Could It Be.. The End? Hairy Japanese Bastards pt. 5,23,658

His brush quivered in exhausted fingers that functioned on little more than adrenaline. The final wash. The final drybrush. The final details and basing. After countless hours, the endless had ended. The numberless hordes of miniatures were painted.

He felt a strange lightness- trepidation almost. For what, now, was his purpose?

He paused, trying to remember a life before this. Visions of sunlit uplands and glorious blue skies fuzzed into an imagination too long neglected, sacrificed to the demands of such a project.

As abruptly as it came, the fear left him.

You are free

“I am free” he whispered, not daring to believe it.

“I am free” he whispered again.

“I am free” he said, more confident now.

He drew a deep breath and threw his face to the heavens.

“I AM FR-“

And with that final roar, his heart beat its’ last.

Yes, it’s happened- these are THE LAST RATMEN! Finishing a project begun in something like the 4th century BC, this is a good feeling – four boxes of Miniknight Ratmen (available here, from the looks of it) bought with the intention of creating a proper old-school Warhammer Fantasy Battle Skaven army.. just a bit smaller. These fellas clock in at 1/72 or 20mm, so about 4/5 the size of a GW miniature… but a lot less than 4/5 of the price. This whole horde came in at under £40.

Anyway, this last tranche had been waiting in the “to do” pile for some considerable length of time as I wasn’t entirely sure what to do with them. I knew I wanted to include as many of the bonkers Clan Skyre special weapons as I possibly could, and thankfully the Age Of Sigmar reboot hadn’t changed them much, so I modelled a pair of each of the Warplock Jezzail, Ratling Gun, Warpfire Thrower and Warp-Grinder Drill teams. Now you’ve already seen the first three, but I got started on the Warp Grinder operators…

..and was just about to pat myself on the back and have a VERY large glass of wine to celebrate finishing the behemoth of a project, when a cursory rummage revealed these two f*ckers that had been hiding!

NOOO! They’re BREEDING!!!!!!

Made worse by the fact that I’d run out of grey and white primer, so these little fellas got a spray of black, followed by a basecoat of bone craft paint… this actually worked surprisingly well, so I’m a little turned around on black primer! I then basecoated tan, washed the models with Vallejo Smokey Ink (talent in a bottle) and drybrushed back up with the original bone. After that, I blocked in the flesh tones and details. Vallejo skin wash brought everything to life and the craft acrylic I used for the red was already pretty translucent so responded to the underpainting pretty well. I wonder if I’ve perhaps stumbled on to a secret formula for cheap Contrast paints here! Anyway, here are the results:

I didn’t actually convert these guys (as my will to live had largely checked out) but painting the blades yellow, washing in green, and highlighting yellow seems to give a nice warpstone effect.

We’ll be using these for Sigmar, old style WHFB, Age Of Fantasy:Regiments, and as the Virum Nascii for Hyperian Wars – and these lads have been smacking DOWN in our HW mini campaign last summer!

Right, if you’ve made it this far congratulations on reading a post about how I painted TWO tiny model soldiers X-) and here’s a group shot of Lord Ratticus’ mighty horde:

Of course, no wargaming/ modelling project is ever truly done… I’d like to add flags and battle standards to these guys, as well as my planned DIY Doomwheel, Plague Catapult etc, but for now I’m drawing a line under these guys and calling it done B-) Of course, in the event I have to self-isolate, I’ll at least have something to do!

Till next time, stay tuned and thrifty! (and try not to cough on each other…)