This has made me tempted to start playing Warhammer again. Skaven were my favourite for the fact that win or lose, something hilarious would happen. (This is probably partially due to the fact that when given a choice I always went for the more powerful but more likely to go out of control option.)

@ DaveDKT:

Thanks. When I started I mostly learned from the British White Dwarf – back then it was still a hobbyist magazine rather than glorified sales catalog. I think people starting today have it much better – there is a plethora of amazing painting tutorials on Youtube that teach you not just the basics but also advanced techniques.

Like for example, theother day I saw a dude who reverse engineered the technique the Evy Metal teams use to do the feathering effect on the Tyrranid carapaces:

Would have never stumbled onto that on my own. Hell, when I was starting it took me ages to figure out how to properly dry-brush, or how to use a palette to thin down paints.

I think that 3D printing is not there yet with respect to detail. Plus I’m kinda shit at 3D design, so I don’t think I could do any useful conversions even if I owned a 3D printer. I actually enjoy the collecting aspect of it too. Not so long ago I got into a bidding war on a unit of Dwarf spearmen. Dwarfs can’t even use spears in this edition, but I wanted those because they were amazing, old school models. :)

@ Zekiel:

Yeah, it does. The current incarnation looks like this:

It’s good but it didn’t really fit with the overall theme – I wanted more science than magic. :) Plus it is probably best used for bigger games.

The Island of Blood was a god send for Skaven players – eBay is literally overflowing with loose models, and extra spures from that set – these are actually some of the cheepest and most widely available models. That 60 model unit was basically about three $5 bags of IoB clanrat parts. :)

But yeah, I remember those times. I have a Dwarf army from that era that is almost 100% solid metal. It is kind of a mess in terms of miss-matched bad paint jobs. You can sort of trace my evolution as a painted by looking at these models. I’m slowly stripping them down, and re-organizing them into something usable. Back then I was just randomly buying models that I liked or which were available and not all the units are complete.

Ah this makes me feel nostalgic! I played Warhammer back in 4th edition and had a small-ish Skaven army (and bigger armies of Undead and Orcs & Goblins). Back then they didn’t do plastic skavenslaves so using the proper models for them was ridiculously expensive (in terms of money-to-points ratio). As a result I just ended up with two medium-sized Skaven Warriors units, a medium-sized unit of Stormvermin, and lots of characters, war machines and specialist units. I did have a Screaming Bell though, which was cool (both in terms of the model and its gameplay effects). Does that still exist in Warhammer?

Stormvermin would look awesome either jet black fur or even albino (with red/pink eyes). Got to say your brushwork is awesome. I used to have the empire vs lizardmen set, can’t say i loved playing as there was nobody around me who did….and i didn’t know how. I just loved customizing and putting together scenes i think….ever thought of fully customizing by going down the 3D printed route?