Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

So after a weekend plus of cutting, fiddling, and glueing I’m most of the way through assembling my two sets of City of Ash Skaven. They are amazing figures but definitely have some minuses.

I do really like that, unlike some previous GW kits, the Skaven were all on the same sprues and not interspersed with the other faction. I may be dating myself a bit but it was a royal pain splitting up Isle of Blood models back in the day.

But on the cons side…. For the love of dog GW, do NOT put the instructions in the middle of a book we might want to use for other things. I didn’t want to break the spine, so I kept having to put things down to pick the book back up and look for the next part I needed. Really annoying. Just print the them on a plain non-glossy pamphlet!

I am amazed at how well the models come together when you finally figure out the alignment of the parts, but there were more that a few times I was cursing the name of Yan Lo’s beard while trying to put some of the fiddly pieces together. Why on earth would you have models glue at their ankles. Or have to glue on a random hand or forearm on a spindly little Skaven arm?!?!?

But probably the worst was that they had the Night Runners on one page and the Gutter Runners on another. Both sets shared legs, so if you wanted to pick which model you wanted to make you flip back and forth checking options. And they were not in the same order! Again, please just have the two options laid out next to one another. Legs X and Y can make Option 1, a Gutter Runners or option 2 a Night Runner.

There were quite a few weapon options I didn’t want to use and going back and forth to try to optimize choices was a pain.

I really didn’t like those bladed tonfa weapons (I’m sure there’s a real name for them but I have no idea what it is). And I didn’t really like the wolverine claw models. Dunno why but i just didn’t like them. Although I now do wish I’d built at least one of the guys with the back-mounted tank and claws.

But i was surprised at how well some of the models converted up and I suspect if someone really wanted to take the time, they could probably find more parts that actually mix and match well. As it stands I found at least one body that fit on a different set of legs quite well and did more than a few hand/weapon swaps.

And on that note, maybe make the heads interchangeable? I know that’s probably impossible, but I did find at least one that worked with only a very minor gap. But it’d be a way to add a bit of variety….

In the end, I think I probably made a few mistakes trying to get just the right models and I ended up toward the end with a good handful of models where i didn’t like the stock options. But the good news is since you only use half the upper bodies, there are plenty of spare parts left. So I did some converting to try to create some unique models. Hopefully, they’ll look clearer once painted, but here’s a few shots of the bare plastic conversions.









I have a couple more, but they worked out well enough i was having trouble finding the converted ones in with the rest. I’ll try to get them primered up this week and maybe get some paint on them. Updates here when i get some done.

Thanks to everyone who’s viewed this blog so far… Hopefully, I’ll have another update soonish.

Valete,

JohnS

Got a start on painting up some of the City of Ash Gutter Runners…. There’re all still very much WIP, but it’s a start. Hoping to get some more painting time this weekend. And wil try to get some clear pix of some of the conversions I made. Pretty happy with they turned out, even the one I was about 99% sure I’d have to completely write off as a failure. But enough of that, some WIP pix…







Valete,

JohnS

And… The first two done. Definitely not 100% happy with them, but I have 38 more to go, so happy enough with them as my test cases.









Ideally I’ll get at least 8 done by next Wednesday night so I can field “real” Night Runners in our ToW escalation league. I’d been using some old metal models bulked out with some of the Isle of Blood models that I had equipped with slings from the now (very) OOP metal sling bits conversion packs GW sold many years ago….

Also finished up the last of the conversions I wanted to do. But they’re currently bare plastic and don’t photo well. I’ll try to get some pix of them at some point.

And, of course, noticed a couple of things in the blown up pix that I’ll probably have to fix before I seal them up…

Valete,

JohnS

Progress from Saturday and Sunday on the rest of my first batch of 10 Gutter Runners. Not the best pix, but they’re not quite done yet. Guess I’ll get a few close-ups once they’re finished and flocked.



And apologies about the focus. My phone decided to focus on the near models so the lads in the back are blurry. Self-evidently, my photography skills are not in any real way better than my painting skills….

Valete,

JohnS

That's a whole lot of finished Skaven, especially given that it's not ski season.

I haven’t had a lot of hobby time over the past week plus since my son is back from his freshman year of college, so in the spirit of trying to keep some momentum in this blog, here’s another older selection from my Skaven army…

With the death of WHFB, until ToW came out, my go to RnF game was Kings of War. There are still a few things about KoW that I like more than ToW, but I’ve accepted the will of my local gaming group. But I did work on some units for my “Ratmen” army that, sadly, won’t likely find a home in ToW (even if GW yields on the inane “Legacy” thing). So without further ado, I give you my Skaven Cavalry…. Aka rats riding giant rats.

I really didn’t like the Mantic mounted models so I went with conversions using wolf rats from Resin Warfare and Isle of Blood Skaven torsos. For the legs, I used Lord of the Rings Warg Riders with the feet and tails from the IoB Skaven. That worked for the first half of the models, but then Resin Warfare came out with their own versions, so half of my Wolf Rat Riders were conversions and half are the Resin Warfare models. In any event, there’s a few shots of the painted models…

First, an example of one of my conversions…





Then one of the Resin Warfare models….





And a couple of group shots of the full unit of 10…





Finally, you need a hero to lead them, right? It took a lot of hacking of the base to get the mounted Vermintide Skaven chieftain onto a 25x50, but I was pretty happy with the results…



As usual, they were largely painted with Contrasts, and they show it a bit, but overall I think they look OK and should do just fine on the table top.

If I ever field them in ToW, it’ll probably be as allied Chaos Marauder Cavalry with the Mark of Slannesh since that gets closest to Skaven stats. The hero would be some mid-level mounted lord, prob with a Ruby Ring or something to simulate the AoS-style gun. That option also allows me to field my Vermin Lord, which I showed a while back, as a demon prince leading the Allied unit.

Valete,

JohnS