I feel like I should call this post “Painting Progress, At Last!” as with the exception of the Warlock Engineer, I really haven’t done much painting in the past while.  I attribute the bulk of the blame for that to an unforgiving month at work.

I finally varnished the 12 Gutter Runners I started at the top of the month.  I suspect there’s a detail or two on there that could have seen more attention, but at this point, I’m glad to be done with them.

I also spent the weekend powering through some Skyre troops: repainting two Ratling Guns to match the color scheme I’m using for Skyre rats now (dark red and grey for clothes and a stronger iron and brass scheme for machines) as well as painting up another two Jezzails (which puts me at twelve total, for two groups of six, with ten of the current model).

I’ve also gotten started on my Hellpit Abomination.  Since Abomination conversions are kind of a big deal right now, I’m going to give mine its own post.

More significantly, I’ve got the Lifeleech Otyugh I mentioned earlier.  And… I’m not sure.  For some reason, I expected it to be bigger.  I mean, it’s big, but it’s not Large Target, “So big does it go on a 50×50 or a 50×100 base?” big.

Here it is, next to one of the Gutter Runners I’ve take too long to finish painting.

The other thing is, I’m thinking about using it to make another Rat Ogre-mounted Warlord.  I think I could pull the tentacles off (put one in the place of that third leg as a tail), replace the two feet with hands from a Rat Ogre and work in the legs from a Rat ogre.  I’d have to do a bit of sculpting to get a face on the thing, and there’d be a bunch of hair, but I’ve got to do that anyway.

Anyway, now I’m kicking this around.  If that’s where I go, I’m not sure what to use as my Hellpit Abomination.

I mostly finished this guy earlier in the week, but only put the finishing touches on him yesterday.  I generally like to wait to varnish painted minis before I take pictures of them, but it’s incredibly rainy in the nation’s capital right now, and I find varnishing doesn’t work out quite as well when I spray during the pouring rain.

I actually built him more than six months ago, and just never got around to painting him.  Now that there’s paint on him, I can spot enough things that don’t look quite right that I kinda want to build him again.  (The only thing that would make it tricky would be tracking down the electrical-looking things on his back.)

Anyway, his legs are from a Plague Monk (or a Packmaster; I forget).  The torso is a Space Marine chest, the left arm a Packmaster’s Things-Catcher with the ‘Catcher replaced with the blades from a Warlock Engineer, and the right arm is from the same Warlock Engineer.  The head’s a Clanrat’s.  The lenses of the goggles are the wax stamps from purity seals.  The mess on the back is a barrel from an Ogre Bull with electrical fence bits from MacCragge and some plasticard.  The cable is a pretty crappy greenstuff job.   He’s got a scroll because I’ll always have a Dispel Scroll (or two) on any given Warlock Engineer.

Impatient for the Otyugh to arrive in the mail (I mean, I only bought it today), I went ahead and converted up a model that I had an idea for that will probably actually work out pretty well in the new book.

Skaven can now take mounts.  Chieftains and others can ride on litters, on giant rats, and on rat ogres.  I had a chat with Joey on Tuesday about how one would go about modeling that last one; clanrat crotches and rat ogre shoulders don’t mix very well.  To me, the solution was immediate and obvious: a BabyBjörn.

Lots of little things went into this guy.  The weapon is from a Night Runner arm, stuck onto the end of a clanrat spear.  The head and feet are from a Packmaster; I needed feet that would hang down and the head just looks cooler than the clanrat heads.  It’s also a little out of proportion, which just fits in better with the whole baby carrier thing.  The torso and legs are clanrat legs.  Carrier is an Ogre Bull’s punch dagger hollowed out.  The torso and legs on both the rider and ridee are pinned and worked a little bit to get them more upright and not hunched-over.

I have a special shield I’m going to glue on, I think, after everything that’s already there’s had a chance to dry/cure.

Quick!  Someone convince me that I shouldn’t try to use a Lifeleech Otyugh as the basis for a Hellpit Abomination conversion!

I picked up a Beast of Nurgle earlier this week, with this intent, but I’ve since decided that it’s probably not going to work out.  (Which is a shame, because I suspect I’m going to have a very, very hard time selling it off to someone else.)  I think I could accomplish the same result, or better, just by sculpting the whole thing from scratch.

EDIT: Too late!  This thing’s going to be badass.