SkavenTide and Beyond
Recommendations: 43
About the Project
Got the SkavenTide box. Love the Skaven minis. Started to build and paint them and wanted to share
Related Game: Warhammer Age of Sigmar
Related Company: Games Workshop
Related Genre: Fantasy
This Project is Active
The clan rats - First steps
Copied a flag from some Gnawhole terrain I scratch built.
There are standard bearers and musicians in the set. They provide some buff in game too so I will be fielding those all the time.
I liked picking a rat at the feet of the flagratman to paint white. Just so he stands out against the basing.
I think they will all get a splash of gore somewhere to show they're in the thick of it. Not necessarily weapons caked in blood, but certainly splatter from the fighting around them.
Thought I would start with the fun stuff. The flags and drummers. Then maybe after that need to speed up with some batch painting of the clan rats
Lloyd shot 
These minis have plenty of detail, which slows you up a touch, but the brown primer is great as a grimey base. If you miss a bit it's rust, mud or some other grime.
I will probably have one unit with more purple in and one with more red in to help me define the 20 rat squads.Already beyond the box
I won a £10 voucher on a Chaos Cards competition and wanted to collect some of the new releases. The Doom-Flayers being a favourite on looks alone.
I got some Gamers Grass beige grasses so added a clump of that.
The whole mini was primed in Leadbelcher and covered the gold / brass areas in a brown contrast (Agross Dunes?). I then drybrushed it with retributer armour gold. The verdigris and blood spatter help make it look a bit more grim and threatening.
The progress was pretty swift on the second one. The Contrast Dunes brown was a nice starting point for the wheel, then the dry brush of gold and silver and the Typhus Corrosion brown and verdigris all worked out well.
Didn't go as heavy on the blood this time, but happy with the look.
Jezzails
These were fun to paint. It took me longer than I hoped to get them how I wanted them. Though I realised that this should take longer on reflection. Each base is two miniatures not one and the posing gives you some hard to reach spots.
I enjoyed painting this more orange outfit from a bright contrast orange up to almost yellow in some highlights. I don't see the need for complete uniformity in a ratman fantasy army. Not sure that their seamstress skills and military outfitters industry would be a paramount Skaven concern.
I like a GW burgundy I picked up and a lovely purple. I will definitely keep this theme going.
The harlequin colours on the pavise carrier amuse me and are an interesting contrast the plain robes of the marksman.
These are lovely models and apparently very effective in game, so I might get some more.
Hoping they do me good service in the game. They've been fun to paint and experiment with.Ratling Warpblaster
I built and primed this model in two halves. The top half sprayed silver and the bottom half Lazer cut brown spray. I somehow got confused during construction of the bottom half with the 4 clan rats pushing the gun along. I forced a part into a poor position and broke part of the front wheel. I made a bodge fix and it looks ok.
I could've potentially added another sub assembly stage to make painting easier, but having the top half available to turn upside down gave me the access I needed to avoid some problems. I wasn't troubled with missing parts of the gunner's clothes and gears and hard to get machinery.
I am keeping a theme of yellow purple and red as my go to colours for clothing, though I don't think that meets the "hereldry" of any of the known clans from the Skaven background.
The basing theme of a mix of grey urban flock and brown flock looks interesting enough. The occasional tuft and sprue brick / masonry work is also going to be a recurring theme. Some of the lovely detailed bases that come with some hero models suggest fighting through ruins so I try to keep that going through the rest of my force.Kitbashing already
I did an engineer kitbash from a Jezzail half body. The sprue gave you the ability to create 3 full bodies and the variety of 4 right hand sides of the body. Bits: Northstar gnoll left arm, Mechanicum left leg, piece of gun barrel as the gun handle, cheese wedge of sprue, Northstar wizard sprue mouse, shortened the barrel of the gun and Greenstuff to fill the left hand side of the body. The basing is from the SkavenTide terrain sprue.
I painted up the mini and was really happy with the outcome.
I had taken the advice of the Age of Sigmar Skaven Players Facebook page on how best to use the extra half of a body and they suggested the Engineer. I looked at the engineer in the SkavenTide box and saw that they had a pet rat, so I leant into that hence the silliness of the cheese wedge and the Frostgrave Wizard sprue mouse.
Jezzails usually have a Pavise type shield held by a clan rat that acts as a musket rest as well. I had hoped that shortening the barrel and suggesting some how that his enhancements and knowledge of warp stone engineering gave him super strength. But as I hadn't improved the muscle look on his right arm or hinted at it in any other way it did look jarring.
On the good advice of Callum Davies (from the forementioned Facebook page), I finished off my engineer with a gun rest. Clever engineer fashioned the rest out of a 40k mechanicum component and a Dark Age Roman sword that pivots, tilts and grips fast over all terrains for well aimed shots.
The final mini has turned out to be one of my favourite kitbashs. Amongst all the Grimdark to come in parts of this force I think this bit of fun will be a welcome lighteners.Rat Orges
Started with the big fellas. I had never painted Skaven before. Wasn't sure how much should be skin and how much fur. 
Had fun with some free hand and gore
I realises that for WYSIWYG I should have armed one with a hand that looks like a cannon. Might buy another set because they're meant to be good in game and these were fun to build and paint.
