My Ratkin mega army and Ratkin Hackpaws have finally arrived! Mantic Games sure gives you a lot of miniatures for your money. These two boxed sets have a combined total of 95 models. In my opinion, these minis are on par with anything Games Workshop ever put out, and I am excited get them assembled so I can start painting.
I have enough rat warriors to make two big hordes of forty light infantry each, and I absolutely love the models except for one thing. The shields. The shields are big jagged random shapes of scrap metal, and I don't care for them. I much prefer round shields or kite shields with a unifying color scheme or heraldry. To me, it is the easiest way to tie a unit together, and it just looks great when executed well. You can make a squad of completely mismatched out of place figures look like they belong together, if you simply give them matching shields. So I hopped on ebay and found three out of production shields from an ancient skeleton warrior boxed set. They are round shields, with a big rat in the middle. Perfect! I purchased the three of them for twelve dollars. Now all I need to do is get a little help from my friend, Ellie. Ellie has experience making silicone molds and pouring resin. In the past, she has done it herself, in order to replicate model kit parts and bits for custom Blood Bowl figures. Because the rat shields are small and flat, they are ideal for molding and cloning. Hopefully we get good results.
Doing minor modifications to wargame miniatures is typically called “converting”. In my GW Warhammer days, it was simply a fact of life that every hobbyist had to do a few conversions every now and then. This was because GW very strictly forbid anybody from using anything besides their own GW brand of figures (Citadel). The problem was that just about every army list had at least one or two unit types or unit options in it for which no official model existed. If you wanted to have that unit, you needed to custom convert the miniatures yourself from something else in the GW line.
And they were strict about only using GW figures. Trust me.
I was still a High School student, the first time I left my home state by myself. In a terrible thunderstorm, I braved the tollway and Chicago traffic to attend an official sanctioned 2-day Warhammer Fantasy tournament at a hotel convention center in Illinois. The tournament had a special requirement. Each player was to bring three models that represented friendly civilians. These would serve as tokens to be captured or protected, depending on the scenario you were playing at any given table. Now, Games Workshop doesn't really make civilian miniatures. They just make little toy soldiers and monsters. Digging around in my collection, though, I found some German Oktoberfest minis. I don't know who made them, and I don't know where I got them, but they were the right scale. I picked out two busty serving girls carrying trays of food and beer mugs, and a fat man with a wheelbarrow and a keg. I stuck them on GW square bases, painted them up, and thought nothing of it. Besides, the rules said that all Armies need to be 100% Citadel GW brand miniatures. It didn't say that special objective markers or tokens had to be. And it wasn't like I really had any other options. There were no Bretonnian peasants or civilians in the official catalog.
I didn't even make it to my first game before there was trouble.
In the hours leading up to the tournament, the hall was opened. The participants were each assigned a table, and told to set up their armies on display for judging. I was proud of my Army. My little knights were colorful, striking, and well painted considering that I was possibly the youngest person there. During the judging, which affected your overall tournament score, I was just wandering the hall, looking at all the other armies, admiring them, and wondering which ones I would get to play against. This was the late '90s, and there was no social media or digital photography. Basically, the only way you ever saw an army was if you saw it in person, or if it was featured in a gaming magazine. Being but a teenager, I must admit I was a little excited at the prospect of my minis being photographed at the tournament, and seen in a gaming publication. So, when I saw a bunch of red shirt staff members clustered around my table, I was hopeful and excited. Then they called me over on the Public Address. I was absolutely elated, but tried my best to contain myself and have some dignity. As I approached the staff, however, I realized that they didn't look very happy.
“Those aren't Citadel miniatures.” they said.
“My whole army is Citadel, though.” I replied, genuinely confused.
“No,” said one of the referees, “Those peasants aren't.”
“But they're just counter tokens!” I said, “The actual army itself is all Citadel. The rules say that the Army must be comprised of GW minis, but those aren't part of the army. They're basically scenery. They're objective markers!”
They informed me that while I was technically right, I shouldn't argue with staff. They docked me points on my army appearance score for my infraction, and told me that if I had those figures on the table during play, my army was not allowed to be photographed by anybody.
As they moved along to continue their judging, the guy at the table next to me told me not to let it ruin my day. He complimented my army, and said that he hoped he would get to play it at some point in the tournament. He'd traveled to the tournament from Indiana, himself, and brought an absolutely stunning Clan Skryre Rat army with him. His name was James, and I got to play him in the second to last match of the second day. It was a great game. His ratmen suffered all sorts of hilarious mishaps from malfunctioning steampunk wonder weapons, which exploded, veered out of control, and shot lightning in random directions, frying just as many of his Skaven as it did my knights. In the end, I was able to squeak out a marginal victory, simply by the grace of my mounted squire cavalry rallying to hold an uncontested table quarter in the last turn. James was an excellent sport, and was all smiles despite the loss.
In fact all my games, except one, were great that weekend. I got to meet players from all across the Midwest, and play against really cool, really competitive army lists and factions that I would never see back home on the local scene. Despite Games Workshop, it was a wonderful experience, thanks to the community of my fellow gamers.
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