20260901 August Paint Wrapup
with the sound of rats#
No lede burring here. It’s all rats, all the way down.
It all started in July…
There was talk of an Age of Sigmar escalation league happening at the friendly local gaming store, and what better way to play more rats than structured rat-play. Sign-ups weren’t due until September, but in order to participate without buying anything (you know, that silly rule I gave myself), I needed to finish my Warp Lightning Cannon as it was the only un-built portion of my Skaven Spearhead. And I knew if I were to build it, I needed to paint it as I went, because there’s no way I’m going to try and get my brushes in those impossible to reach insides and paint that thing after the fact.
So I told myself I have to finish this first, then I can sign-up for this event.
Painting it in sub-assembly, there’s a number of in-progress photos, and even a classic revelation where I painted something that just gets covered up anyway.
Ultimately I did have to leave one of the passengers off the floatilla, as it’s a real tight squeeze in the backseats and if you have the stickshift guy not perfectly to one side you can’t fit the wrench guy. Oh well.
rip and tear#
In a continued effort to finish half-completed projects and clear them off my table, I finished my kitbash/proxy/ Thanquol and Boneripper understudies. I don’t care for the modern Thanquol and Boneripper model, so I attempted to make my own (and save myself near $100). This was also in part due to me not liking the Skaventide box set Grey Seer (and the 3rd edition AoS Spearhead box being unavailable so I couldn’t get that Grey Seer) so I wanted to incorporate a Grey Seer I could use independently of the model.
I ended up using a “Classic Grey Seer” (which is the same model as included in the “Classic Screaming Bell” set, and I swear I’ve seen labeled somewhere as “Grey Seer/Thanquol” before but I can’t find that reference now) and a Rat Ogre from the Isle of Blood box set in order to best replicate the “Classic” line of models, as seen below:
And my recreation attempts:
While I set the Rat Ogre on the correct size base as the modern Thanquol, I wanted the Grey Seer to be usable as its own model if I didn’t want to run Boneripper - it’s a great model and I had fun painting it. So I carved a little inset into the cork I used and have the base magnet under that spot so the Grey Seer/Thanquol can pop in and out as needed. I painted the Grey Seer in maybe 2023/2024 and the rat ogre has been sitting like 2/3rds completed since then, so that’s another project off the table.
and the chaff#
In addition to these larger, unfinished projects, I also had a handful of partially painted Skaven clanrats I decided to knock out for some quick victories. Nothing fancy here, just your average rats:
But for this 5th rat, I did something special. What started as committing to a bit too hard turned into a self-imposed painting challenge, painting a purely monochromatic rat.
It was actually a very fun and fast little project, some unexpected highlight practice, and I may use a modified version with some torch-yellow/orange highlights to paint Eshin units if/when I paint any Eshin units. (I do have like 40 still on sprue clan rats, maybe I’ll just paint up a unit of Eshin Clanrats instead.) Might work as some blending practice in the future too.
the walls were alive#
I also whipped through some Spearhead terrain in order to paint more Spearhead terrain so I can use the terrain to Spearhead… or something.
this trip is a business#
So where does that leave us?
You can see all the entries that were started in 2023 and only just now finished. Pricing-wise, I had a hell of a time. I did price the WLC at full, as that was the complete WLC kit - however, since I was only painting the “Boneripper” portion of the Thanquol model(s), I opted to give that half the normal retail price. The terrain I also priced out at 20% of the “Spearhead Starter Set” (and then 2/3rds and 1/3rd of the 20% based on size). I did get them through the Skaventide box but I felt trying to determine pricing from that was even more confusing.
Fantasy/AoS has finally caught up with Blood Bowl on a raw model count, but the low-cost Clanrats are keeping it about $50 under the BB retail value. Also, it turns out I don’t have a straight-up Terrain category - I think I did initially, then second-guessed myself and decided I wouldn’t end up painting any terrain. So those got slotted under the Other category for now. August does bring us into the $400 range, closing in on $500.
It’s not quite the single highest number of models per month, but it did edge out the single highest retail value for a month. In April that was largely carried by the three centerpiece models that got painted for competition, wheras this month it was purely organic (and slight schedule panic).
The only things of note here are the Fantasy category matching or approaching the Blood Bowl category in models and retail. Now those two are leaving everyone else in the dust. (And here I thought the Tau ship was going to bridge that gap.)
The carry-forward looks mighty familiar right about now. No real change there.
The only new kid on that block is the Warlock Bombardier (I always want to say Warplock instead) who is part of this Skaven painting sprint. I’m slowly painting towards my final list for the league event, so I’m trying to work ahead on some of the bigger point models while I can. Which also means, prepare for a lot more Skaven in the coming months. Which gives me all of September to finish … 8 infantry sized models and some assorted clanrats. That’s doable.
and now for the weather#
Other August posts you might be interested in reading:
If you want to get ahold of me, you can now reach me at floppyparts@proton.me. Send me whatever you want.
