...And Another.

My second Black Skaven is now finished.  I gave this one a naginata, which will simply count as a spear in Mordheim.  As with the other Black Skaven, I decided to make his cowl green to give a bit of color to my black-clad Eshins, as well as to give something to differentiate them from my Adept and Night Runners (which I have yet to make).  Green is also the color of my Skaven army, so if I ever manage to actually finish it, this will help to tie my Gutter Runners into the rest of the army.

 

The base for this model was the Festering Skaven from Spiteclaw's Swarm.  This one has the most dramatic pose by far, so I really wanted to make use of him (and I'm tempted to think of a way to use him again).  I like that they actually modeled another character using tail-fighting skills, but I thought that the dagger as well as the end of his tail were a bit thin and flimsy looking, especially in contrast to Snikch's tail, which looks thick and muscular and is wrapped around his blade several times.  By comparison, the Festering Skaven's blade looks like it's tied to a thin piece of string and floating gently in the air.  So as much as I like the idea of a tail weapon, I decided to remove it from this model.  Maybe I'll try to make my own later.

Like my Assassin Adept, I used a Myrmourn Banshee to make his long, tattered cape.  Since his arm is sweeping out to the side with his naginata, I wanted his cape to look like it had been tossed across to his other shoulder, hence using the smaller, thicker banshee bit.

As usual, I tried to add some Mordheim imagery to the model, such as keys...

...and skulls.

Again, I didn't want my Gutter Runners to be quite as pale as my Adept, so this guy got a slightly darker, healthier skin tone.  I ended up adding a lot of very pale highlights in the end, but I think the final result turned out rather well.

I've now only got two more heroes to go, though I'll still have to make a huge pile of Verminkin for this to actually be a playable warband.  Still, quite pleased with the first little bit.

More Ninja Rats

The next member of my little band of Skaven Ninjas is finally finished.  Since the background fluff for Clan Eshin is that they learned to be sneaky assassins by watching actual human ninjas, I wanted my Mordheim warband to actually use as many traditional Japanese, Chinese, and Indian weapons as possible, instead of the mostly European weapons that come in the kits.  So here is the first of my two Black Skaven, armed with a Kusarigama, which will count as a sword and buckler.  Conveniently, the rules for sword and buckler in Mordheim are actually quite well suited to a Kusarigama, as the double parry is a pretty good way of representing the use of the chain to distract and entangle your opponent.

In keeping with my theme of pinning ridiculously tiny bits together, I decided that I needed to pin the blade of the kama onto the handle, just in case.  I don't think it was quite as bad as trying to pin the Horror arms, but the bit I was pinning was so small that you can actually see the pin through the thin layer of plastic that was left after I drilled it out.

 

The body of this guy is actually from one of the original plastic Night Runners that came in the Mordheim box.  I liked the little row of throwing stars on the bandolier across his chest and by sticking the Night Runner body on the newer Clanrat legs, it gave him a bit more of an upright posture, which I wanted for his pose of raising the kama above his head.

The chain was definitely the most difficult part of this conversion.  I wanted to make it as solid and stable as possible, which I sort of achieved.  The chain is cobbled together from a number of different lengths of chain, mostly from Dark Eldar bits, as I recall.  The main chain going from the handle to his left hand is made up of at least two shorter lengths of chain, but I have it kind of tucked below his head, so that it's hopefully not in a position where it could get caught on something or that the model could fall and land on this bit.  The last little bit of chain with the weight is a bit more flimsy, and I definitely broke it off a few times and had to re-glue it to the model.  In retrospect, I probably should have tried to find a longer bit of chain that would have allowed me to rest it on the ground, but if it breaks off in the middle of a game, I may end up doing that anyway.

The cape comes from one of the Blood Bowl Skaven models, though I hacked at it a bit to make it look a bit more distressed, though this fellow definitely has one of the better kept capes in the warband.

I made some cobblestones from green stuff to try and match the basing on the other models...

...and of course, the obligatory skull.

I also just realized that it's now been slightly over a year since I started working on this guy, which is kind of sad, but at least that's a marked improvement from the twelve years it took me to finally finish my Sorcerer.

Hopefully the rest of the warband will be coming along soon!