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

Chicago Painter Retrospective: John Stachura

Occasionally we cross paths with old-school painters and gamers from the early days of the hobby. Last year I bought some unpainted miniatures from John Stachura, and as part of the deal he included a small batch of painted medieval figures that I eventually put to good use in our skirmish games. You can see them in the photo above. The classic styling and detail prompted me to get back in touch with John to learn a little bit more about his involvement in the hobby, both historically and today. Hope you enjoy this interview retrospective!

CSW Karl: When did you get started gaming? Were you a painter from day one?

John Stachura: I started gaming back in the early 1970s and originally used Humbrol enamels as my choice of paints. To put it in perspective a little better, I think my 5-year-old grandson could have done better. At this stage of painting, I still didn’t have a clue on even how to get paint to flow smoothly from my brush to the figure. I eventually figured it all out and started to experiment with the enamels.

Karl: I hear you won some awards as you were just getting started...

John: Yes, these are part of my 25mm Napoleonics that earned me “Best of Show” at a convention back in 1979, as I finally started to figure it all out on how to paint.

 
I also won the Wargame Award from Military Miniature Society of Illinois show the same year.

I pretty much cleaned up for the next few years in all the painting competitions, so I retired from entering any figures at the local conventions and ended up judging most of the painting competitions during this time. The only other competition I did enter was the Armory National painting competition, which was judged at the 1985 Gen Con convention.

The rules were simple. First, the figures had to be painted utilizing Armory acrylic paints, and second, you had to paint a knight from the assortment of knights currently available from Grenadier Miniatures. You could do some conversions to the figures, which I did by adding in different crests to their helms, wine bottle lead to the back of their helms, and some reanimation of the arms. I thought this shouldn’t be too hard, right?!

Karl: But up until now, you had only used enamels, right?

John: Yes. This was to be my first foray into using acrylics. There was enough of a learning curve to make me rethink why am I doing this. I didn’t attend Gen Con that year because of some family commitments, and Jeff and Rich from Games Plus took my entry up with them to Gen Con for the competition. I saw Jeff the next weekend after Gen Con, and I think he was more excited than I was. I ended up winning the Masters Vignette category in the competition and with it came a gold medal and a $500 gift certificate to Games Plus! Below are the images of my winning entry.

Karl: That's amazing, considering that this was all converted from stock metal Grenadier sculpts. What came next?

John: Over the years I’ve painted up plenty of stuff:

• Medieval armies in 15mm and 25mm
• 15mm Starship trooper company (yes, we did this back in the 80s)
• 25mm French Revolutionary Army (currently part of the collection of one of my friends from the West Coast)
• 15mm Napoleonic Naval (no pics, but still part of my collection) 
• Warhammer 40,000 figures for Space Crusade and Space Hulk (currently in the collection of one of my best friends) 
• 25 mm Minifig French Napoleonic Army (mostly in the collection of a dear friend from Canada)
• 18mm Napoleonic French and Prussian armies for 1806 (images below ... this is what I’m currently working on) 
• And assorted minis from Thunderbolt Mountain's Arthurian range

If you been a reader of Wargames Illustrated, I think images of some of my Thunderbolt Mountain figures are in issue #123. My daughters have already threatened me with bodily harm if I sell any of them off, and they've already divided them up on who gets what. I also have a good size group of Dragon 1/6 scale figures that I play skirmish games in the backyard with my grandson, Will.

Here are the 18mm Napoleonics.

Here's my stuff from Thunderbolt Mountain.

 

 

Karl: Very impressive! You know, you've got the makings of a nice warband for Song of Blades & Heroes! They would be welcome on our game table anytime.

John: Thanks! I don’t really consider myself an artist, though my two daughters are. One majored in arts and the other studied illustration as a minor alongside her nursing degree. They are both very talented artists. My claim to fame is I’ve formulated a technique that I’ve refined over the years I’ve been painting, so I pretty much experiment while getting the figures to look a certain way. My daughters have told me that I have a great eye for colors, which has probably helped me the most.

Karl: It definitely shows in these photos. Thanks a lot for sharing them with us. Any parting advice for long-suffering painters?

John: Just soldier on, gents, and keep experimenting with your painting techniques! Sometimes you’ll surprise yourself with your own accomplishments!

-- Karl, Chicago Skirmish Wargames club member
-- Photos by John Stachura

More Reinforcements: Knights and Pavises

Here's a look at yet another batch of figures that I didn't paint. Don't worry, I have some of my own creations on display at the bottom of this post!

A year or so ago I purchased a massive load of Essex 25mm medieval miniatures from a local gamer here in the Chicago area.  My intent was to build a "Good Guy" army to counter my "Bad Guy" Kings of War army. The Bad Guy chaos army is still slowly growing, but the idea of building an entirely new army, especially one as miniatures-intensive as this one would be, has become much less appealing.

I finally sold most of it off this this month, but I kept the eight miniatures you see in this post. These had come painted to a standard quite above my own. I added a few missing weapons, touched up a few places that had chipped, and the results are quite pleasing.

The classic blackline and shading work is not a ground-breaking technique anymore, but it's very well done and far beyond my own abilities. The freehand work on these figures is truly impressive.

Check out the scabbards!

This got me thinking about some of the other work I had seen while visiting the painter, a local chap named Jon Stachura. I contacted him and asked more about his work and he was kind enough to offer up a wealth of photos and information about his long career as a miniatures painter. Look for that in a subsequent blog post.

Regarding the miniatures themselves, the Essex miniatures are a bit bigger than some other classic 25mm lines and are chunky, even by the standards of their day. Still, the details are quite good, and they are a step up in quality from most of the Old Glory 25mm figures that I've seen.

They are shorter than many current 28mm figure lines (such as the ubiquitous Games Workshop), but the chunky dimensions means that they would probably look good on the same tabletop if kept in their own units. And it will work perfectly for any of the warband-style skirmish games that the club plays regularly. All in all, this is a set of minis that I am thrilled to be able to add to my collection. I saved a small batch of the unpainted Essex to add to this group for my Of Gods & Mortals warband.

After our most recent Kings of War game, I decided to upgrade my chaos army to make the archers a little more powerful. Here is a fast and cheap way to build an "extra rank" of pavises to bulk out such units!

I've currently got 30 chaos archers (old Battlemasters figures) painted up, but 40 will get me to horde-sized unit in Kings of War, which is much more potent. I have exactly zero interest in painting more of them, and I'm not even sure I even have any more. So instead I decided to individually base and paint 10 pavises I had lying around from the aforementioned lot of Essex medieval miniatures.

The pavieses are supported by sections of toothpicks, both of which are just pressed into premixed concrete patch and cement, which readers of this blog will recall is one of my favorite products for figure bases.

The painting is just black gesso undercoat, base colors, drybrushed base, a few indecipherable red chaos runes and dip, followed by the matt varnish and done!

I would recommend only that anyone doing this project do one thing differently than I did. Put the pavise in the middle of the base rather than the front edge. Some of mine ended up a bit tippy, and I had to add some weight (old metal sprue) under the opposite side. Also, the pavises already hide most of the basing on your front rank of miniatures, so if you put the pavise at the front, you loose some valuable space in which to put your basing scheme in clear view.

Look for these pavises in our next game of Kings of War!

-- Karl, Chicago Skirmish Wargames club member

Figures You Forgot: Shadowrun

Here at Chicago Skirmish Wargames we're always looking for rare and lesser-known lines of miniatures. At a Little Wars paint-and-take table a couple years ago, I painted up a couple of Shadowrun miniatures. I was just wasting a bit of time at the convention, but when I got home I found out that these figures were spot-on 28mm figures.

Compared to many -- perhaps most 28mm ranges -- that have inflated "heroic" proportions, these figures are very close to true human proportions. Here are the three figures I painted up compared to a Games Workshop Imperial guardsman who is exactly 28mm from sole to eye.

They are based on Proxie Models bases (edges blended in with filler) which are about half as thick as Games Workshop slottabases. When the Shadowrun miniature with its integral base is glued on top, its sole comes to almost exactly the same height as a model based on a slottabase.

I don't have all the info, but apparently in the mid to late 90s these were made by Ral Partha for FASA, and they are still available from Iron Wind Metals. At about $4 each, they're fairly average in price, but this month they are on sale. The sale price is closer to about $3 each.

Though the mediocre pictures don't do the figures any favors, this line of miniatures has about 200 sculpts, including all manner of humans, supernatural creatures, monsters, and other races in the typical 90s-era cyberpunk style that Shadowrun was so well know for. The line even includes a variety of motorcycles and trikes.

 Lastly, here's a bit of history. In the early 90s Grenadier produced a line of Shadowrun miniatures. Slightly smaller in stature, with far fewer figures in the range, they are nonetheless very characterful sculpts if you can find them now that they are unfortunately out of print. The three basecoated models in the picture below are a "Metahuman Gang" pack I picked up some time ago. The figure on the far right is (I think?) a Dwarf from the currently available Ral Partha/Iron Wind Shadowrun line.

And there you have it! A trip down memory lane, as well as a history lesson.

-- Karl, Chicago Skirmish Wargames club member

New Paint for Old Friends: Necromunda Van Saar

I've got a blast from the past for you today in the form of my new Van Saar gang, which I just completed after collecting them off and on for many years. Further down I'll also go over a couple of nifty wargaming products for the gamer on the budget: brush-on matt varnish from Winsor Newton and plastic scenic wargaming bases from Champ Industries.

These Van Saar figures represent one of my earliest gaming purchases back in the mid-1990s. Memory is fuzzy, but I may even have purchased the gang before I bought the actual Necromunda game. Just looking at the box gives me warm fuzzy nostalgic feelings.

Unlike many of my other early gaming purchases, I painted these guys quickly, though to a standard that I find slightly embarrassing today. For some reason I've recently become rather taken with the idea of playing Necromunda, even though it's nearly a decade since the last new Necromunda product release and more than a year since the miniatures were unceremoniously dropped from the Games Workshop catalog.

Luckily, over the years I've managed to gather up enough minis for four factions, So my old gang went for a swim in paint stripper and I dug out a handful of other Van Saar and assorted scum models and got to work.

Most the gangers are stock with a few exceptions. Here are a few converted figures. The first ganger here is one of the multi-part Van Saar figures released later in the game's history. He has a Van Saar head, but hands from plastic Imperial Guardsmen and a Heresy Miniatures sniper rifle. The rifle is not really a practical or common weapon in the Necromunda game, but it can easily serve as a lasgun or autogun and is really an admission that these figs will see battle in games outside of Necromunda. The heavy is a Heavy Stubber gunner with an Imperial Guard flamethrower. The hose to the tanks in back is a piece of guitar string.

These next two are also multi-part Van Saar plastic figures. On the left, I've given her a head from Alpha Forge Salvage Crew (formerly sold by Megaminis) and a Warhammer sword hand. The fellow to the right has a new hands from plastic Imperial Guardsmen and a Rogue Trader-era Space Ork plasma gun, one of my favorite Games Workshop bits of all time. (I'm currently trading for more if you've got any…)

A quick word about the multi-part Van Saar who were released eight years or so after the originals: It's always nice to be able to add some variety to your warband, but in many ways these figures represent a missed opportunity. They do not have any of the slender grace of the original figures. The details are chunky compared to the finely sculpted original figures. Oddly, none of the heads on the sprue have the signature Van Saar hairstyles, or facial hair.

As usual, I opted for a fast paint scheme. All the figures were primed with white gesso mixed to a grey color. then I block-painted all of the basic colors, followed by a drybrush of light grey on the hair and light green on the green sections. The bases were given a brown wash and then they were brush dipped with Minwax Polyshades Tudor Satin.

To cut the shine from the Minwax, I varnished them with Windsor Newton Galleria Acrylic Matt Varnish at full concentration with no water added.

It was my first use of this particular brush-on varnish and I am completely sold on it. After years of searching, I have found my brush-on varnish! It's cheap, has low odor and it cuts all the shine in a coat or two. Eight ounces (250ML) is just $8 at my local art store! I've read online that you should use thin coats to avoid clouding the miniature. I found that it dried flat in just a few minutes and I was able to touch up spots I missed quickly.

However it does stay tacky for a while. If you plan on doing any painting over the varnish, it's probably best to leave the figures to dry thoroughly first.

Now let's see. What's in this cigar box?

Why it appears to be a Van Saar gang!

Let's take a closer look... here are the Juves

Lasgun and autogun gangers. I'm very pleased with the way the dark crimson color came out on thier weapons. I'm going to do more of this in the future.

Other gangers

Heavies.

Leaders and close combat gangers

The figure with the bandana is actually a Scum figure, but since he's already wearing half of a Van Saar body suit and the appropriate facial hair I decided to paint him as one of the gang. This is the other Scum figure that came in a pack with the Scum above. One of my favorites, this independent fellow is definitely not a permanent part of anyone's gang.

All the figures had their slotta tabs trimmed down to a peg under each foot and were based on Champ Industries plastic scenic bases with small holes drilled for the pegs.

They are excellent bases with crisp casting and none of the drawbacks (flat bottom, bubbles, flash, etc) that one gets with resin bases. They were originally created for the Rezolution: Dark Tomorrow game and are now available direct for the ridiculously low price of 30 cents each! The only drawback is that each of two themes only has 4 different sculpts.

However, they're easy to modify and really simple to work with! One wonders why more companies aren't making plastic bases.

There you have it. My first Necromunda gang gets a new lease on life and some more useful products for the thrifty gamer. I'm not done with Necromunda either. I've got the figures for Escher and Cawdor and maybe Delaque and Orlock gangs as well.

Lastly, this figure just came to me from Tim a week ago.

With his flamboyant outfit, lack of insignia and bulbous head, I though he was a Genestealer Cult character. However it turns out he is an Imperial Psyker. Necromunda has rules for Wyrds (psychics) and I think this guy will be perfect!

-- Karl, Chicago Skirmish Wargames club member