This year has been all about the rats so far and it’s been fun. Although the number of games I’ve won seems to have steadily dropped over time. That’s not the worst thing in the world, I play rats because I enjoy the fluff and the aesthetic, not for their hard hitting, punchy and incredibly reliable elite units (wink). Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying ratkin are a bad army, on the contrary, there are some great players who play very effectively with them, it’s just that I’m not one of them.
It’s fair to say my army has seen better days since I completed it in 2021. So, this year I decided to try and give my vermin a bit of a glow up. This has involved removing models from bases, giving both models and bases some fresh paint and then repopulating the bases. It’s not necessarily a time-consuming process, but it can be a bit fiddly. Because of this the relatively good start I made at the start of the year slowed to a virtual halt, as did a kit bash I had started to replace one of my tunnel runner regiments.
However, with Steve Hildrew’s Bullrun on the horizon I’ve found myself suddenly reaching for the paint brushes again. This is the third Bullrun event Steve’s run and I’m really looking forward to it because it is very different in terms of scoring and scenarios to most events I attend. Importantly it has a hobby component to the overall score, so for this reason I decided that whilst I will be unlikely to make it past the bottom table (and I certainly wouldn’t sniff at coming away with another of Steve’s lovely wooden spoons) I can do something about the general appearance of my army.
As is the way with so many things, I haven’t had the time to do as much as I would like, but I’m really happy that I have had time to sort out three of my core units. My warriors (who will be acting as Shock Troops) and Shock Troops have been given some highlights and a bit more colour. With the Shock Troops I’m really happy that their skull helmets look more noticeably skull like – this is a bit of fluff I really like and I’m quite keen to build another horde of these.
With the warriors I’m excited to have spent some time on their shields. I love the mix of designs and really wanted to bring these out.
The tunnel runners (the new Goblin chariots and mincers) are simply fab, and whilst I don’t mind the Deadzone models, I’ve wanted to do something a bit more interesting with this unit for a while. It’s also got me thinking about how great it would be if Mantic could produce a few more characters/more dynamic individuals for the factions. Don’t get me wrong, the rank and file plastics are great, but it would be nice to have a range of models that could be added to mutli-bases to create some extra energy.
So that’s it for now. Time is not completely up, and I have a couple of little extra things I’m hoping to add before Sunday, but the main elements are done and I’m thoroughly looking forward to getting on the motorway on Sunday.
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