Chaos Ratmen, or the Origins of Skaven

Everyone has them: miniatures that for whatever reason, you associate strongly with your hobby origin story.

For me, these old-school Chaos Ratmen are some of those miniatures. Produced in 1986, these guys were a decade old when I arrived in wargaming in 1996. And although I never played Warhammer Fantasy, seeing these awesome figures in the pages of White Dwarf magazine really helped kindle my imagination in those early years. After an adolescence surrounded by the elves and dwarves of Tolkien lore, seeing a completely reimagined fantasy race -- imbued as they were with magic, mystery and lore -- was absolutely exhilarating.

Fast forward 15 years, and I managed to get my hands on a bag of loose, poorly painted Skaven models at the Games Plus gaming auction. At about $1 per figure, I knew it was a good price, but it wasn't until I pawed through the bag that I knew I'd found a real treasure trove.

The bag contained five "Chaos Ratmen" sculpted by Jes Goodwin, from the "C47" release back in 1986. This was before the Skaven were a proper army ... these guys were just another type of Chaos mutant in the Warhammer World. These figures are just completely unique in a way that only old-school Citadel minis can capture. Here's the original sell-sheet.

Anyway, the bag included plenty of mid-1990s Skaven figures too, which are plenty awesome, as well as some Marauder and Harlequin rat-guys...maybe 12 figures in all. Everything went into paint stripper and I forgot about them until last weekend when, in a burst of inspiration, I dredged the Chaos Ratmen out of the depths of my lead mountain and gave them the brushwork they do dearly deserved.

I'm not sure if it's visible in these pics, but I deliberately tried to stick to a simple paint scheme in keeping with the old-school nature of these figures.

Doubtless they'll take to the battlefield soon enough, either in Song of Blades & Heroes or Open Combat!

-- Patrick, Chicago Skirmish Wargames club member

Games Plus Miniatures Auction Coming Up Oct. 6

This weekend many of us here in Chicago will be making the pilgrimage to Games Plus, an excellent suburban game shop that's hosted many of our game nights. Oct. 6 Is their twice-annual miniatures game auction, and it's a fantastic opportunity to gamers to get their hands on miniatures, terrain, hobby supplies, rulebooks and more for very attractive prices.

I'd hazard a guess that most of the projects and games we've run over the years -- from our Song of Blades & Heroes campaigns to our 28mm Mech Attack convention games -- have been catalyzed by cheap pick-ups from the game auction. It's worth the drive if you're anywhere near northern Illinois on Sunday!

-- Patrick, Chicago Skirmish Wargames club member

Auction Report: We Came, We Saw, We Bid

Last weekend a handful of us ventured out to Games Plus for the twice-yearly games auction. We made a point to attend the miniatures day, when thousands of minis -- boxed and loose, painted and unpainted -- were auctioned off in a marathon bidding session lasting from 10 a.m. to about 8 p.m. These photos are sort of a general look at the chaotic array of loot that was available at the auction.

A little bit of everything, eh?

Here at Chicago Skirmish Wargames, we added a whole bunch of cool new stuff to our coffers. In no particular order, here's what we carried out of the dungeon (er, Games Plus) at the end of the evening:

• 11-inch vinyl Cthulhu model kit, unassembled
• Warhammer Storm of Magic templates (extremely cool and useful to represent all manner of tabletop area effects)
• 2 40k dreadnoughts from the Assault on Black Reach box set -- one of the few ways to get multimelta dread arms!
• 40k manufactorum terrain kit, new on sprue
• A batch of 10 desert islands that could be used for Uncharted Seas or naval historical
• 4x4-foot Zuzzy gaming mat with a desert wasteland texture
• Undead dracolich and a few smaller undead dragons, poorly painted and ready to be stripped
• Assorted terrain pieces: jungle trees, seaweed, unpainted Armorcast resin bits, scratchbuilt medieval building, sci-fi bunkers
• Bunches of old (and new) rulebooks, codexes and army books
• And countless "grab bags" of random assorted sci-fi and fantasy stuff. Priced at $5 to $10 each, these packs were just so much fun to buy and we ended up handfuls of useful stuff.

Mark your calendars -- the next Games Plus auction will take place in a mere 6 months!

Where You'll Find Us This Weekend

The Games Plus gaming auction is upon us again! This twice-yearly event, which spans four days in March and October, is one of the highlights of CSW's event schedule. In the month leading up to each auction, gamers from around the Chicago area drop off unwanted or surplus game books, supplements, dice, miniatures, board games, terrain, hobby supplies and more. The stalwart staff of Games Plus organizes the many thousands of submission and will present them for auction this weekend.

Of course, the highlight for us is the miniatures day. The auction starts around 10 a.m. Sunday and continues nonstop until the last lot is sold -- typically around early evening. Painted and unpainted miniatures from every conceivable game and manufacturer are auctioned off, one after the other, at very attractive prices. Many members of Chicago Skirmish Wargames have personal stories about particularly sought-after miniatures or kits they've acquired at the auction.

If you're anywhere near the Chicago area on March 10, you really owe it to yourself to stop on by and check out the auction. That's where you'll find us on Sunday!

Terrain: From the Auction Bench to the Battlefield

At the Games Plus miniatures game auction in October, I nabbed a pair work-in-progress terrain pieces. They were on their way toward becoming a pair of urban ruins, but their owner decided to get rid of them before completion. When I picked them up -- for bargain prices -- they were basically two chopped-up resin building wall corners sitting on a piece of hardboard. No extra bits, no rubble, no gubbins, no embellishment -- and no paint. Just barebones resin walls hot-glued to the hardboard.

After some hemming and hawing about exactly how I might finish off these pieces, I just bit the bullet, pulled out my foam rubble bin, and started slinging glue around. These pictures show the finished product, which hit the battlefield in last week's In The Emperor's Name session. I've included a couple of figures for scale: a wasteland raider and a sniper lying in the rubble.

I mostly used expanded polystyrene chunks (bead foam, the kind that is made up of little balls) as well as blue foam insulation. The chunks were glued on haphazardly to create a rubble zone in the center of the terrain piece, with the walls still standing on either side. I glued everything in place, then threw in a bunch of spare bits: drinking straws for pipes, coffee stirrers for metal beams, wooden craft sticks for broken floorboards, etc. I added little bits of wire poking out of the foam chunks as concrete rebar.

 

 

 

After affixing all the decorative bits, I slathered the whole thing in a thick coat of blue-gray house paint. My goal was to seal the foam chunks so spray paint wouldn't melt them. The house paint created a nice unified surface, but alas I must not have done enough coats, because some of the foam chunks still melted a little bit during the spray paint stage. I was initially dismayed, but the foam didn't melt away into a puddle of goo...they just shrank a bit, and the effect was pretty cool. Crisis averted!

 

 

On to the painting! I sprinkled on some gravel and ballast to break up the smooth areas of the ground floor, then sprayed the whole thing black. After that I sprayed a few targeted blasts of brown, followed by a rough textured gray spray that unified the whole thing. 

Once this was dry, I used a big brush to splatter on a rough coat of brown wash, then drybrushed with a light tan to pick up the highlights. The final step was to add some patches of dead grass flock to the ruin. I guess I could have gone crazy with detailing, but I was more interested in making this piece quick and simple.

  

Here are a few more pics of this piece in last week's game. When these photos were taken, I hadn't yet completed all the steps described above, but the terrain still looks pretty cool. Pictured are Karl's Squats and Tom's Necrons.

 

Remember, the auction lot included two buildings. The second is currently a work in progress. It's about half the size of this piece, though, so I anticipate having it done in a week or so. Check back for more pics of the second piece!

-- Patrick, Chicago Skirmish Wargames club member

Where you'll find us this weekend

This coming weekend is the Games Plus spring auction, an annual event that draws gamers to suburban Chicago for 10 straight hours of auction fun. It's a great place to find deals on rare, OOP or just plain weird miniatures and gaming paraphernalia.

The event runs for four days, capping off the excitement with the miniatures auction on Sunday. It'll start at 10 a.m. this year and will probably wrap up around 8 p.m. A contingent of folks from Chicago Skirmish Wargames — including your intrepid blog editor — will be at Games Plus for most if not all of the Sunday auction.

Are you planning to come out? It's well worth the drive for folks in Indiana, Michigan and Wisconsin. Post a comment here and we'll be sure to say "hi!"