I had mistakenly purchased some of the old 2002 plastic skaven clanrats. I was dismayed with their rather comical look, they'd clearly stand out in my Island of Blood and current gen rats. Also to my horror, they came in about 6-7 pieces.
Like I said, I haven't done any modeling in over 10 years, so I was pretty rusty. I put together a few clanrats in their display poses. Spears up and shields forward. They looked boring. After that nonsense I decided to kick my creativity up a notch and started to work on the command group.
Worked on the musician first since it involved the least amount of "danger". I wanted to try to capture him in a rocking pose which I think I got, but his overall presence isn't grand. I think it's because his musical instruments aren't they showy. Since his hands were full, I squeezed a spear into his tail grip. Looks nice on his own, but when he's in rank, the banner obscures his tail weap!
Now satisfied that I wasn't terrible at this, I started to work on my standard bearer. I was feeling better about doing some retooling so I did a simple swap with the top pennant. Opting to put a spear tip on the top and moving the clan symbol to the banner (so I wouldn't have to paint a symbol on). I thought that the standard bearer should have a bigger shield to cover himself with, so I cobbled together something from one of the extra undead musician pieces and a strip of card stock.
last but not least was the regiment champion. I thought he should be rather imposing looking, and what's more imposing than 2 heads? I made him a bitchin' spear from the undead banner arm and put him in an action pose. Gave him a larger shield on his back with the small one up front.
Felt like I was still on a roll and cobbled this upraised shield rat. The arrow was made with a staple and some card stock. It was a bitch to get the fletching on.
I finished up the rest of the regiment with some variations but when I came to the last clanrat, I wanted to try something new. I clipped the hands off and grafted some sword onto his stumps (who doesn't like sword hands?). I thought he could look a bit more visually impressive, so I gave him 2 shields, and then I riddled him with arrows. I think his pose is pretty dynamic don't you think? Maybe too dynamic! He's so visually distinct it looks like another champion and he's kind of a bitch to get into formation.
here's the completed regiment in formation. I had to finaggle the whole front rank to get these dirty command group rats into proper formation.
I thought these would suck to put together since they came in so many pieces, and I wasn't feeling it since they were the older models. But as you can probably already tell, I had a blast putting these guys together. Infact, I actually felt gypped when I put my Island of Blood Clanrats together because I couldn't make any changes to them!
