Plague Furnace. One more thing still on the to-do list, I guess. :/

As in my last blog, I'm more than slightly late in posting pictures. Here is my unit of Stormvermin. This was a tough unit to rank up mainly because I bought everything as separate bits from eBay. Good deals meant more than a tiny bit of frustration making things work. I definately need to put a numbering system on the bases before I use them in a game. I'll be so sad otherwise. :/




I've basecoated my Wolfrats and done a little work on my Gutter Runners but didn't get pics of them. I'll take some this weekend when I'm at the Seattle Bunker.

Two "in progress" shots of my Wolf Rats. The first is a quick look at the unit after primer and a coat of Tallarn Flesh. The second is after adding most of the non-flesh colors except for the fur. I'll be washing the fur in Badab Black and then I think I'll be hitting it with Eshin Grey. I think I'll make a dark red wash to soak in the brand marks just to make them stand out a little better.

Man, I'm taking so long that pretty much every update is effectively a thread necro. :/ I know that policy doesn't count here because I'm updating a blog with actual relevant content but it is still a little depressing to see so little progress on my army.

Still, I've pretty much finished basecoating my Wolf Rats and Gutter Runners.





So, Rat Ogres are up next. After that it's on to individual models/characters and then on to war engines and such. I really can't wait for this to be done and over so I can start fielding them. Bwah-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!!!

Finally, an update.

I finished my pack of Rat Ogres and the Pack Masters that go with them.

The Rat Ogres were basically painted the same scheme as the Rat Wolves above while the Pack Masters wear silver armor and red straps associating them with Clanrats.

Two Island of Blood Rat Ogres



Island of Blood Pack Master



Whole unit of Rat Ogres



One thing the sharp-eyed will notice is that there are seven Pack Masters but only six of each type of Rat Ogre. This is because I used one of the Rat Ogres (armor on arm) for Mordheim and the other is unassembled and unprimered.

I think next up will be chararcter type models as they're smaller and I can do a little bit of assembly line painting on them. The base coating won't be anything special, except that I'll pick out eyes, claws, and teeth where possible. The improvement will be after the Devlin Mud bath and highlighting.

Man, I wish I had more time to paint (which I sadly might have in February if my contract isn't extended).

So many skaven...

So awesome...

I love skaven. I really do. However i think i'd go insane if i only painted what i have and my army is still under 300 models if i remember correctly.

 Jackal wrote:
I dont envy you mate, that many rats isnt good for metal health, which is why my skaven are just points boost with big toys to keep model count down.
Only blocks i have is 50 slaves and 2 lots of 50 clanrats.
Granted ive got 40 stormvermin and 40 monks, but its still a low count for skaven i guess.

That's why i never understand the complaints about slave armies with skaven for the skaven players' opponents. Do you guys have any idea how much money, all the modeling and a painting that has to be done if somebody should so choose to do a slave army? It's also probably a huge pain to carry that many around anywhere. Having a slave army if you're a skaven player is a huge investment which costs a lot more for a horde player than it does for an elite army player. Not to mention when the island of blood sets stop being made due to 9th edition cost for clanrat/slave models is going to go way, way up.

@breotan: Dude you totally need skweel gnawtooth with that ridiculous amount of rat ogres. He would totally beef them up. Totally your choice though.

Fantastic amount of rats here!

Looking good for the base colors, waiting fro the washes to give them final look. Then this sized formations are some sight.