hobby blog The Wolf and the Rat, new monsters and now at 2000pts!
Entry posted by Haanz
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Today, I'm very pleased to share that my army "The Wolf and the Rat" just hit their 2000pts of painted minis target and I can more or less draw a line under this army as "completed." This will undoubtedly prove to be a fabrication as the urge to add new guys will eventually hit me, though the limiting factor will now be how much space is left in my storage foam. More Bloodletters and Blood Warriors would be nice to mix things up, and theres no shortage of awesome models to paint that would fit this theme - Rat Ogors, Slaughterbrutes, Flesh Hounds, and hey, I hear Khorgoraths are getting a bit of a buff in the new Battletome!
But enough about my screaming wallet, this is supposed to be about me finishing this damn army.
Skritt's Hunting Pack (Wolf Rats)
QuoteAs nimble as a rat, but with the cunning and vicious temperment of a dire wolf; Skritt's hunting pack of Wolf Rats are the blasphemous result of inbreeding between the remaining Giant Rats of Clan Fellpyre and the hunting wolves employed by The Pack. Primarily used for running down and retreiving fleeing 'cattle', their cunning and muscular build have made owning and raising one a risky, though coveted endevour.
Awesome miniatures, and a lot bigger than I expected. In fact, I actually expected the Skin Wolves to turn out a little bigger and these guys to be a little smaller. I gave them the same two tone grass and animal bones/skulls/warpstone crystals as the Wolves, which I really like on these bigger base minis. For the paint job, I wanted them to have a cohesiveness with the Skin Wolves, but with a few distinctions. In the ended, I chose to paint them with the same sort of grey/brown fur as I gave the Skin Wolves, but with a ratty pink flesh instead of the blue/grey. One key distinction is their armour/adornments are red, like the Wrathmongers, as opposed to the bone white of the 'enlightened' - like the Wrathmongers, they're feral and vicious and useful in a fight, but not considered 'people' in the way the Skin Wolves (perhaps foolishly) are.
Skaarakh, The Fang of Khorne
I did a thing with this guy, which you might notice if you saw him in his primed-only state in the last photo, and that's that I hacked off his axe hand, twisted it and re-pinned it back in place. The reason for this was my 'dynamic pose' I was going for looked really weird, and the more I kind of pictured myself with my arm outstretched like that, the more it seemed unnatural. I had originally wanted him kind of pointing the axe in a challenge, but reposing white metal is difficult, and in the end I realised his arm would make a lot more sense if he was at the end of a big arcing swing of the axe, so that's sorta what I went for.
If you didn't see my previous post, then what you're looking at is an old, white metal Bloodthirster. I have no real stylistic reason for using him, other than I had one lying around at my parents house from back when I played World Eaters in 3rd Ed 40K when I was 13, and using him over buying a new plastic kit saved me like £50. He was obviously pretty dated looking though, so I made a few adjustments. The key ones were giving him a new head from the plastic Bloodthirster kits (which just look a zillion times better), reposing his arms to look a little more dynamic and a little less like the old style where everyone stood in that same unnatural pose, and finally I decided to go nuts and give him a giant green stuff fur cloak, because the new style Bloodthirsters are a little more burly than the skinny, boney style of old and I wanted a thematic way of bulking him up a little. In order to make the cloak not look weird over the wings, I added some beaten brass spiked collar pauldron things, that I personally think turned out pretty good for my first major green stuff endevour. I'm particularly pleased with the bulging vein on his axe arm bicep that I used to cover up some of the fingerprinting and roughness.
Oh, and I shaved off the little stars where his nipples would be, because I have no idea what they were thinking with that design choice.
As with my Bloodletters, I went for a slimy albino look on this one as well, and I'm again pretty happy with how he turned out; I'm getting a little more confident in painting whites, which is something that I absolutely failed at 6 months ago when I was starting out again after my decade long hiatus. There's no point in painting bone armour on a white guy, but I wasn't really that keen on red armour either, so I decided to make his breastplate black, and just get a little dark red on the cloak lining and the whip (and the blood effects, obviously!), and I'm really happy with the overall result.
Basewise, he's on the same Secret Weapon Miniatures sculpted resin lava base as my Lord of Khorne of Juggernaut, which I think looks great. I also added the one remaining huge rock and animal skull piece to it to tie him in a little with the Skin Wolves and Wolf Rats. I was originally planning on sticking a Fenrisian Wolf on the base with him, like I'm planning to do to my aforementioned Lord of Khorne, but I'm not 100% he really needs it anymore, what with everything else going on.
I'm still working on the lore, but I'm starting to think that 'he' might actually be a 'she' considering the weirdly low cut and chesty armour and more slender build compared to the modern Bloodthirster design. Hopefully I'll have that figured out at some point, and I'll include it with a big full-army photo in a future blog post.
Conclusion and Army List
And that wraps up my 2000pts of The Wolf and the Rat! As I said before, I have no immediate plans to expand - it'd be nice to take a break once I finish my two 2000pts armies and work on something smaller scale like Blood Bowl or Malifaux for a while - but ****** if I'm not tempted to fill up the (limited) free space in my BattleFoam for these guys by rounding out my two units of Blood Warriors and Bloodletters. Beyond that pipe dream, I have plans to add some furry tabards and pelts to the Blood Warriors and Bloodletters that I already have, but I'll just edit them in my original post.
Here's my final, 2000pts list that I'm planning on running these guys as. Note that this list isn't built to win any tournaments. I tend to build armies around what models I want, how I can tie a theme/narrative to them, and work from there. I don't know how many games I'll actually win with this list, but it looks cool and it's got a lot of fun things to play and a lot of weird mismashed synergies and that's what's important to me. If I ever consider what I include from a rules perspective, it's mostly to balance against my other armies so that I can fun games using only my models, should I want to demonstrate to friends, etc.
Thanks for reading!
The Wolf and the Rat - 1960/2000pts (pre new Battletome)
Heroes:
The White Wolf (Mighty Lord of Khorne OR Lord of Khorne on Juggernaut) - 140pts
Skritt Ashenfang (Skaven Warlord on Brood Horror) - 200pts
Skaarakh, Fang of Khorne (Bloodthirster of Unfettered Fury) - 300pts
Tanaris Redmaw (Bloodsecrator) - 120pts
Battleline:
The Red Hunt (Blood Warriors x 5) - 100pts
The Enlightened (Blood Warriors x 5) - 100pts
The Bloodhounds (Bloodreavers x 20) - 120pts
The Bloodied Teeth of Skaarakh (Bloodletters x 20) - 200pts
The Rabid (Wrathmongers x 5) - 180pts
The Blessed (Skin Wolves x 3) - 120pts
The Ashenfangs (Stormvermin x 20) - 280pts
Skritt's Hunting Pack (Wolf Rats x 5) - 100pts
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