5) Down to Brass Tacks: The Craftiness of Rats

When collecting an army for wargaming, it is important to pace yourself and to set goals. It's also important to have a plan, because this is a time-consuming project. For my new Ratkin army, I decided that I would need to power through the Eighty basic Rat warriors that comprise the bulk of the army first, just to get the most repetitive assembly and painting out of the way.

The ideal weekend for me to start this phase of the project was Thanksgiving weekend, because I had Friday through Sunday to work on it. It was an especially good weekend for me to dive into this project, because all my typical weekend chores were done on Wednesday and Thursday to prepare the house for Thanksgiving dinner, so my weekend was even more open than usual.

In the very least, I wanted to get the minis clipped off the sprues, cleaned up, glued together, and primed. From there, I would move onto assembly line batch painting them. I decided not to move onto any assembly or painting of any other units until I was totally done with the warriors. Getting to build and paint a cool elite unit like Nestguard, Clawshots, or Ogres would be a little reward for getting the warriors done. Building the warriors was especially time consuming because I had to clip off the shields that I didn't like, and sand down a flat spot on every left arm so that I could attach the round shields that I want. I only had to do about sixty of these arms, because I happened to have a bunch of old marauder left arms lying around, and they were the exact perfect size for the Ratkin. Some of the arms were not angled well for holding shields, so I had to glue them a little crooked, and then use white gap filler putty once the glue had set.

By the end of the day on Friday, I had clipped all the parts off the sprues, and glued the legs and the heads onto each of the Eighty Rat warriors. I took a break and sat in the recliner with a couple of my pet rats out for playtime. I decided to just browse the internet for a little while. That was where the temptation began. I caught myself looking at more miniatures.

“Yes...Yes...” whispered the rat named Aster from inside the hood of my sweatshirt, “Black Friday deals sales. Click tap. Add buy...”

For a moment, my finger hovered over the screen of my smart human puzzle box device...

The hunchbacked brown rat, Umber, grinned widely, from the folds of my throw blanket, and repressed a squeaky chuckle with one tiny hand.

“Yes... yes...” I repeated, before suddenly snapping out of my trance, “No! No! I can't. I can't buy any more minis. I have over 150 miniatures to paint already. No shopping!”

The rats hissed, and scrambled up the back of my recliner.

I quickly navigated away, and instead started looking at paint schemes that I might use to paint the warriors that I was currently assembling. This was okay, until I found some cool conversions and kit bashes that people had done on rat ogres. I started thinking about some old unassembled Warmachine Horde figures that were lying around, that would be the right size and scale to modify my rat ogres. Next thing I knew, I was digging through my spare parts.

I realized what was happening, and I stopped.

“No!” I said, “I have to stay focused. I can't start on another unit while I am in the middle of this one. I have to stay on target, and power through these eighty warriors before I even think about starting on another unit.”

There was no response from Aster or Umber. The two old rats were fast asleep on my chair, and my fudge stripe cookies were mysteriously gone from the side table. I realized that it was 1130 PM, so I tucked them into their nest, and went to bed.

I finished assembling and priming all eighty figures on Saturday. It was my first time doing the two tone drybrush priming. I haven't painted minis in 18 years, but apparently it's all the rage now to spray prime the figures black first, and then drybrush white to highlight all the raised areas. I have to say, it really does help bring out the details on the mini, and it does make painting easier. I'm a believer.

It was time to move on to painting! I decided to use the same color pallet that I used for my Mordheim gang. Infantry with hand weapons would be red uniforms, infantry with spears would be blue, and the metal (Nestguard) Ratorean Guard heavy infantry would be purple. The plan was to assembly line paint ten troops at a time, one color at a time. As far as fur goes, each batch of ten would all get the same fur color, in order to make things smooth and expedient. My first batch of ten were brown furred rats in red uniforms, and I finished them on Saturday night. My second batch of ten were grey furred rats in red uniforms, which I finished on Sunday morning. It consistently took me three hours to paint each batch. In both cases, I found myself nitpicking little details, and wanting to go back and do proper shading and highlights and cleanup lines afterwards. I resisted the urge, and reassured myself that this was going to be a massive horde army, and I needed to limit how much time I spent on each individual mini, or I was never going to be done.

I took a break from the basement, folded laundry, and cooked a big pot of soup for the wife and kid, who had been out working at a local farm in the cold and rain all morning. It was done just in time for them to come home from work, and warm up. We had lunch together, and then everyone was off and running to do their own thing. I looked at the clock. I had enough time to do another three hour session and knock out ten more minis, but I decided instead to affix shields to the twenty that I had already done, and do a little photo-shoot to document my progress. The attempts to make molds of the little rat shields by myself had not produced satisfactory results, but I figured something else out. When I was cleaning out the basement, I had found a jar of fancy antique upholstery tacks. They were the perfect size to be little bronze shields for my ratkin. All it took was clippers and a pin vise, and we were in business.

Seeing my twenty rats arrayed in formation on the game table, and getting some nice photos of them was a big morale booster, because it showed me the progress that I had made. I was ¼ of the way through my core infantry units, and I was proud of not only my progress, but my results. My rats were looking good. In fact, I was so happy with the upholstery tack shields, that I decided to do the same thing for the spear unit, too. I was going to have to get help molding resin copies of the old rat shields that I had bought, so those were going to be reserved for the elite Ratorean Guard unit.