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Fantasy Rat Men
Another bout of recapitations, here. This time using Skaven Plague Monk
(that is anthropomorphic rat-men) heads. This type of conversion shows
how we can create consistency with disparate things. It also highlights
what I think is our "focus point" with minis. Without an a priori
bias (such as ... in 1843 the Trans-Slobovian Army shifted to a seven button
uniform from their old six button), I think color, heads, and weapons
are the three most important recognition factors for minis. In that order.
Also, these are the cheapest rat heads at Hoard O' Bits and since I don't have an affinity for the GW game they go with, they are as good as any other since stylistically they are all equivalent.
Here's the whole army. Twenty-five infantry and two cavalry.
The color theme is brown for the "skin tone", and grey base for clothing with green accents. Even though there are two shades of grey and three of green (and one figure with neither grey nor green), I think the color scheme unifies the force.
Everybody having rat heads helps, too.
These mace wielding rat-women are the Skaven heads put on to
HeroClix Hawkgirl figures and supplemented with Wargames Factory
Viking shields.
Since I am using color and rat heads
for consistency, I felt I needed to mix it up a bit with repositioning
some arms.
That results in a pretty consistent, yet not identical mace squad
for the force.
We move on to some more ratty (he he) figures. These are the unarmoured
Wargames Factory Viking bodies and a mix of WGF and GW (and I think
some leftover Old Glory maybe) weapons and shields.
The variation makes these guys more believable as rat men, which I
would intuitvely expect to be motley. It also allows me to separate
out the more consistently designed mace rats as an elite unit with
different stats than regular rats, if we need that for a scenario.
A few long range troops are a good option for the force. But only
a few. I would expect ratmen to be used mostly in a stealth-creeping
or a close combat swarming capacity.
Cavalry also goes against the rat feel, but having a couple as a piquet
or scouting party is a good idea. Plus, I needed fantasy figures as
cavlary to justify the mounts.
The bodies are plastic toy elephants or rhinos that I took the heads from (for other conversions) The beetle heads (third eye added with a dollop of liquid latex) were3 left over from a cyber beetle conversion. Together, the disparate bits make a nice, weird, one-off fantasy mount.
One champion. The ratman with the handheld crossbow could be a leader.
Or this guy could. Or, on a bulked up, muscular HeroClix
Demon
body, could be a warbeast, too.
Or just another rank-and-file ratter.
For pretty much the same reasons, these heads make a nice theme
for sci-fi pirates.
