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I just completed my massive Skaven Renegade & Heretic army in time for the Astronomicon tourny in Toronto this weekend!
I've been wanting to make this army since imperial armour 13 dropped with the R&H army list, and I knew Skaven were going to be my go to because I think they're such a great and characterful range of models (also I already have a guard army, and I didn't want to repeat myself!). With the way the R&H (and the Vraks horde list in particular) can respawn, this is truly the epitome of an endless ravening horde of evil minions (backed up by some colossus stompy robots)!
I started collecting parts for assembly about a year ago, grabbing bits off ebay. The Skaven Clanrats were perfect to buy in bulk, coming in around only .50cents per model, but then I also needed to stock up on Dark Eldar arms for pistols and melee weapons. The DE arms are a perfect fit and aesthetic, but I had to do a -lot- of shaving off clanrat left arms (shield arms) to add pistol/weapon combos to the majority of the infantry.
Painting the chaff was geared purely for production line efficiency. They're 3 point models, so they only need to look good 'en masse. Primed brown, basecolour grey/red/metal, a quick dip in Army Painter Strong Tone, sprayed with Dullcoat, pick out eyes/teeth/rivets and base with copious amounts of blood. The majority of the 100 or so infantry models were painted in about a month, on and off.

The army consists of 6x 15 man infantry squads (that respawn on a 2+), 3 Helbrutes, 3 Soul Grinders (see my P&M Blog thread!), 3 Rapiers, and assorted support/command infantry.






The Vermin Lord, who's difficult to photograph because of his hunchy pose.


Some officers and banner/sigil bearers to keep the scum in line. The Stormvermin kit is great, and helps to bring the horde up to a more human sized height.


A few flamer carriers (each squad has 2). The flamers are cut down Kroot Rifles, Cadian flamer packs, and some wire for the hose.


Lascannon Disciple team. They come with the Lord, but they snipe things pretty well.


Laser Destroyer Rapier Battery cobbled together from some Manic Forgefather tracks and a bunch of random bits. I know they're supposed to have quad lascannons, but I could'nt figure out a way to make that look good. So they just have magic dragon heads that gives them extra powa'.

Awesome.

Great work but, IMO way too much red.

 Sammoth wrote:
Great work but, IMO way too much red.

Nah, not if they are trying to go fasta!

Awesome conversion work!

 BunkhouseBuster wrote:

 Sammoth wrote:
Great work but, IMO way too much red.

Nah, not if they are trying to go fasta!

Awesome conversion work!

That's why it's called an opinion.

Did you photograph these with a red filter? It looks like you did and I feel like they'd be better shown without it. I feel like I'm looking at them under a heatlamp.

The conversions are A+ though!

Brilliant idea, and the conversions look good, but the bases don't contrast with the figures and would look better with a drybrush of something else.

Yeah...that's..a lot of red.

Amazing work !!!
I have a bunch of Blood Island skaven and I was thinking into turning them into 40k renegades as well. I was thinking more of mutant rabble, but you've changed my mind something fierce.
Also went through your gallery and saw your khorne centigors, I was really wanting to make khorne centaur bikers as well.
Great stuff.

Pure awesome juice

Thanks for the replies guys!
It's very red (I'm also terrible at taking photos, so these are even more washed out), but I've already thrown my soul in with Khorne. There can be only blood, even if it is poor colour theory.
The rats blend in because particularly the brown I picked for their basecoat/clothes ended up pretty reddish. Most of my non-skaven models in the rest of my force try to incorporate more blackgrey, bone, and greyblue for come better contrasts.

Had an awesome weekend at the Astro tournament in Toronto with my rat men hordes. All games were bloody meatgrinders as appropriate. I was afraid that I'd have game time problems moving so many models (and the fact that they come back after they die), but it was never really an issue. Colour coding the squads was invaluable.
I was having some conversations about how cultist/GEQ horde armies feel really fun to play because they have the exact opposite psychological effect of super elite armies/units. With a fancypants unit, whenever it fails to perform or dies, you feel really disappointed a bummed out. But when a useless cultist stabs just a regular space marine in the eye, it makes you feel all warm and fuzzy inside.
Highlight underdog kills include:
-3 squads swarming and slowly eroding two Dreadknights over the course of 4 turns. I hate Dreadknights and watching them get papercut to death was very gratifying.
-Putting the last wound on a swooping Devourer Flyrant with a laspistol.
-In the same game, the last model of a squad killed a charging Tervigon on overwatch, with a laspistol.
-Losing 10+ models in the ensuing fireball anytime I killed a vehicle with meltabombs. In one game, I lost more models to vehicle explosions than enemy shooting.