Limited Palette Skaven

[Lord marcus]

I've been painting the unpainted portions of my skaven collection in a new scheme to make painting the race new again and to play around with a limited palette swatch.

catch up at the main blog below

 

Link here

 

I'm going to be posting updates from here onwards

What I painted in tonight's personal hobby session, with a darker tone on the base per a fellow hobbyist's suggestion. The swords-rats also have my first use of my magic items color, florescent green.

Second photo is everything so far, and third photo shows a closeup with the old base scheme alongside the new.
Which looks better?

Edited November 23, 2023 by Lord marcus

[Lord marcus]

Suddenly roars sound in the deep reaches. Echoes reach the defending line and they know, without hesitation that beasts have been unleashed.

[Lord marcus]

Above the clamor of chittering rat-men, an unfamiliar hum of electricity courses through the darkened tunnels.

[Lord marcus]

"Something is different about the rat horde this time, Steinbeck." Muttered Wren leifsson. Wren and his squadron had been manning the tunnel watch for the last 11 hours, and had repulsed 3 successive waves. Sigmar only knew how many more were marching beneath Chamon's silvered peaks.

 

Jonus Steinbeck, his armor worn from the days fighting, was sitting on his helmet smoking a pipe. Between lazy smoke rings he managed a reply "how so, Wren? You think the furry ****** have brought up another war-engine."

 

Wren didn't reply immediately. Jonus had a point. The last contraption the skaven had wheeled forward had left the closest cannon a melted, smoking wreck in one blast. "Not that. They're more disciplined this time. Not charging pell-mell like Kul's bloody dogs."

 

Suddenly, through the sense shadow of the tunnel ahead, another wall of red eyes and chorus of chittering. But among them, perched on a slight of rubble, was a bigger rat. It was clad head to foot in that rough segmented plate they all wore, and atop a back banner was a braiser of green and black flames.

 

"Wave ahead! Man your stations, by Sigmar's backside! We will hold them!" Wren didn't completely believe the words he rattled off to his men. In truth, he had seen too many freeholders dragged under the horde and ripped apart. But it would do no good to sacrifice the men's morale. Not when they had no word of reinforcements.

 

A staccato of blasts signalled the garrison's first efforts, and quickly the battle was joined.

 

15 more clan rats and a claw leader for the tunnel fighting experiment.

 

[Lord marcus]

Wren leifsson ached. The steel helms had been holding the passages for hours. Twelve waves of the rat-men had assailed them. Twelve times they had been repulsed, at cost. 

 

Marshall Gerric was up on the ramparts, directing repair to the redoubt. The Eldritch machines the rats had wheeled forward had torn gaps in the wall, and men worked to patch them. The marshall was an imposing figure, his full plate armor making heavy clanking sounds as he paced the wall. Gerric was a hard man to get along with, but Wren knew he was hardened by constant war.

 

The outpost at the surface above them was now their home. An isolated standard of sigmar waving in the bleakness of chamon. The families of the free guild were above, though for Gerric it was less so. He had lost his son early in the crusade. Speared by an orc when the column's baggage train was attacked.

 

The outpost had been a former mining colony, hence the tunnel network. Apparently the inhabitants had been driven out, or worse, by the rat-men.

 

Steinbeck sat near Wren. The man had been swarmed during the last attack, and his head was bandaged like a Shyishian grave tender where a slashing wound sat, slowly scabbing over. Ever since, the usually jovial steelhelm had been quiet.

 

"Do you smell that, Wren" Jonus' voice was distant and quiet, almost a whisper. But he had a point. Wren smelt the tang of ozone, like what was left waiting in the air after one of the rats cannon blasts.

 

"Marshall!" He called. Gerric fixed him with a quizzical stare from forty paces. "We should ready for an attack! I smell their war machines!"

 

In any other situation, the marshall would probably laugh at him. As it was, he turned to look out from the wall and raised his sword in a signal to the troops along the redoubt.

 

Within seconds of turning around, however, a curved blade emerged from the darkness and was driven into the Marshalls eye. The rat man clambered up his armored torso even as it fell, prepared to pounce at his next target. Projectiles thrown from the creatures off hand took out two men who had charged in response.

 

Wren gathered himself to take the fight to the cloaked figure himself. Then, calamity. A roiling cloud of black-green smoke poured across the upper reaches of the tunnel, before a bolt of purest green lightning manifested from it. With tremendous force it struck the group of men repairing the wall. In seconds, their charred corpses littered the works.

 

It was going to be a long war to make their new home safe.

 

---------

 

15 more clan rats, as well as an assassin and a warlock engineer, painted.

 

[Lord marcus]

The cannon's roared down the tunnel, grapeshot shredding the oncoming horde.

It had been 2 days since the Marshal's death. Wren had rotated from the tunnel fighting below to the town above twice. He missed the town, even as another one of the rat things through itself against his shield. He landed a forward blow with his mace to the rats left side, and it fell away wheezing from a collapsed lung.

The line had held. Even with their war machines, the devils couldn't break the men's morale. It helped that old man Arkanzibar was deflecting their worst magiks. He was even now pouring over one of his old spell tomes, hands spread in a chant. Wren smiled, thinking they might beat the creatures back, and potentially gain ground.

That smile faded immediately, after a new sound reached wren's tired eardrums. A distinctive crack, accompanied by Arkanzibar's head exploding, and several exit wounds appearing from his chest. The old wizards robes deepened with the crimson of his life blood, and the body topped to the ground.