Skaven Works-In-Progress

Mutant rat ogres are special choices in a Hell Pit army list. The unit can be purchased with upgrades including: powerhouses, quadrupedal, resilient, extra extremities, brain transplant, and trollblood. These guys are a hoot, and I'm still gathering all the bitz I want to have on hand before starting more. I plan on modeling some with each mutation so that everything is well represented. The mutant rat ogres are going to get more spikes and chains than other rat ogres, and the packmasters will be equipped with spiky whips and mancatchers. The chains and such will be added when the figures get based.

I had this rat ogre torso, which is a difficult and uninteresting pose. I had to stick some more arms on him, no question about it. The arms were from another classic rat ogre, so all the claws are matching (except for the one that needs a nail trim). Although these are mutants, there's something beautiful about the symmetry of the mutations. I've learned from doing so many chaos figures that keeping the mutations balanced and symmetric works best for most figures, unless you're doing a spawn or an aberration.

I don't know if this counts as extra limbs or brain transplant, but it was fun. The three heads look great together. I tried to choose three heads with different expressions; the two classic heads do, and I hope that the angle and expression on the plastic head is just different enough to stand out when painted. This torso got the right arm cut off for mutant rat ogre #1. Because of the angle of the cut, it had to be replaced with a similarly sized plastic arm, which is easier to match the join with. The green stuff covering the join makes the muscles continuous, so it should look superb when painted. The arm is from the chaos mutations sprue, but I was happy with the way that the claws were very rat ogrish, and the musculature matches, and the boils are just a bonus.

This, of course, is the Albion Fenbeast model with a plastic rat ogre head. Most of this model will happen in the painting stage, where it can be made to look like warpstone salve was used to attach all sorts of things to the body. I don't know if I'm going to sharpen the back spikes like the head, or blunt the head spikes, or just leave it all alone. Still needs gap filling.

This is still very much a works-in-progress. I was inspired to do this one while watching the movie Doom, where at the end the movie takes on the first-person shooter perspective like the game and the main character kills a pinky demon with a chainsaw. The pinky demon actually has a set of wheels replacing its back legs, hence the idea. It's based off the Mordheim Thing in the Woods, cruelly sawed off and joined to the torso of the Blood Slaughterer of Khorne. Still needs the lower jaw, fix the front arms, and create a realistic join.

This is another conversion to represent the quadrupedal mutation, based off the dragon ogre lower torso. There was a big size discrepancy between the fat dragon ogre and the skinny rat ogre at the waist which required significant green stuff to fill out. I sculpted some belly musculature, but because there is a belt and nothing below it on the dragon ogre, it was difficult for me to figure out how exactly those muscles should look. I guess we'll find out how I did once it's painted. I plan on leaving the claws but replacing the tail with something rat-like and not spiky. The left shoulder still needs work, I just used green stuff to pose the arm.

This is based off the Mordheim Thing in the Woods model, but with some serious work. The legs are repositioned so it can stand more upright. It's bulked out about the waist and broader in the shoulders to look more like a rat ogre. Had to sculpt ears, fix the lower jaw, make teeth of plasticard, sculpt a loincloth, and add tons of sculpted hair. Huge pain in the ass, and I'm not sure I'm happy with the results. It's also larger than the average rat ogre, but not quite as large as a giant. Here's a size comparison shot.

This is another conversion that is turning out to be an immense amount of work. This is a quadrupedal mutation based off the 40k Tau Krootox model. I liked the way that the claws are curled under and it is sitting up, but I could tell that there was going to be that size discrepancy at the waists of the two models, so I started there. I had to cut and file away a difficult area of the two Krootox halves so that the rat ogre torso would fit against the body at the correct height and without sticking too far forward. Luckily, there was sculpting on the Krootox belly and the rat ogre torso, so I simply combined the two, which I think looks magnificent. The way the upper body is rearing back over the front legs seems very natural and dynamic. When I fill the gap along the back of the waist, I'll try not to ruin that effect.

I also had to file a lot of irritating flash off the Krootox model and cut away the Kroot legs, feet, and some sort of ammunition or something on the beast's back. Needless to say, the entire back and most of the sides will need to be covered with sculpted hair. I also cut and shaved down an attachment point for a tail. Still needs at least one head.

Description to come.

What's next:
More mutant rat ogres are the next item of business. I've got several started and in progress, as you can see, but they're turning out to be quite challenging, especially the quadrupedal mutation. I've tried dragon ogres and Krootox so far, but I've got my eyes open for more, even out-of-print stuff like zoats. I would also like to try some mutant rat ogres using Ogre Kingdoms Yeti bitz, and various trolls, especially from the OOP Citadel era. I also need to order some more bitz, as I really want the packmasters of the mutant rat ogres to have more chains and spiky whips compared to the other rat ogres.