My Skaven Army – Slaves of the Skaven
I might have commented on this before but the Skaven Slave regiments are interestingly described. WFB2 (ravening Hordes) just says “Ratmen Slaves are often forced into armies to increase the numbers and soak up casualties.” this could be said to say they are all Skaven in that, or to say they are just Slaves OF the ratmen. WFB3 just says “The lowest caste of Skaven society are the slaves”. Doesn’t really confirm that they are ONLY Skaven really.. though generally pushing in that direction..
Then WFB4, with it’s expanded army books, clearly says “other races are seldom used because they might escape or start fighting the Skaven partway through the battle.” THIS confirms that Skaven don’t only take other clan rats as Slaves.. just don’t use them much.
So I created a mixed race slave unit. 30 figures, of which only 19 (which is the bulk) are Skaven.
Well.. I say Skaven.. but most of these Ratment aren’t Skaven. But lets go through the breakdown shall we?
The first two here are Skaven Slaves. I think the first is Skum (by Jes Goodwin) from the c47 range, but the top of his spear was missing. So I replaced it with a bit of a plastic Halberd from… someplace.. No clue.. In my weapon bits tray. I could have done a bit of a better job with the lining up but.. It looked fine at first ^_^ The second is his dolly mate Slake. The next two are both Oakbound Gnawlochs which fill up most of the Ratman ranks in this unit, being as they are suitably light armoured with doublehanded weapons.
The next 4 include another Jes Goodwin Skaven, this one being Skuttle (War Thrall) from the original 19 C47 releases. The next one (and the 4th one) are Custom Skaven Skeletons which I have said about before, but are Midlam Minitures Dwarf Skeletons, with putty sculpted bone tails (technically a bit big), new heads from a Citadel sprue (Skaven Skulls) and new weapons. The third one is another Gnawlock.
The first is an EM4 miniatures ‘hero with Axe’, with his base cut off to fit, the second is another Gnawloch, the third is a Heroquest Skeleton, with his base removed, and some putty work to make a raggy jacket, a scrap of hair and a bit of ribbon on his scythe. The 4th if another Gnawloch. I said that made up alot of the Skaven in this.
4 more Gnawlochs. These match in well with Jes Goodwin’s early Skaven, compared to the more musclebound take from Colin Dixon.
well, two of the same Gnawloch here, but also some green skins. The Orc is Hagbald the Mainer from the C15 set, by Kev Adams. Mine was missing his weapon hand and weapon and from the pose I thought he was holding a spear. So I put in a plastic Skaven spear with Hand. then when I checked up on the figure, I noticed he should have been holding a weird but nasty looking sword and the arm had been bent up a bit at some point. work anyway. Then the 4th one is a HQ Goblin. This was a damaged one in a joblot of figures I got the one time, where someone had kinda turned him into a standard bearer by cutting his arms off and making them move inwards. I liked the idea, but the job wasn’t well done, so I kinda took it back apart (the best I could with that glue) and rebuilt new shoulders so it worked better. Then added the spear to complete the look. He already had the shield on his back and I decided I couldn’t be bothered trying to remove it. It’s not like he is using that for much protection.
Just a look at his shield. I think I tried to copy an image from the 3ed armies book. Kinda worked.
The first one here is a Amazon Warrior from.. I can’t remember where. But it was a random figure in a joblot ^_^ and I felt the very undressed nature made her good for a slave. Then we have 2 more Gnawlochs and a Halfling. I think that Halfling is from Oldschool Miniatures but don’t hold me to that.
For years, the only snotlings I’ve had were 2 double pairs. This is one of them C14 ‘Piggybackpair’ probebly be Kev Adams. Decided they would be fine in a slave unit with them working together to be close enough to one normal figure. The next two are Gnawlochs again but one of them, I had snapped off and lost the spear so I replaced it with a plastic pitchfolk. Finally, there is my 3ed Skaven Skeleton. I think the blade (damn, a bit off screen) is in fact cut off from another skaven but I might be wrong.
The final two figures in this unit are technically the Standard (I guess Totem) bearer, a Female Druid from the Celtos range currently with brigade models. I got this one with a couple of other figures cause I saw the .. erm.. Spear/totem’ and that she was holding it up and thought, wow, that’s ridicules. I love it! Techinally she isn’t carrying a double handled weapon if you call that a Totem.. but its got a huge spear head on it and look at that top? That’ll hurt if you hit someone with it. The next one is C47 Razortail. This is a Miniature from my youth and pretty badly painted back then. By now, most of the paint was in a very poor state (I do have a photo but I won’t post it now). So I decided to strip him and do a decent job, but kept the rough colours the same. He is the unit Champ.
So. with this unit now down, an update on the running total. Slaves are under armoured and cheap. I haven’t classed the Druid (who, by the way, is in a colour scheme based on Amazon Tyris Flare, former princess of the Firewood Kingdom, from the 80s Arcade game ‘Golden Axe’) as a standard, so you can field it as a standard, or just a really big spear, But I do have factored in points for the spears and the Champion, giving this unit only 87 pts in total (well, the champion is erm.. 33pts I think on top of that. I think I might have screwed up my running totals a bit.. oh well.
Running Total:
Characters: 806pts
War Machines: 200pts
Monsters: 0pts
Regiments: 591pts
Total Army Points painted up: 1,597pts
