From SamuliS: Hamster wheel of Doom (80 points)

Kill-Crush Man-Things! Glory to the Horned Rat!

A little change of pace from mass painting historical miniatures. One of my all time favorites from the Warhammer Fantasy universe, the Doomwheel! A rat riding in an oversized hamster wheel powered by smaller rats and fitted with plenty of blades and warpstone powered apparel. What's not to like? This is the second and newest incarnation of the model and actually one of the minis where I can genuinely say that it looks far better than the Oldhammer incarnation. Sounds like blasphemy, but I think this really captured the whole concept spot on.

This marks the start of my Skaven army project. A nice appetiser before I start grinding through over a hundred clanrats and some 40 Stormvermin on top of that... I've got different warmachines prepped that I'll allow myself to paint everytime I finish a unit of rats. Hopefully that'll provide enough variety to keep me interested, but I'm not really stressing about finishing this quickly. Probably going to be painting units in the ninth painting challenge as well ;)

I'm trying to keep the paint jobs pretty simple throughout and maximizing the amount of airbrushing etc. I can do to speed up everything. On this it was surprisingly easy with the whole kit being broken down to about 15 subassemblies that I painted nearly completely before putting the whole thing together and adding final highlights. Also a lot of the detail was done with just a basecoat and a wash without any highlights anywhere. It feels a bit like cheating, but works pretty nicely with all the wood and metal parts and really cuts down on the time I need to put into getting things done.

The banner proved a bit tricky as it's pretty darn big, but very wavy. First I was thinking about doing some larger pattern going through it, but after the first attempts abandoned it and decided to paint it with one main colour and add some simple freehands to spice things up. Freehanding is really something I need to practice, but it always just seems so darn daunting and everytime I try to do something complex it looks like it was drawn by some 4 year old. I'll need to see if I can find any Skaven themed decals anywhere to make things easier. As far as I know Games Workshop never made any, but someones bound to have made at least some fan made ones.

I left it without a base for now as I'm not 100% decided on whether to go for round basing and Age of Sigmar or go the older direction with square bases. Age of Sigmar actually seems like a pretty good ruleset now that it has points and a proper matched play system. And the scene for 9th Age etc. is pretty tournament focused, which I'm not really interested in so finding nice casual games might be a bit tricky.

And as an end note. Why on earth do they have to make so darn fragile minis... The flag pole is pretty flimsy and bends just from shaking the mini so I was sure I'm going to break it at some point. Didn't expect that to be 10 minutes after I varnished it though... The whole thing fell on the floor thanks to a rather inquisitive dog sniffing at the new mini on the edge of the table. The flag pole snapped near the bottom and some other pieces fell off. All the other areas were easy to mend, but the flag pole now clearly shows where it was glued back together... Oh well I guess it was inevitable.

Points wise I'll leave it to the hands of Sidney. No idea what it should be ;) One giant hamster wheel, 1 seated crew, 1 rat operating the bellows and 12 tiny rats powering the whole contraption.

Artist: The Fratellis
Song: Chelsea Dagger







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What an amazing contraption, Samuli !!  I can only look on and marvel and admire the great craftsmanship, vision and ability anyone has in making and painting such a thing.  Awesome work!!  

Every army is special, and every collection of figures that we start needs a special beginning - something which knocks the ball out of the park, and is something which, when those long hours at a painting table start to add up and almost ANYTHING on Netflicks looks worth watching in preference to yet more white Austrian uniforms, we can look back at and say "Yes, that's what I'm doing this for!"

And for you, my dear friend, it's going to be this crazy, insane, warped, chaotic, vermin-chittering, manically-squeaking Doom Wheel of DOOM!  I know it's going to give you hours of fun, and pleasure, remembering its creation.

I love the green colours and standards (always a perfect Skaven colour), and the way in which you've picked out so many highlights.  But, as you say, why do they make those war machines so fiddly and prone to breaking - such a shame, but here's hoping you can fix it.  Don't at all be downhearted, Sir, as this is a work of special wonder.  

So ... points.  Gosh....15 for the crew, 36 for the tiny rats (at 3 points each), 5 for the bellows operating rat, and 20 for the Doom Wheel, and an extra 4 for putting the whole thing together so well.  And, all in all, that would be 80 points to add , very deservingly, to your total !  Well done!