Building Da Fort

It's been a few months since I posted anything here, due to the fact that my town has been hit not just by the global plague that is currently rampaging largely unhindered through my country, but also by earthquakes, food shortages, and whatever the desert equivalent of a class 3 hurricane is. Fortunately, we're still alive and doing pretty well, all things considered. And although I haven't had a ton of free time between work, repairing the house after disasters, and staring blankly into the void, I have made some progress on a proper fort for my Morker boyz.

I actually started this fort over a year ago and the planning began long before that. Since my gang was the most obsessed with vehicles and gubbinz of any in our campaign, I wanted them to be based out of a remote fort on the far side of the Skid, where the the grots are unruly and the spanner boyz are even more eccentric than usual. I designed their fort to be built up against the side of an especially large chunk of the 'Ulk that had long since been stripped of any useful scrap. I also wanted to make the fort modular so that the other gangs could use the parts and swap in their own sections to make their own custom forts.

Like most of the gubbinz for my big trakk, my plan was to hold everything together with magnets. Since there were going to be models standing on top of the walls, I wanted to make sure that the whole thing didn't tip over if someone bumped the table. It also had to fit the dimensions for the fort scenarios and be tall enough that all the vehicles in the campaign could fit through the gate. Fortunately, my mob has the most ridiculously tall vehicles in the campaign, so hopefully this will accommodate everyone.

The project has changed quite a bit as the build has progressed, and there's still quite a way to go until it's ready to go on the table, but I'm pretty happy about the direction in which things are going.

All the Henchmen

I finally managed to get the last of my Verminkin finished up.  This last guy is armed with a push knife and a throwing knife.  Of course, only Heroes get to use throwing knives in Mordheim, so it will just count as a sling.  It was considerably easier to convert than the slings were, so I might make do this again when I need more Verminkin (which hopefully won't be for a while.

The idea for this guy came from the original Mordheim night runners, which featured a number of arms holding throwing knives and shuriken.

As I recall, the knife is a Space Marine knife that I just whittled down to the proper size.  The blades on the push knife are from a Dark Eldar spear of some sort, as I recall.  It's surprisingly hard to find good symmetrical blades in Warhammer, but this one worked quite nicely.  As with my other Verminkin, the body is just a Clanrat with a green stuff cloak.

So at long last, my Verminkin are complete, which should give me enough models for a decent starting warband.  Now I just need to work on some Terrain and we'll be ready to go.

Almost There...

Here's another Verminkin for the horde.  I tried just giving this one two swords, though doing so with the Clanrat shield arm made for a pretty awkward pose.

Yeah, punch daggers definitely work better than full on swords.

One more to go...

Slinger 2: Sling Harder

Here is Verminkin number three.  He's basically the same as the last one, but with a bigger stabber.

You can't really tell, but this guy's actually got slightly lighter colored fur from the other Verminkin. I also like the way his leather helmet turned out.

The sling used the same method as the other one, which, again, was a huge pain, so this guy might be my last slinger for a while.  His sword is made from the end of one of the left over spear tips I had after making the slings.

Definitely have to figure out an easier way to make slings...

Skaven Slinger

The second henchman is now finished.  I decided to give this guy a sling, since having a whole unit of Verminkin flinging rocks can be pretty handy.  Back in the day, Games-Workshop used to sell sling arms for upgrading your models.  After modeling a few myself, I wish that I'd invested in a few of them. 

The sling turned out pretty well, though it's a bit on the large side.  I was mostly concerned with making it solid.

The sling arm is a Clanrat spear arm.  I actually left some of the shaft, which runs inside the sling, giving it some structure so that it's not just two thin strips of green stuff sticking up in the air.  It's solid enough that I can grab the model by the sling without worrying, so I guess it paid off.  Still, not doing a whole unit of these unless I come up with a better method (or track down some of those old GW sling arms).

On to the Henchmen...

Here's the first of the henchmen for my Mordheim warband.  Skaven don't get a lot of options for henchmen.  I might eventually convert an Eshin Rat Ogre, and giant rats would be good to have on hand since there's a spell that can summon a few, but the only option for actual henchmen that gain experience and use equipment is Verminkin.  As such, I'll be churning these guys out for a good long while.

In order to make these guys seem like the bottom rung of the Eshin hierarchy, I decided to convert them all out of Clanrats with very minimal changes to their overall posture and silhouette.  Basically, every one got a black cloak and a second hand weapon in his left hand, and that's about it.  This one got a nice Katar-style push dagger in his left hand, which turned out rather nicely.

The dagger was made from the sword of a Vampire Counts skeleton, I believe.  I wanted to make it look like it was lashed to his hand with bandages, which I made with green stuff.
  

Since I was just going to drape their cloaks over them without a lot of dynamic movement, I decided to try normal greenstuff capes.  They were pretty easy and turned out alright, though the ends of the cloaks by their feet were still far too bendable.  I ended up giving them a coat of Mod Podge before painting, which gave it a bit more stiffness, almost on par with a thin piece of plastic.

As a prototype, I'm pretty satisfied with this guy.  I'm still slow when it comes to both painting and converting, but I for the most part, this is a fairly straightforward formula that I should be able to repeat.  Since these guys will probably be used as Night Runners in a normal game of Warhammer, I'll eventually have to make even more than the twelve or so that I'll need for a maxed out Mordheim warband, so efficiency is a big plus.

I've got a long way to go.

Mordheim Souvenirs

My second Night Runner is all ready to go, which means that I finally have all six Skaven heroes finished.

Like my other Night Runner, this guy got stuck carrying the baggage for the rest of the group.  He's in charge of carrying the loot that the warband acquires, though he seems to be more concerned with grisly souvenirs and trophies than items of any actual value.  I decided to arm him with a pair of hook swords, which seemed to go well with his vicious appearance.

Definitely got a thing for bones.

This model is converted from a standard Clanrat.  I straightened out his posture a bit to make him stand out from the Verminkin, which I'm also converting from Clanrats.  Combined with his oversized pack, he ended up looking like a hulking figure next to some of the other models, despite actually being the exact same size.

I guess he does have pretty beefy arms for a Skaven.  I got them from one of the Beastman sprues.

The hook swords were fairly complicated constructions.  The main part of the blade came from one of the Clanrat spears, but the rest of it had to be built from plasticard.  The crescent blades on the hand guards were particularly difficult.  I ended up making them using a standard hole punch, then filing them to give them an edge.  I had to punch a million little partial holes in that sheet of plasticard before I was actually able to get two of the right size that matched.

Got a nice assortment of skulls and bones from a variety of different models.  I especially like the ork jaw that he strapped to the top of his pack.

I used the same Milliput and green stuff blend that I used on the other Night Runner to make his cloak.  I think it might have turned out even better on this one, not that much of it is visible with his huge pack.  Since there were already plenty of skulls on this model, I decided to decorate his base with a bit of fence from the Banshees sprue.

My two Runners turned out a bit different than I had originally imagined, but I'm pretty happy with them.  I'll probably just use them as Gutter Runners in a normal game, though they might stand out a bit from the rest of the unit.

Now that my heroes are all finished, it's nothing but Verminkin from here on out.  And since a Skaven warband doesn't max out until it hits twenty members, this is going to take me a while...