Old Skaven Madness - part 23 - Gutter Runners

Hello all,
as the weekend disappears so do the Eshins performing their evil deeds...

Wasn't that an artistic introdution? Let's just see a two more of my old nightcrawlers and a group shot:

The one with a club and net has always been a favorite of mine - looks more likely to maul someone in a backstreet than to sneak around. Even the eyepatch is cool :-)

Brilliant models.

Best regaards,
Kasper

Old Skaven Madness - part 22 - Gutter Runners

Hello all - there is plenty of Skaven images to get through, so to speak.

This time it is time for those deadly ninjas of Clan Eshin. I alwys loved how the authors got ninjas into the warhammerian and Skaven lore - a lost clan, heads east and becomes ninjas; simpel and effective :-).

The old models (the ones below) were really diverse and each felt "alive", i.e. had equipment and a style that set him apart from other vermin. I really enjoyed that. Also they do not look like organised soldiers at all, the ninja "warfare" style is really predominant.

 I love how individual these two are (even though it clearly is the same model used as a base). The barbed net is brilliant and so is the sling - although that is a pretty massive slingshotstone :-). What was the rule for nets? Extra armour save or something?

Anyways, all the best,
Kasper

Old Skaven Madness - part 21a - Skaven Slaves

Hello all,
More skavens uploaded today: A Skaven slave command group:

Here is a shot of a champion and standard bearer from one of the slave units. BTW I would love if someone could tell me what the new rules are about these slaves - I keep hearing something about them blowing up?

Thats it for today - its -10 degrees (plus a strong wind) and snowing here in Nuuk, Greenland, and I´ve decided to climb a mountain tomorrow! Wish me luck!
Best regards,
Kasper

Old Skaven Madness - part 21 - Grey Seer (Thanqoul)

Hello all - more Skavens!

This time it is "only" Grey Seer Lord Snik-Snak, the religious and factual leader of my old Skaven Clan Ressak. 

Although he is pigmentally-challenged he is a Grey Seer (as he will tell you in a very, very violent way). He suffered the change in skin after a failed ritual and was thrown out of the "guild" due to his lack of Greyness. As a result he has become even more of a religious maniac and has more or less taken over the entire clan as his own, leading it in a very fanatical way.

 
 I've always¨loved this model (I think it is an old Grey Seer - but very aggressive in its stance) but wanted one with additional handweapons, often a magic sword or similar, and had to do a few hand swaps.
EDIT: The cold must have gotten to my brain - this is, of course, the old Thanquol model (cool special character and brilliant rules).

 At the time I quite liked the horns (tyranidoid origin if I remember correctly) but today I would judge them as just a wee bit too large :-).

All the best,
Kasper

Old Skaven Madness - part 20 - Clanrats (former Bloodbowl minis)

Hello all - the last Skaven who was forced into serving the army instead of pursuing his lifelong (yet very short) dreams of becoming an All-Star in the Blood Bowl world.
And if I may say so myself - he is a pretty impressive little rat - I wouldn't mess with him!

 
He looks ready to pound on anything that survives that heavy rifle of his.
 I really can't remember where that handgun is from - perhaps one of the Gorka-Morka models?

And finally a group shot of the former BB "Team Ressak" which instead of trampling on skulls in the arena now gets to wreck havoc on whole armies at a time :-).

"Say Cheese!"

Best regards,
Kasper.

Old Skaven Madness - part 19 - Clanrats (former Bloodbowl minis)

Hello all - for very weird and unmentionable reasons I happen to be in Greenland for a couple of weeks, so these Skaven pictures are sent to you curtesy of the Greenlandic University´s network :-).

Continuing the theme from the last post of examples of how I converted some of the excellent Blood Bowl Skaven into rank and file clanrats. These three rats are more of a martial art character than the former, needing no weapons to bash in the brains of any opponents. 

I think the logic is that if you, as a Skaven, manage to survive on the Bloodbowl pitch then a mere battle offers little danger :-).

 They arnt really converted but the rat on the left has been modified somewhat and is now delivering a vicious kung-fu kick to the groin of any cowardly elf who comes within range.

Again, these are nice minis that spices up any boring clanrat unit :-)


Best regards,
Kasper

Old Skaven Madness - part 18 - Clanrats (former Bloodbowl minis)

Hello all,
Continuing the theme of converted Blood Bowl minis into rank and file soldiers for use in a Skaven army, I found these in my collection:

 All were originally Blood Bowl minis but have received additional weapons, apart from the brilliant claw model on the right. 

The left one is dual wielding a pair of Chaos Warrior axes while the other has received a bow from an orc and a fine headpiece marking him as a dependable archer (at least according to Skaven standards...). I think it is from a very old Dark elf (if I remember correctly, it was one of the crew of a RBT).

 
Cool minis that gave some diversity to a clanrat unit :-).


Best regards,
Kasper

Old Skaven Madness - part 17 - Skaven Master Gunner

Hello all,
More skaven? Yes!

 One of my favourite conversions because it is just a simple hand-swap but looks pretty vicious. 

The old but brilliant BloodBowl Skaven stole one of the infamous Dark Eldars weapons and is now a threat to be reckoned with. The Eldar carrying the weapon was free on the cover of an old White Dwarf and the weapon was ideal for use with Skavens.

I think he saw service with my Gutter runners (which included a fair amount of Blood Bowl Skavens converted to serve in the clans frequent wars), perhaps this is a modern version of the poisoned sling shot :-).

Simple but effective, and the weapon does have something Skaveny about it :-)


Best regards,
Kasper

Old Skaven Madness - part 16 - Skaven Sorcerer

Hello all,

Another Skaven character worked his way up from the basement and demanded being shown on the blog.

This time it is a warlock engineer with his trusted warplock rifle. Having little or no long range shooting as a Skaven army, I loved the option of giving characters these guns. It might just pick of an enemy model or two (wardancers or other troublesome skirmishers) and thereby paying for itself, but it also gave me something to do in the early shooting phases.

The model itself is the old "Skaven sorcerer with warplock pistol" from late 1988 or 1989. The barrel has been extended slightly (inexpertly) to produce a rifle instead of pistol but otherwise it is a brilliant model from the early waves of Skaven. That wave really defined the Skaven for me and still ooze of character, more than the modern models do in my opinion.

 "I'll Kill-Kill you now and all your friends-friends!"

Best regards,
Kasper

Old Skaven Madness - part 15 - Deathmaster Snitch

Hello all,

A few pictures of another of my old Skaven miniatures - this time its the Deathmaster! Not only the best name ever in the Warhammer world, it is also one of the best Skaven models ever made.

He just incorporates the entire race and the evil assassin twist is always nice.

The upgraded Snitch - with warpstone flails :-).

For some reason this version of the model (I think I have three of these models) has been modified a bit. He served as a Gutterrunner champion or similar and if I remember correctly he had an option for flails - or else I just enjoyed flails at the time :-).

Best regards,
Kasper

Old Skaven Madness - part 14 - Gutterrunner champion

Hello all,
Is there anything on the other side of the number 13? I guess there must be so another picture coming up of my old Skaven models.

This time it is part of the Clan Eshin wave; a Gutter Runner champion who must have gotten too close to the warpstone on a mission or two.

Six clawed arms - must be vicious in a hand-to-hand combat!

Best regards,
Kasper

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