My Skaven Army – Slaves Unit A – Part Two

So. Let’s get back to some of this for now.. Building my first SkavenSlave Unit as a unit which is mixed of Slave Skaven and other races. All use the same statline but rules do say key words that other races aren’t often used (not NEVER) and are mostly skaven (not ONLY). First of the non-skaven ones is a Goblin.

A while back, in a job lot of figures, I got some old HeroQuest ones in various states. Great, No problem. ones which aren’t damaged will either go into my HeroQuest set, or most likely go for either something else or maybe traded at some point. Ones which were basic damage (missing weapons or something minor like that) can be easily customised for some use. Then there are ones with a bit more “Damage” to them. arms missing, heads missing etc. Custom fodder.

One of these ‘custom fodder’ figures was a Goblin which had a old large round shield on it’s back and it’s arms were cut off and badly reposed in front of him. I liked the idea but it was a bad way of doing it. his arms didn’t line up with shoulders for a start.

well.. stripped him down a bit (wasn’t painted anyway, I just took the arms off.. the shield is pretty well stuck). Pretty bad Super glue all over the place which is a bit annoying but oh well. One arm was mostly fine but the other I cut off the upper half of the arm and the shoulder and re-sculpted that. Not the best work in the world but I wanted to try to ‘save’ this figure more then make a totally perfect figure. Being a HQ goblin, it was unarmoured and pretty good for a slave. Technically the shield is wrong but it’s fine. With the arms together I went to add a spear I got from some 5th Skaven plastic. Slight problem is I cut a bit out of the Spear so he would hold the bulk on top, with a bit of the shaft under his arms.. but when I was printing, that bottom bit came off and got lost.. oh well.. no problem with the goblin hugging the spear like that.

How did the figure turn out? .. erm… okay in a group. Clearly not gonna be front ranking or much of a stand out job but the idea was mostly to save the figure. clean up the damage caused by bad work and bad super glue and make it presentable. And I’m pretty sure I did that.

Next figure is a bit less work maybe? I decided since I do have a lot of spares and some damaged ones, look at my HQ figures for another Slave. Problem is more that the Slaves need to be kinda downtrodden and with double handed weapons and pretty much no real armour. Fimir is possible and I might do one but they are kinda.. powerful boasting poses which looks like it would be more harm to the people holding it as a slave then as a slave. Orcs? I’ll include one but right now, a bit too powerful a pose atleast. the Brief does say that “Other races are seldom used because they might escape or start fighting the Skaven partway through the battle.” so kinda want to go for either weaker looking ones or ones which I could easily see that they appear to be slaves. I’ve already done one Goblin so while I might add more, I wanted to go another type of figure first. So that was the green skins out, so what was next? Oh, the undead. and the first one my hand got to was a Skeleton. I’m a little unsure how a Skeleton would work as a slave.. If you see my thoughts on Skeletons in Fantasy, I would more say Skeleton only exists as long as it’s powered by magic. so if you don’t have a mage (I hate using the term ‘Necromancer’ cause.. well.. a Mancer is someone that performs divination. Telling the future. a Necromancer does it from the dead. there are other types of Mancers used in fiction.. Chromomancer reads the time stream to tell the future (Blood Omen: The legacy of Kain features Mobius, a Chromomancer)… there are probably other types but I can’t think of the name right now.. Arithmancer is one that uses math to tell the future I think. Basically working out the probebilites.. (see the Isaac Asmovi short story ‘Spell my Name with an S’, though it uses the numerologist name, but it’s an Arithmancer).

Well.. If you read my little article on Skeletons, I kinda listed how a mage could summon a skeleton and then it could have a ‘unlife’ of it’s own and be self-sustaining… In which case, you could take it as a Slave! how well it would follow orders is another matter but.. yeah, I think my article does make it perfectly fine. So HQ Skeleton becomes a Slave.

First I wanted to look at the weapon. cause of the pose, it’s pretty hard to do much cutting and editing on the skeleton to get a new pose but the weapon is the first thing which can be changed… oh wait, it can’t ¬_¬ the Scythe handle is quite defined. while I guess you could cut off the blade to make a spear or banner pole… I don’t think it’ll work too well and besides, the Scythe is such a classic weapon for a western skeleton (middle eastern ones like in Greek myths don’t use them, Western ones might use the odd one but rarely) and counts as a double-handed weapon, the same as a spear so no problems there.

As I said, the pose is.. not easy to change. arms are close on the body, weapon is formed in a set way it couldn’t be changed.. how to do something to change it up a bit.. well.. one way really.. sculpt new bits.

So.. I sculpted a bit of a raggy vest and a tiny patch of hair still attached his skull. well.. skulls with hair… just another skull with hair… Hair isn’t attached to the skull of course, but when a human dies (or any other creature) the skin and stuff dries out, as such it gives the impression that hair can grow for a while after death. as the Skin dries out, the hair doesn’t just fall off and can end up with the bits of muscle, skin and whatever, becoming a kinda glue which looks like the skull has the hair attached. I’ve never seen this happen with facial hair or other shorter hairs like body hair but look at alot of skeletons from Aztec, Egypt, etc. Hell, if you want to break the law and dig up some old bones at the local boneyard, you will probably find some.. But I wouldn’t recommend this. (side note, always funny that Pharaoh and the higher ups had all the fancy mummification acts, while the poor peasant was just thrown in the sand and yet it was the sand which protected the body much better. all that money and expenses for nothing. Peasant got the last laugh).

Not a huge difference but I think it works well. I also add a bit of ‘ribbon’ on the scythe to give a bit more difference to that. some scrap that he probably got in life.. Oh.. sorry.. Looking at the pelvis.. she probably got in life. Still.. makes a nice Slave.

Well.. for the third… As I said earlier, I was thinking a Fimir. technically Fimir are on 25mm bases which would screw up the unit, but these aren’t being classed as the race they are. They are just ‘slaves’. If I used a HQ one, that’ll easily fit on a 20mm base. and with it’s size, I think it could hold a double handled weapon in one hand.. though I’ll probably do some reposing. One thing I was thinking of is making the Fimir part of a 2 figure set. the idea that yes, they have a fimir as a slave which normally would overpower, BUT they have him chained with a guy next to him holding the chain to keep him in line and a kinda ‘if he gets out of control, you die so keep him in line’.. I would love to have the two figures on the same base but that is just being a bit stupid for normal figure like this. So it’s gonna be an interesting thing as the second figure is on a different base and also separate enough that if only one got taken out, it wouldn’t be a problem.

well, That was the plan and I still got a Fimir sitting waiting to figure out the weapon load and probably a repose but I had other figures to add to this unit. One of which was this one from… I wanna say Diehard Miniatures.

And to tell the truth. I picked this one up cause she is insane. A Druid woman, her outfit I painted up as Tyris Flare from the original ‘Golden Axe’ game (don’t talk about that awful remake..) She has that large top knot, an over sized sickle and.. well.. What I’m calling ‘insane spear’. You might think ‘Banner pole’ or Totem at first but the bottom of it is all spear. This massive heavy spear in one hand.. loved it (2 piece cast just for that) and she may be the standard for the unit.. or probably not.. It’s just a nice bit of crazy girl who might not be a slave out of choice. I mean, come on, you think there aren’t any Skaven Cults out there? I’m sure there are some who would worship this side of chaos (not to mention, about the only way you are gonna get a female in a Skaven army is like this. Female Skaven are…. erm.. yeah.. how they felt the pygmies were an uncomfortable insult yet got away with female skaven and the whole Nippon side I don’t know ¬_¬ well, the Japanese seam fairly relaxed to cultural insults so… probebly fine on that).

Next up one of the Rats. Cause yes, atleast half this unit is gonna be Skaven from other clans and the bulk of these are in fact, oakbound Gnawlocks:

As the unit are all double handed weapons, Gnawlocks having a range of spears is pretty useful and the Gnawlocks all wear light cloth which is also perfect for a disposable slave unit.

well.. that’s 4 out of 30.. I got another two almost finished and a bunch primed, but still need to work out some other figures and conversion work for some.