AdamH’s Skaven wrap up post

Another OWAC down, another contingent added to the ratty horde.

Once again I am really pleased with the amount of work I was able to complete during the challenge. I have said it before but I find the challenge a great motivator and I am never as productive as I am during the first six months of the year.

This was my third OWAC representing #TeamSkaven and my sixth overall. But focusing on the Skaven I think I now have about 6,000 points worth minus magic items. A really nice size for an army but not quite where I want to leave them. Therefore you can expect to see at least one more Skaven entry from me in the future, however it won’t be next year, for that I have other plans, green and creepy plans…

Let’s start with the Ansell (RIP) traditional pose:

Followed by some slightly closer pictures of the goods:

Specifically I want to highlight my favourite part of the challenge this year, which is my custom screaming bell. I’m really happy with how it came together and am looking forward to getting it on the table:

So what do the final stats look like for OWAC VII challenge:

Models painted: 139

Total points: 3,284.5

Current weight being held up by the glass shelves in my cabinet: about 10kg

But now is the time to show off what I always enjoy doing when I paint more Skaven for the challenge, get everything out together and see the full horde!

Looking a bit more closely at some of the clan specific sections first up we the terrible machines of war from clan Skryre:

The diseased fanatics of clan Pestilence:

The uncountable hordes of the Hell Pit of clan Moulder:

And finally the warrior clans:

As I mentioned above I still have at least one more #TeamSkaven OWAC in me, in fact I have already started to work out what units I plan to paint. I still need to expand the Eshin part of my force so a couple of units of Night Runners plus one more Gutter Runner unit should take care of that. Plus there are a couple more special characters I want to add. I also have another ten Rat Ogres to paint and two more Doom Wheels.

But as mentioned they are not the plan for next year, that particular plan is already well underway preparation wise.

Oh one other thing that I have been collecting this year as the challenge goes on is these cute little guys from Etsy:

Should you wish to pick up your own you can find them here. I’m not sponsored or affiliated in any way with them. I just thought they were super cute.

Anyway that’s me done for the year, I hope you have enjoyed this journey with me and the other challengers, until next time… squeak squeak man-thing!

AdamH’s Skaven final month! - Rank and file month

Here we are at the end of another OWAC, or at least the painting part of it. This month was my Jezzails, as well as more Globadiers and a few random Stormvermin that I needed to finish in order to complete a unit.

I also decided that the base on my Doomwheel from a previous challenge was simply too large to be practical for gaming so I removed it from that base, put it on a new one and reclaimed some of the giant rats from the old base to make a small unit. I also repainted the driver in my new black and red Skyre scheme:

I’m not going to claim any points for painting these as all I really did was the bases but it took up hobby time so I thought I would at least include it as part of this month’s work.

Month six stats:

Models painted: 32

Total points: 746.5

Chance of the Jezzails hitting anything in-game: 0

I also had the opportunity to bring the army (and some bits from previous challenges) to Japan and play a couple of games of Warhammer Renaissance, it really is a pleasure to see painted models facing off against each other on the battlefield:

So that’s it for painting in this year’s OWAC. I have a few finishing touches, mainly varnishing and then adding grass and tufts to the bases which I will do over the next few weeks ready for the wrap-up post in July. I can’t wait to see the army all together and then with all the rest of my Skaven, I haven’t put it together myself yet so it should be interesting seeing what it looks like.

Until the wrap-up post though I hope you have enjoyed following my rats come together over the last six month, I always enjoy painting them and I probably have enough to do one more challenge but not next year. I already have something planned for that but I will save talking about it until the wrap-up post.

AdamH’s Skaven month five - Leader(s) Month!

OK, so I went kind of mad this month. I had a plan, knew what I wanted to paint and had it prepared. Then saw a model that had been sat on my painting pile for ages and decided to add that to the mix. Then I remembered an old conversion I made and sold and decided to remake that as well.

What I ended up with is a huge amount of characters/leaders that I couldn’t possibly play in a single game but that now give me a bunch of options so that is nice.

So I am going to start small and build from there; first up we have some assassins. Up until now I had just been using some Gutter Runners painted in a previous challenge as assassins however I wanted to have some of the newer models ready to use:

Next up we have some Warlock Engineers. I wanted to try and have one model to represent each of the wizard level available to them, plus the Arch Warlock himself, Ikit Claw! This also gives me a few equipment options like the Brass Orb and Warlock Pistol:

Next up is the conversion I mentioned at the start of this entry. So many years ago (15 I think?) I restarted the hobby and built a Skaven army, it was mostly the then-current plastics, I ended up selling this army along with all my Warhammer during one of those phases where I was questioning what I was spending my time on. Well there were a number of conversions in that army that I miss and this is one of them. Therefore I decided to try my best to re-create it and got pretty close! Here is a WiP shot:

Plus I made it so that the “Grey Seer” can be removed from the top and put on a standard base should I want to run him on foot. There are magnets under the base, in the top of the “Bell” tower, and under the seer:

I plan to use this as a Screaming Bell proxy (since a bell can technically be put in a unit of Plague Monks I wanted a thematically consistent one), or if I play later versions of Warhammer I suppose it could also be a Plague Claw catapult. Anyway here it is all finished:

Finally we have the big boi that has been sitting unpainted in my pile for years. I’m just going to show the pictures here, not much to say other than I have two Vermin Lords now apparently, so that’s cool:

Month five stats:

Models painted: 9?

Total points: 1,934 (lol)

Glowy rocks painted: Many

Next up is the final month! Yay! I have the Jezzails as well as a few other bits I have been working on throughout the challenge and will try and get everything finished together for a nice big finish. Good luck everyone!

AdamH’s Skaven month four - The horde grows

Another chonky one this month from me, rank and file month three; the other big unit in this year’s challenge; Clan Rats!

If you have seen either of my previous Skaven Challenge entries then you will have seen me paint these toxic yellow mainstays before. Not much has changed here other than the addition of an extra Rat Ogre (that forms a unit filler), and some extra command models:

As mentioned above I painted an addition Rat Ogre, I now have one of these old sculpts in each of my Clan Rat units. I don’t think they are quite as nice models as the later 90’s Rat Ogre Sculpts and a bit too small for their profile. However I do like them so I think they fit in perfectly as a big mutated Clan Rat!

I also wanted the ability to run multiple small units of Clan Rats so painted an additional command, this means I can now run four units of 25, perfect for that weapon team spam!

Month three stats:

Models painted: 30

Total points: 198

Secret Japanese words hidden in the unit: one

May is a reduced month for me, I have a trip that cuts a week out of my painting time so I am going to focus on getting as many of my Leader models done as possible. I have been working on a little bonus model in the back ground recently though, hopefully I can finish it and get that painted next month too!

AdamH’s Skaven month three rank and file - Stimky boys

This month was one of those big model count units that you just get your head down and get painting on.

I wanted to expand on my existing Plague Monk unit and add another smaller one. With everything I painted this month I can run a big unit of 40 and a smaller one of about 15, or alternatively a couple of medium size units.

With this I have no painted pretty much all of the Plague Monk models I own, other than a few extra Censer Bearers and a couple of broken models that I may try and use in another project that is it.

Both groups of the metal releases of Plague Monks (the original 80’s and the 90’s models) are among my favourite Skaven figures. I am very happy to finally have a good sized collection of painted fanatics such as these:

Finally a close up of the command models for the unit, taking this picture made me realise that I either never had, or have misplaced my second unit champion so I guess I will have to track another down at some point.

Month three stats:

Models painted: 33

Total points: 245

Times I have been sick this month totally unrelated to painting these plague invested vermin: several

Another big unit next month as I am going to try and get through the Clan Rats, but it should be easy sailing from there as all that is left after will be the Jezzails and Heros.

AdamH’s Skaven month two - Big pew pews

I’m busting out my wildcard early this year. As everyone who has done an OWAC before will attest February is a brutal month, you are off the high of starting the challenge in January and with it being a shorter month it claims a lot of victims to the field of bones.

There was a real risk of me being included in them this year since I had/have two trips in Feb, losing me over a week of painting time. Therefore I bit the bullet early and decided to use my wildcard early and paint something big in size but small in number.

So yea, I went for my Warplightning Cannons and Globaiders, the first of the Skyre reinforcements for my force.

But AdamH I hear you say, those models aren’t from WHFB 5th Edition, the edition you play, and you would be right. However I strongly believe that “oldhammer” is a mindset and a style rather than a time period. There are plenty of models released today from some wonderful makers that really capture that oldhammer style. However you would be right if you were to highlight the fact that there are no rules for Warplightning Cannons in 5th edition. Therefore I will be claiming no points for these in the challenge, but I will claim them as being two models that I painted 😛

Anyway, enough justification, look at my models!

Also I did some OSL that you can’t really see unless you are close enough to touch the model with your nose, definitely the right thing to have done when I was short on time:

These two cannons enable me to play later editions with my army, and I have even seen some fan versions (WHFR) that have ported the rules back to be usable in a 5th edition style ruleset.

Next up we have the Globadiers, these jugglers are some great models but there aren’t very many variations in the classic style, so I painted all of the ones I have (I have since bought two more on Ebay and will be painting them in a future month to bring my total to ten), but here is a shot of each of the sculpts:

And all of them together:

So that brings me onto my month two stats:

Models painted: 10 individual bases, maybe 16 if you count each piece separately?

Total points: 80, hey look at that, same as month one!

Pointless details you can’t see when the models were built: Lots

Next month I will have much more painting time so will be tackling one of the bigger units, the Plague Monks or the Clanrats, so look forward to seeing a big block of scurrying vermin coming from me next!