Old Skaven Madness - part 13 - Standard, Chieftain, and lucky charms...

Hello all - holy thirteen! What Skaven to show on this most august number?
I think I'll present another Army Standard Bearer - this time with a banner:

Army Standard Bearer

The clan name (Ressak) was the main clan I fielded in battle and have served me well. I think the Standard bearer is the old Maurauder one with an additional very heavy axe from the Chaos Warrior set - looks like he could take care of himself (which a Skaven ASB never could :-)).

Army Standard Bearer

A pretty sweet banner if you ask me :-). The head is an old dinosaur head from a competing wargame that never really took of but made some vicious dinosaur-like mounts for Orcs - I'll show some of them later. The central part of the standard itself is from the old Chaos Dwarf Tenderizer, I think. Edit: Nope it is the old "bow" from the Orc ballista or whatever it is called.

Army Standard Bearer

Might as well show the Chiefftain standing next to the ASB (weighing the base down).

Skaven Chieftain

 
He is one of the old models and still a favourite of mine (my general is also based on this model) - there is just something commanding about the model that I have always liked.

Skaven Chieftain

 and finally just for fun:

Skaven Archers?

 These little buggers (half old goblin archers and Skaven heads) used to be my lucky charms - guarding my dice and being useful for remembering stuff. They might be a little bit wacky :-).

Skaven Archers?

Anyways - hope you guys are enjoying these models (a few comments would be nice :-) ).

Best regards,
Kasper

Old Skaven Madness - part 12a - Army Standard Bearer

Hello all.

Just a quick look at another Skaven from my collection. This time it is the (almost) finished conversion that was meant to be my army standard bearer. Apart from the standard itself he is done, and looks pretty vicious ;-).

The bits? A lot :-). The lower body is one of the old Maurauder Stormvermin standard bearers, the upper is an old Chaos Warrior while the tail is from the horrish gargoyles (I think).

Best regards,
Kasper

Old Skaven Madness - part 12 - Mutated Grey Seer

Hello all,
What rats should we view today?
How about a heavily mutated Skaven Grey Seer? He probably took one too many warpstoone token and got a bit more mutation than he hoped for.

 
He does seem to function and his scary appearance should help keep those pesky skavenslaves in line.

The bits are the old head of the a beast of Nurgle - I love the bizarre cross between a snail and an octopus and how it reflects the creation of the demons as mirrored by the old fantastic tables of mutation and animal types in the Realm of Chaos books.

Best regards,
Kasper

Old Skaven Madness - part 11 - Rat swarms

Hello all - more Skaven pictures!
Today I present some of my old ratswarms. I do not know how they are in the current edition but when I played it was unthinkable to not include at least a couple of these in any army.

Skaven Converted Rat Swarms

The models are mainly Games Workshop but the big rats are from some other company which I have forgotten the name of. The snotling does look like he is having fun and a great hammer it carries as well :-).

Skaven Converted Rat Swarms

I really should take a day off and base all these rats - it would make them look much greater. That was one of the continous frustrations of my Warhammer days - I never could find a basing method that I liked. But today, with all the flock available on the internet I should just buy a brand and get at it. Any suggestions?


Best regards,
Kasper

Old Skaven Madness - part 10 - Grey Seer Bodyguard (Stormvermin)

Hello fellow rat-lovers!
We better get some pictures of the Skaven infantry units up as well - there are a lot of them.

The models below are made up of some of the plastic sets that came out just as I stopped playing but the flexibility they offered was just amazing. They made all the conversions I had been doing easy and I loved it.  Especially after the plastic sets that I "grew up" with wherein the clanrats were as bland and boring as could be and the shape made conversions difficult. 

They might look a bit more like apes in their bodyform but I was in love with them anyways and the ease of building crazy stuff was amazing to me.

First the champion, standard bearer and musician:

Stormvermin Command Group

Stormvermin Command Group

This is a unit of Temple Guards - the bodyguard of my Grey Seer. I can't remember if it was mentioned in the Skaven background or if I made it up, but my Seer had his own bodyguard made up of light coloured (as opposed to the overpriced Stormvermin - the bodyguard of the clan lord) tough battleproven Skaven. Well as much as you could expect of skavens :-). To represent their superior fighting skills I madly combined them with the Chaos Warrior plastic set and had a load of fun with that.

Stormvermin Converted

 And the final shots of the entire unit - sporting all their captured equipment. This is about half the unit and when pushing the bell around they looked impressive - really representing the elite bodyguard who had been in a lot of fights.

Stormvermin Converted

Stormvermin Converted

All the best,
Kasper

Old Skaven Madness - part 9 - Skaven Knight

Hello all - we must have more Skaven madness!
So todays old Skaven is a knight chieftain - who seems to have stolen the armour of a poor Brettonian knight. There used to plenty of options for mounting chieftains on monsters (which was not such a great idea) and I have made several mounted heroes but this guy always brings a smile to my face - he just looks so pleased about himself.

I´ll have to paint one of my old monsters for him to fit onto. 

He deserves it, having waited so paitiently in that awkward position :-)

Best regards,
Kasper

Old Skaven Madness - part 8 - Rat Ogre Warthrone

Hello all,

Returning to the ever devious vermen I give you: The ratogre war-throne.

Rat Ogre War Throne

Even though this was before all the nice updates available in this edition of Skaven, I always felt that my general could use a little something extra. He always looked a bit wimpy compared to the vampire and chaos lords he encountered.
So I made him this war-throne to stand upon and yell at his hordes (preferable from behind the lines).

Rat Ogre War Throne

The parts seems to be (apart from dusty...) the backrest from a doomwheel, a very old dragon head (with green stuff one horn broken off) as well as a few bits and pieces.
Still looks good and when I manage to find the old general I'll let him ascend and grab a few pictures.

Rat Ogre War Throne

Best regards,
Kasper

Old Skaven Madness - part 7b - Globadiers

Hello all,
Just to finish with the Skaven Globadiers here is a more massive globadier rat - seems to haven been a collaboration between Clan Skryre and Clan Moulder that created this monster. Perhaps in an effort to throw the bloody globe further?

Converted Skaven Globadier

The Giant Rat (which I have no idea where stems from) is in my mind one of the best Giant Rats ever made. Looks bloody vicious!

Converted Skaven Globadier

Best regards,
Kasper

Old Skaven Madness - part 7 - Globadiers

Hello all - I thought I might as well finish the Skaven Globadiers by showing the last few of them.

Converted Skaven Globardier

These are all models from the 1989 line of Skaven - where they had unfortunately stopped giving the rats individual names:  So these are simply named as an Clan Skryre Globadier (the left one, who looks like a Plague Monk - whom I have supplied with a new hairdo), and another Clan Skryre Globadier which to my mind looks a lot more sinister than the modern one, and lastly a Grey Seer model from the same year. The Grey Seer seems to have turned a wee bit green - must be all the warpstone...


All the best,
Kasper

Old Skaven Madness - part 6 - Skaven Sorceror (Soerik)

Hello all - more skavenatious pictures today. I think I will show my Skaven sorceror - apparently he got trained by some Dark Elves instead of the normal vermin road to magic. Thats why he dresses a bit funny, compared to your normal, everyday contraption-wielding engineer.

Skaven Sorceror (Soerik)

 Pretty cool little rat :-).

Skaven Sorceror (Soerik)

Again - if anyone knows what company produced this I would love a link or other information.

EDIT: Thanks to Dreadaxe I've found out that he is a "Zahranian Ver'men Shadow Mage" and is named Soerik by the company selling him (Black Tree Design). Still a cool little guy.

Best regards,
Kasper

Old Skaven Madness - part 5 - Globadiers

Hello all,

More Skaven today! This post presents two quite converted Globadiers (of the modern type - these are still the current models, right?). Or perhaps psycho-robot-rats would be more a appropriate title :-).

Converted Skaven Globadiers

I never really got Globadiers to work but almost always fielded a few just for laughs and as they were cheap it added an additional dimension to the games (and even more friendly fire :-)). These two guys were subsequently used as blitzers in a Bloodbowl tournament, hence the numbers.

Converted Skaven Globadiers

As for parts - I havn't the faintest idea, but they look like I sprayed them with superglue and dipped them in my bitsbox before painting them. I think I can spot a few very old Space Marine shoulder pads  and a powerglove from the old plastic SM set, some gargoyle parts and a chainsaw from an orc - and of course a lot of spiky bits :-). The thing on the arm - I have no idea!

I think they turned out allright..

Anyways, stay tuned for more Skaven (I still got about 3000 points of painted Skaven to present .-)).
Best regards,
Kasper

Old Skaven Madness - part 4 - Rat-taur Warp Fire Thrower

Hello all - a detour from the Plague Monks seems to be in order.
Instead I present one of my old and heavily converted Warp Fire Throwers.

Converted Skaven Warp Fire Thrower

 
This is a conversion of an old dwarf bull centaur (if I remember correctly it was the one pushing the Tenderizer) and the top part of the skaven with the gun part. Both parts are pretty old, I guess. The tank was from the back of the unlucky skaven slave who got to carry the warpfire while the tube is simply some wire.

Converted Skaven Warp Fire Thrower

Warpfirethrowers was by far my favourite part of the Skaven army (and yes - this was way before Ratling guns etc) and even though they would always blow up - and everything else within a wide diameter - they would also crisp the opponents favourite troops. Great fun :-).

Best regards,
Kasper

Old Skaven Madness - part 3 - Plague Monks

Hello all - today we continue with a few of the old rank and file Plague Monks. This was always one of my favourite units but the paintjob always caused me problems. These have been painted the traditional green, a deep purple and other "uniforms" while I tried to decide what colour they should. Eventually they ended up being black with a yellow line (to represent how often they let me down :-)). In my opinion this looked both visually nice and threatening. Their swords are bone coloured (perhaps a bit too bright) but it worked well with the dark colours and was part of the background fluff for my clan of Skavens. I really hope I can find this fluff somewhere...

Edit: I found a pdf of the spring catalogue from 1986 when the cental plaguemonk was first sold as part of the very first Skaven wave of models. Apparently he was called "Spyne Blightmaster" - thats a pretty cool name :-). Sculpted by Jes Goodwin - best Skaven sculpter ever.

Plague Monks

 Some of these are quite old plague monks while some were the current ones when I stopped bying the ever tempting GW-models. Three of these are from a different miniature company that I simply can not remember the name of - perhaps it was a French company? If you do know this then please let me know!

Plague Monks

If I remember these were usually fielded in a big block of 30 PM with 15 (max) plague censor bearers in front. I loved watching them rip apart expensive stuff - especially my friends high elven cavalry :-).

Plague Monks

All the best,
Kasper

Old Skaven Madness - part 2 - Plague Priest

Hello all!
Continuing down memory lane with a revisit to my old Skaven - Clan Ressak.
Today's vermin is my plague priest - I used to love these characters as they were the only ones that could actualy fight and kill something...

Plague Priest

Im really not sure what parts were used, but I think I can identify a Grey seer (maybe the one from the Screaming Bell?), Lord Skrolks staff and the gun hand from a Doomwheel driver. He is sporting the last uniform version that my "Monks of Madness" (my main Plague monk unit) were painted in and the yellow was hell to paint on top of the black but looked pretty good with thrity of them lined up.

Plague Priest

Check back as we continue with more Plague Monks before deciding what else to show :-).
Best regards,
Kasper

Old Skaven Madness - part 1 - Plague Monk Banner

Hello all!

Skaven!?! I hear you utter in surprise and ridicule, but yes: Skaven!

Twenty or twenty five years ago I began playing Warhammer and did so seriously for at least 15 years (e.g. a ton of competitions and at least a game every fourteen day). After this period I still enjoyed painting and converting these 28mm figures. 

The result is a Skaven army that includes ancient models, an absurd amount of conversion and about a million manhours :-). But unfortunately also a Skaven army (about 7000points) that I have not really seen in ten years due to my dislike of the last couple of Warhammer editions ("Herohammer").

This complete lack of interest (or rather feeling a great sadness every time I saw their containers in the basement) has somewhat disappeared due to the new edition of Warhammer that stresses the type of armies I enjoyed (huge blocks) and the new Skaven models. But no, I probably wont be playing any Warhammer games but I decided to take out the old rats and take a few pictures of them - which resulted in a nice afternoon of reliving old days :-).

I´ll start out with the banner bearer and champion from one of the Plague monk units as the banner really sums up my skaven army :-).

The Banner bearer is the old plague monk banner bearer, while the champion is a combination of a jezzail champion and a globadier hand, and a couple of horns to finish him off. The banner proudly presents a minotaur head - probably one that they have recently killed. There used to be some more stuff on top of the head but that seems to have fallen off.

Plague Monk Banner

 

 

 

 

Plague Monk Banner

I hope you´ll come back and see more of these Skaven as I share them over the next weeks.
Best regards,
Kasper