Ratmen Team

So I originally planned to print all these support Rats as an addition to my team – forgetting of course that my team are *proper* metal (the one true material) minis in the original scale. The stl files are of course scaled to the newer “heroic” shite!

But of course at this stage I’d printed out all 19 minis. So I either go and scale them back down or I print a new team in 32mm … or … I could do both! ???

So I have this friend. One of my best friends. I mention him in the description of this project- well hes gone from snotling to Black Ork in no time and is now a l33t BB coach. And hes been talking to me about the new BB2 rules … so I decided this weekend was perfect to finish off this little project and team and have it ready to play- I’ve only a couple of models to paint- no worries!
Then … I realised I somehow bought a 3d printer for my birthday earlier this month and my friend was like – “awesome! Can we print BB teams on it?” I was like yeah sure- if I can find the STLs (not really thinking about looking for them). But then I did!

There’s not that many out there but I just happened to come across this guy https://www.patreon.com/pungaminiatures/posts

The January release was 19 support minis for a rat team! Wait a minute – *I* play rats!! I just had to get them and add them to the roster!

So the printer got fired up and I picked 6 of these to put down on the plate! Plug in your settings and hope it doesn’t fail!

And there you have it. That’s 6 more minis I have to paint before this project is complete! And the armoured Rat Ogre is currently in the printer!

I hate you Josh! ??

3 out of the 4 Gutter Runners done. The reason the 4th one isn’t there is I missed it out of the box when I was doing the preshading and couldn’t be bothered getting the airbrush out again.

Same colours and techniques as the Linerats – but with the black cloak I tried using Vallejo Model Air black as the basecoat – hoping the thinner paint would allow the preshading to do its work – but it just left visible brush strokes so needed another coat anyway and normal highlighting.

For the inside of the cloak I went with a darker green – Angel Green from AP as I didn’t want it all black but wanted a contrast from the Sick Green too.

Thanks to encouragement on the forums and project I fired through the Linerats last night and got them all finished. (To ‘tabletop standard’ at least!)

I mixed up some of the highlighting colours on the skin to provide a bit of variety. Some of them were a bit light and the contrast was too much cause I was too lazy to build up the layers – so to tone it down a bit I just gave them another flesh wash to blend it a little better. A couple I also gave Vallejo Cold Grey fur with a Dark Tone wash and a drybrush.

My test piece I gave a black nose, but looking at photos of rats, they tend to have pink noses. I’ll just say he has a genetic mutation. Some of the models have furry tails and others have more realistic segmented tails. On those I gave them a couple of coats AP red wash to give them a pinkish tail.

I wish I’d picked up a couple of extra line rats from the Kickstarter cause if Nuffle has anything to say about it, a lot of these guys will soon be playing in the great stadium in the sky – and they don’t seem to sell individual Linerats on their website. I might write to them to see if it’s possible to pick up a couple. I can always use the Kicker model as a proxy as they’re not in the modern game anyway.

The positionals are mostly base coated so hopefully finish those up tonight before moving on to the miscellaneous pieces.

Painted up one of the Linerats first to make sure I was happy with the colour scheme. Decided to go with a Green and Gold pattern in honour of my late girlfriend who was South African – might have to call the team the SpringRats!

For the Green I went with Sick Green (Vallejo Game Colour), Gold was Army Painter Greedy Gold. I gave the fur a wash of AP Strong Tone and the flesh in AP Flesh tone to try and get a subtle difference between the two. Strong tone over the gold areas too and AP Green wash over the green.

The fur I gave a drybrush with the original fur mix lightened with a little AP Skeleton Bone. The flesh I did similar but painted on the highlights and made it a little lighter. Gold highlighted with VGC Greedy gold and the Green with the Sick Green lightened with a little white. Teeth and claws in Skelly Bone and then washed in strong tone again.

Finally based up and I’m fairly happy with the result so far.

So first off I was really pleased with this Kickstarter. I got the Deluxe edition, which came with 6 Linerats, 2 Blitzers, 4 Gutter Runners, 2 Catchers, 1 Rat Ogre plus a bunch if Kickstarter extras like a coach, mascot, Bloodwiser Babe and more.

It also has a double sided pitch and dugouts for Skaven or Chaos, custom dice, reroll markers, score tracker and nice little small reference card. Plus the box has a custom foam cutout to store all the minis.

So first step I had already built and primed them some time ago. Next I decided to try and do the whole preshading thing through the airbrush.

Those that were mostly fur I then gave an airbrush coat with about a 50/50 mix of German Red Brown and Mud Brown from Vallejo Model Air

I don’t think I’ve quite got the hang of the whole preshading thing yet. After the basecoat I don’t notice much difference – I’m maybe going to heavy. I went with 2 coats of the brown – maybe I should be going with slightly thinner coats?