Wednesday 13 February 2019

The Path to Damnation (Part 2) - Ratling Renegades

When I rolled up my chaos renegade warband, I think the unit I was most pleased about was the three ratlings. Not because ratlings are iconic followers of chaos (the reverse is probably true), but because I've always enjoyed modelling and playing with figures of a ratling's stature. I even made a full ratling Inquisitorial retinue after all!

I already had four or five spare ratlings, so it was a case of selecting three to work out how to chaosify them. To my mind, the key change needed was a head swap. The classic Rogue Trader ratlings have beaming round faces - not the sort of look that a trio of corrupted ratlings would sport. In a case of serendipity, I also happened to have a selection of Maxmini's Fallen Legionnaire heads (left over from an aborted Blood Bowl hobgoblin project).

I cut off the original heads, replaced them with the nasty chaotic ones, and sculpted new collars:




After that, it was simply a case of selecting a suitable colour scheme to fit with my Khornate theme:

A trio of ratling renegades - Spite, Malice and Bile.

I went for a pale green-tinged flesh, with yellow eyes and touches of purple. The red was washed with Agrax earthshade to dull it down. I was pleased with the brass masks, which were gold given several washes of brown and black.


I think the pale flesh, grey clothing and deep red armour is just about right for Khorne. I'm really pleased at how much the look of the figures has changed with just simple head swaps and colour choices.

The contrast between the bright loyalist ratling and his renegade counterpart below just illustrates the point!


I've started building some of the six beastmen I'll need, and have put the finishing touches to my renegade Inquisitor conversion. I think the Inquisitor will be the next on the painting table.

Part 1 - Creating the Warband

28 comments:

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    1. Thanks! Evil and cute ticks a lot of boxes :)

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  2. I've inherited the bug for converting ratlings and gretchen into other little wretches from reading your blog!

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    1. They're one of my favourite things to make, honestly! I bet I've made 20 or more little chaps over the last 5 years. It's a good bug to catch :)

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  3. Now that is a relatively easy and high return on time investment conversion! If you go back to these guys, you might want to add a few marks to the casing of their needle rifles, some sort of kill marks or Khorne runes. Ratlings and in particular Khorne worshipers do not seem the like the type to have clean weapons...

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    1. Runes or kill markings are a great idea. I'll revisit that and see what I can do!

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  4. Simple yet brilliant. Great work on the conversions, colour scheme, and painting!

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    1. Simple is sometimes the best! Glad you like these guys!

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  5. Most excellent! Like itty-bitty Blood Pact! ^^

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    1. Perhaps they're copying fashion from an illegal holo-vid broadcast?!

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  6. Magnificent. They deserve to be the heroes of your next game.

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    1. I have a feeling they might be inconsequential cowards, but I hope they're the stars!

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  7. These are great, they really look the part!

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  8. You're streaking ahead of all of us :D

    Great stuff mate, these nasty little buggers will be fun to use in game.

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    1. I reckon you should always make the stuff you're inspired to do at that point in time. We'll all get there at the end :)

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  9. I like that you are setting a pretty high standard for this whole thing because now we're going to try and make ours up to these. ^^
    That's perfect emulation. And perfect chaos ratlings. ^^

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    1. I think everyone's models will be great, whether they've been grabbed off the shelf or made specifically for the games! But making cool new stuff is what I enjoy most ;)

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  10. Oh! These are so fun! Nothing like corrupting the "incorruptible"! Well done!

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    1. I can imagine their parents sitting at home trying to work out where they went wrong!

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    2. Ha! Indeed!

      "If only he'd stuck it out with his baker's apprenticeship..."

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    3. Life choices can be difficult!

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  11. Consider them chaosified ... great work axiom :)

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  12. Bravo sir! The best part about this is I now know what to do with my 3 random ratlings since the RT Ratling squad is five figures.

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    1. It's a no brainer then! Those 3 ratlings can join the dark site :)

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