Sticking it to the Man Warhammer Stylee!

All my projects are long term but this one is (I'm sure) going to drag itself into the far future.

Simply put, I've decided I want a Hellpit Abomination (2 preferably), two Warplightening Cannons, a Plague Engine Thing, and a Plagueclaw Catapult. I want these items but I don't want to buy them. I don't particularly  want to steal them either so it leaves option #3: make them. I have been sketching the first of my projects which is the Abom, its going to take is plenty of wire and greenstuff (of which I have a goodly amount), some items from my bits box and we can Rock n' Roll. I also saw on a forum how to make a barrell shaped item which should enable me to make my cannons. On another forum I got the idea of how to make wooden wheels fairly easily and the viability of the project gets more viabler. I have plenty of skaven slaves, clanrats and plague monks just begging to be chopped up into new and interesting poses. Catapults are essentially a frame with a beam and a counterweight so one of those could be knocked up. Then to cap it off I had an idea of making a third Doomwheel for my skaven one that is a ratty knock-off of a  dwarf gyrocopter. Hopefully my initial burst of enthusiasm (and this blog entry) will get me off the blocks swiftly.

Scratchbuilt Abom

The above conversion is the kind of thing I'm talking about, and the full entry can be found here a blog called a Tale of four geeks. Below is another one I found on a Warhammer 40k forum. Both figures are different but are pretty ratty as well. All I have to do is get cracking!

Abom with the jaws of Doom

Another brilliant model.

N.B. This plan is in no way an attempt to delay painting my Wood Elf Glade Riders, and more importantly their goofy horses!

Deathmaster Snikch's Posse.

So I have gotten my painting hat well and truly on and it's looking like quite a nice fit too. There are are few models that have been lurking furtively in my painting case for many months now and finally they have been sent out into the verdant pastures of my painted bookcase. So before I start any more painting metaphors (or whatever) here are the money shots.

Deathmaster Snikch & his helper 

Deathmaster Snikch has been undercoated for some 17 years or so, and in that time has decimated regiments of units skulked around on numerous battlefields as well as been used as a rather neat threat that has deterred advances by his merest presence. Now that he is finally painted I hope he will do even better things. His mate had better look lively as well......

Ratling Machine Gun

Ratling Machine Gun from the other angle

Jezzails

 The Weapons Teams were in the painting pile for yonks & to be honest I'm glad to be rid of them, not bad figures but hampered by the fact that they were glued to a cavalry base which made painting some of their nooks & crannies a mite more difficult than it should have been.

Three Clan Moulder Heavies

 Two packmasters & the original Throt The Unclean are added to my rat packs or rat ogre units. Yehaa!

Clan Skyre Globadier

 Good job Globadiers are skirmishers, I got a bit carried away the clay base which is over hanging the front two sides, lets hope for his sake he doesn't get into close combat.

Ten Points of Carnage

Skavenslaves with pets

Two Fairly Healthy Looking Slaves

Yuck!

Champion

 My Skavenslave unit is bolstered by nine models this week of which five were converted, one has a green medallion, presumably a keepsake from his breeder gal at home. One has a pet rat on his shoulder, with really bizarre shaped ears, another has a swollen face with a maggot peeking out (also a pet), and the last two have large unsightly boils/cankers/whittles on their backs. A sad inditement of the inhumane conditions that these political prisoners are being kept in. it is also a sad inditement of me putting extra hours work on 2 point models.

Group Photo

And finally a photo of everyone in the class, with a combined cost of 563 points, I am pretty happy with my achievement for today.

Rats-a-gogo!

Well I have been messing about with greenstuff again so it's probably about time I inflicted the putrid contents of my mind onto the internet, just to teach it a lesson! One thing that struck me about the previous Skaven army book was the genetic manipulation that Clan Moulder do to improve their otherwise crappy giant rats, using rudimentary surgery and extreme violence they seem to get acceptable results. So bearing this in mind I thought to myself, rather than just paint up a few dozen giant rats for my eternally ongoing Skaven army, why don't I spend an inordinately long time sculpting up loads of models that are worth 3 points in game terms? How it's taken me 20+ years to get to this stage is beyond me!

Giant Rat-Orc

First up is my Giant Rat-Orc, a simple Clan Moulder trick of removing an Orc's head and then bolting it to a Giant Rat's body. Legs & possibly arms to follow.

Giant Rat-Orc

Fat Rat

This bad boy is inspired by the Skavenslayer book by Bill King where specially bred rats could eat huge amounts of food causing a famine in Nuln. It has the head of a Warpfire Thrower firer bulked up with blobs of greenstuff.All I really need to do now is sculpt some rather large incisors & his other front leg & he's ready for painting.

Fat Rat gnawing on a man-thing

Cthuluesque Giant Rat

Somewhere in the depths of Hell Pit, some Master Moulder thought that crossing a rat with some kind of astral deity of unimaginable power would be cool, and rather scary. Being unable to catch the aforementioned unnameable being he probably spliced it with a big sea anemone. 

Cthulu Rat

Mole Rat

Clan Moulder salesmen are constantly being asked by unhappy warlords 'How do we get into fortresses without too much aggro?'. The answer: the patent pending Mole Rat, for all your tunneling needs!

Mole Rat

Scythy the Scythe-headed rat

How do you make a Giant Rat even more unpleasant? Weld a scythe to his head & hey presto! An instantly more killy rat.

Scythe-headed Rat

Rat with a Hat

I chopped the head from a Clanrat & decided to put the head to good use. It is highly likely that other rats in the unit will be jealous but that's part & parcel of being Packmasters Pet! 

Rat with a hat

"Look Out, He's Got A Knife!"

A similar amount of greenstuff for this skaven head to be attached to, but with a stump with a knife blade attached to it. This fella is from the bad part of town

Knife wielding Rat 

"You can still see the stitches!"

Skavenslave has his head removed, stitched onto a giant rat, it's that simple. I could leave him like that as some kind of slug rat I suppose.

Legless-so-far Rat

Treeman Ancient

I thought I'd try my hand and putting a few more branches on this bugger, to denote that he is a Treeman Ancient rather than one of these whippersnapper treemen of only a few centuries old.

Rat that looks like a treeman

Ratogrerat

Took the head off one of the Oldhammer Rat Ogres to make another Giant Rat, but I realized that a huge head would look silly with a small body, so in typical Clan Moulder fashion I thought, sewing two rat bodies to that big ole fat neck should make everyone happy! The skaven equivalent of the Nobel prize awaits!

Rat Ogre Rat

Giddy Up Rat Horsey!

This one has only just been started, I was rummaging around in my bits box & found this part of a centaur body, with a correctly sculpted rat torso you've got a pretty freaky figure. 

Rat Horse

So that is what I'm wasting my time with this week, whether the above models make it on to a battlefield this year is a priority, it is only 30 points, aside from the treeman of course. I still can't figure out where all my time goes!

The Warhammer World is Doomed, Doomed I Tells Yer!

I like Warhammer, a lot. More than a lot really. I think it's a good game with enough variety to keep me enthusiastic, even after 21 years of playing it in it's various forms. what I don't really like is the all pervading sense of doom that surrounds it. What I mean is there are far too many bad guys, beating up on the good. The Empire, the Brettonians, Wood Elves, High Elves, Dwarfs & Lizardmen make up the forces of Order, Chaos - Warriors, Beastmen & Daemons- Vampire Counts, Goblindom, Dark Elfery and Skaven are in the Blue Corner (Forces of Destruction), and finally the Don't Knows of the Warhammer world : Ogre Kingdoms and Tomb kings.

The Forces of Wimpery

On the face of it the sides seem fairly even Good Guys 6 armies, bad guys 7, sitting on the fence 2 races. If you look a bit closer then the numbers don't really add up.
The Empire is the biggest country, with a huge army lots of artillery and wizards aplenty so no big problem here, I'd probably give them an 8/10 for what they bring to the table.
Brettonian, again numerous people, archaic feudal system where the few elites go to war on horsies with a few slack jawed yokels with bows and trebuchets. No gunpowder, and a matriarchal magic system which gives me the creeps. In military might I'd give them a 7/10 at best.
Wood Elves are great, just as long as you can be bothered to traipse all the way to The Forest of Loren, where they are rock hard - the trees join in to kick your arse! Good magic if a bit hippyish with some great close combat & missile troops. Chances of them coming to the aid the Empire or indeed any other of the Forces of Order? Slim at best. So I give them a 4/10 for their general indifference to others.
While we're on the subject of indifference no other race seems to embody such a total lack of friendship maintaining qualities as the High Elves. A superior attitude and Chaos Incusions followed by a neverending war with the Dark Elves means they are barely a tenth of their original strength. Infertility and possible androgenous elves means they are supposed to be dying out. Coupled with the fact that none of the other Forces of Order particularly like them around makes the High elves the Billy No Mates of warhammer that gets them a 5/10.
Dwarfs are another dying race that have been kicked out of more strongholds than many races even started with makes me think of them as the eternally bullied. Good fighters, brave, disciplined with loads of magic items & artillery. How comes they can't hold on to their stuff? Losers mentality I reckon, rampant alcaholism & ugly dwarfettes means it is infinitely preferable to die in battle than to repopulate the ever decreasing Dwarfholds. 4/10.
Lizardmen. Socially awkward, doesn't play well with others, communicates badly & overeacts violently to uninvited visitors. Lizardmen armies are definitely on the autistic spectrum of Warhammer. Very powerful but 'all the way down there' makes me think they are not much use in a crisis. Equally like to attack allies as to sit in their temples rocking gently, simply put Lizardmen ain't a big help. 3/10.

The Forces of Evil

The Forces of Evil are far better served.
Warriors of Chaos, big burly blokes with huge numbers of troops, good fighters and Chaos Hounds, and that's only the tribesmen. When it come to hard as fuck troops that like to rip off heads and spit down necks, the 'proper Chaos Warriors' have that position nailed. 9/10
Chaos Beastmen are basically a circus with the emphasis on bloodshed. Brute strength and ignorance is their motto, and the amount of beastmen and minotaurs, one can surely say this army is Horny. With loads of beasts like the Great Hoofed Snargleflasher and the Plogspittle Beast, they are a force to be reckoned with. I'm giving them a 7/10.
Daemons of Chaos are everybody's worst nightmares, innumerable lesser Daemons, and of course many greater Daemons. They very nearly destroyed the world in Aenenions time and since then they have become even stronger! 10/10!
The Vampire Counts have megahard characters with cheap as chips rank and file that won't run. Causes fear and lots of killing blow/poisonous nasties make them another very potent force. tonight Matthew I'm giving them a 7/10.
Orcs & Goblins are supposedly countless too, and have on a few occasions very nearly toppled the Empire! Not the most team orientated army but pretty good nonetheless. 5/10.
Dark Elves, not very numerous, but generally a gnats eyelid from eradicating their not so evil cousins on a regular basis. Plus they have Witch Elves and they are just sooooo cute. 6/10
Skaven are again one of those' too hard to count' type armies, but I once read that from one pregnant rat inside a year 3000 can be born, plus the fact that statistically you are never more than 6 feet from a rat at anytime then it seems to me they are pretty omnipresent. Boasting some the most devilish warmachines going, mindbogglingly cheap troops and some of the best mages then Skaven are pretty hard to beat. Gift-give them 9/10 quick-quick!

The Forces Of Meh

Ogres can be bought like some tuppenny whore by the docks in Marienburg, yes they are big and tough but all they seem to be interested in is food so leave them be and they will probably eat themselves to death!   And Tomb Kings spend all day cruising round wearing speedos in their chariots so to be honest I don't even count them in this, who's who of Warhammer butchery. Also nearly rans are Dogs Of War and Chaos Dwarfs, Halflings (snigger) and Fimir (who?). Added together they could probably fight their way out of a bone dry cardboard box, but I'm not a 100% certain of that.

The point of me trashing so many of these armies from a not very well informed position is simply to say that by pure luck the Warhammer world is not just a smouldering pile of ash with a few daemonettes dry humping  vampire counts and Skavenslaves mucking out tonnes of Minotaur faeces from the University of Nuln. So what I really think is it's about time the balance was redressed! Bring on the Mermen! Death to the Forces of Evil if they go anywhere near the beach! RRRAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRGGGHHHHHHHH!!!!!