A Bit Ratty

I've been chipping away as my 30 year old collection of Skaven that were originally intended to for the beginnings of an army for Warhammer Fantasy Battles. This plan never got off the ground as I could field barely three units.

Now focusing them towards Age of Sigmar (possibly due to lower model count) I've reached the last bunch of the original collection and have added another 10 Clanrats to the 30 already painted.

I've needed to get the number of Clanrats painted to get the required models to field two units of 20 and provide a decent chunk of battleline units to my force.

As ever, I have mostly focused on the plastic Skaven from Advanced Heroquest (released in 1989) which do show their age but actually hold up better than many other miniatures of their venerable age.

Painting, as explained in previous posts, has been mainly done with contrast paints to speed things up. Even then I've had to break these 40 into 4 blocks over about a year.

I've never been a fan of batch painting, I think it's because I get bored of the repetitive nature of it. I suspect this is the main reason that I didn't do more painting in my youth.

Obviously, being the last batch, there were a few missing and broken parts involved. As such couple of weapon swaps and variant shield have found their way into the unit.

Additionally, there was more cleaning up to do on these models that had not had mould lines addressed and had probably been twisted of their sprues rather than clipped.

Also, the unit includes these two chaps from the event older Fantasy Regiments box (1987) which included 60 monopose miniatures;10 each of Skaven, Dwarfs, Elves, Orcs, Goblins and Dark Elves. 

The miniatures actually hold up okay and the box actually came with alternate heads for each sculpt allowing for a little bit of variety on the tabletop.

My Age of Sigmar Skaven army currently consists of:

• 1 Grey Seer
• 1 Master Moulder
• 3 Rat Ogres 
• 40 Clanrats (2 units)
• 1 Endless Spell

I still have the wherewithal to add a couple more units and Endless Spells to the army and potentially get it up to 1000 points.

However, I'm glad I'm done with the Clanrats. Younger me was probably right to not start in turning this into a Warhammer Fantasy Battles army, as I would definitely have run out of steam.

Acquired: -95
Painted: 160
Lead Mountain: 394