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 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 Engineer / 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 next turn your neighbour!"

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.

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 :-).

The upgraded Snitch - with warpstone flails :-).


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 Gutterrunner champion who must ahve been too close to the warpstone on a mission or two.

Add caption

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

Best regards,
Kasper

Old Skaven Madness - part 13 - ASB, 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:

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 :-)).

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.

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

and finally just for fun:

 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 :-).

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

Best regards,
Kasper

Old Skaven Madness - part 12 - 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 oldísh 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 some crime pictures of one mutated Skaven 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.

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 :-).

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 shoudl just buy a brand and get at it. Any suggestions?


Best regards,
Kasper

Old Skaven Madness - part 10 - Seer Bodyguard

Hello fellow rat-lovers! We better get some of the infantry done 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.

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. 

First the champion, standard bearer and musician:

Stormvermin Converted

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.

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 brought 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. 

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

Rat Ogre War Throne

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.

Best regards,
Kasper

Warmaster Battle Report

Greetings!

As much as I am enjoying revisiting my old Skaven models we should not forget that the main purpose of this blog is the wonderful game of Warmaster. And as we managed a quick game I thought I might present a selection of pictures from this entertaining little game.

We decided on an anarchic gametype where we had three sides of 1250 points that were all at war with each other. We have tried this before and it presents remarkably few problems while allowing for some serious murderous fighting :-).

There wont be a detailed report but I'll briefly write below each picture what was going on - especially on my flank where the most blood was shed (as bloody usual :-)).

Here the evil despot, the Grand Master of the Teutonian army, is clearly trying to terrify the young Ottoman Sultan by seeming as casual as possible while the Turkish horde keeps growing on the table.

The Ottoman Turks setup - using Carthagian troops (so thats not Hannibal but Suleiman the Magnificient :-)).

Army contained: 1x General, 1x Leader, 2x Shepharis and 1x Kapikula (Heavy Cavalry), 2x Janissaries, 2x Akincis, 5x Azabs, 6x Vassals, 1x Cannon and 1x Heavy Cannon (1250 and a break point of 10 (20 units).

Most flanks had some of the terribly bad infantry while the artillery was placed in the corner, Janissaries facing towards the river and the Heavy Cavalry held in reserve.

 The Teutonian forces - cleverly or cowardly (or perhaps a mixture of both) deployed far backwards to see what the opponents decided to do. Only the ArtilleryMaster seems eager to get into action. The rest is comprised of 1x Grand Master, 1x Magister, 3x Brother Knights, 2x Crusader Knights (five heavies ... auchie!) and 2x Light Horses, 2x Crossbowmen, 2x Spearmen (with pavisses).

The valiant and brave (Must add more adjectives later .-)) House of York, once again deployed in magnificent style - ready to defeat the evil opponents! (My army if you werent sure .-)).

1x King, 1x Leader, 3x MenAtArms Mounted, 4x Shire Longbowmen, with stakes, 4x Shire Bill, 6x Irish Warbands and 2x Peasants.

 After a couple of turns the Ottomans have entrenched themselves within the village and it's fields. The Yorkian Men-At-Arms move slowly foward to try and clear some of the useless Turkish infantry away...

 On the other flank the Shire defensive units have moved forward, but the Irish are still hanging back - drinking probably. The Infantry are not looking forward to receiving the charge of all the Heavy cavalry units in front of them - but for some reason the order to deploy stakes have yet to arrive...

 The Yorkian cavalry were unsuccessful and get caught by cheap infantry front and flank - but manage to sneak away - though heavily damaged. It does serve to open up the flank...

Teutonian indecision allows the Yorkian infantry to deploy stakes and to get Irish support from the nearby woods - ready to charge any horses that are thrown back by the impresssive defences...

 Ottoman and Yorkian Heavy Cavalry fighting. The Yorkians win by pure  numbers but here something weird happens as the Turks are pushed ff the field and thereby survives - very infuriating and the first time we have met the less than perfect rule of returning units from having been pushed of the board. We might need a houserule here :-).

 The Yorkian aggression is punished by the Turkish counter-charge, more or less crippling both sides cavalry units and leaving only stragglers surviving.

 More Nastyness...

 On the other flank a single Brotherhood Knight unit managed to charge (the central one was pushed back and lost a stand due to lucky longbowfire thereby making a combined charge almost impossible due to the sneaky Irish who had moved within 20cm but hidden behind the hill. What a sneak that Yorkian player must be! :-)). But it was thrown back and murdered by hundreds of angry infantrymen venting their fear on the expensive brotherhood knights.

 Chaotic cavalry fighting on the Yorkian/Turkish flank continues. Here the Yorkian have managed a charge in the flank of the newly rearrived Turks as well as some cheapo infantry mopping up.

 The survivors of the flank. The remaining Yorkian cavalry have decided that the huge Heavy Cannon is a more tempting target than another charge at the tough Kapikula. They, of course, utterly destroy the cannon.

 Last turn and the Teutonians massacre a lot of Yorkian Infantry but too little too late (although they quite enjoyed it, I am told. The Cavalry that is. The dead Infantry did certainly not enjoy it!)

Meanwhile on the other side of the battle the Teutonian Cavalry finally managed to break through the Turkish defences in the last turn. They have had a strong position, defending the river banks and throwing back the cavalry charges a few times. and managing confusion every other shooting phase. But finally the cavalry push them back and the Turkish line folds from both flanks as the Yorkians and Teutonians envelop the heathens.

A great game - a couple of anxious turns were we tried to decide what way to send our armies before it turned into mainly a cavalry battle as they were the only units to make it through the defensive gaps etc.

The final results were as follows:
Teutonian losses: 1xBrotherknights and ½ a unit of Light Horses: 180 (Bloody coward won!).
Yorkian Losses: 2½ Irish, 1Longbow, 1½ Bill and 2 MenAtArms: 475p.
Ottoman Turks Losses: 1 Kapikula, 2x Shepharis, 2xAkincis, 4Vassals, 3Azabs: 665 (and BROKEN!)

And even though the Ottomans have since tried to disprove the fact that they once again fled the field, they indeed did so - because even Skirmishers count towards break point - when they have an armour save (and Akincis save on a 6+.....).

Anyways - a bloody fun and, well, bloody game :-). It is a brilliant ruleset and with some comrades it always ensures a pleasant evening.

Hope you enjoyed the pictures,
Best regards,
Kasper