I’m not a big fan of zombies. I enjoyed 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Left 4 Dead 2 as a teenager, and World War Z is a cracking book (and mediocre film), but I grow bored of the shambling undead pretty quickly. 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Warhammer 40,000: Darktide is g🐼o🐲od fun, but I wish we were Chaos cultists representing the four Gods facing off against hordes of Guardsmen or planetary defence forces rather than seeing Poxwalker after Poxwalker explode at the end of my lasrifle.
The same goes for tabletop games. Why would I build a horde of zombies when I could field a few elite knights or elves? I like the splendour of the centrepiece models, I can’t be bothered with the thousands of foot troops. I’ve played Orks in 40K, I know how it feels to paint 100 Boyz in 🐭a week, and I’m even less likely to put that effort in for zombies.
That’s why I’m converting 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Ushoran,𒀰 Mortarch of the Flesh-eater Courts, into a Skaven character. It’s an excellent miniature (if you can call it that, he stands over four inches tall), and 🧔one I want to b🥂uild a force around. But I don’t want a force of zombies. A force of ratmen, on the other hand, is mighty tempting.
The inspiration for this conversion came from Ushoran’s clꩲawed hands and pointed toes. I’d seen digital mockups converting him into a Seraphon (Lizardman), or even a Kroot character ahead of the new range refresh, but his hunched posture and murine features imme𒁃diately screamed Skaven to me.
The plan was simple: head swap, weapon swap, pin a tail on the Mortarch. And, even before getting to work with modelling putty and Green Stuff, it work༒s. I think I’ll work on the forearms a little, add some tufts of fur to cover up the decaying🎉 limbs, but I’m not too humble to admit that I’m onto a winner here.
This is a ‘first draft’ of the conversion, if you will. I still need to tidy up the Green Stuff on the head, find a weapon that looks like a Skaven ‘religious staff’, and might make the tail more visible ܫtoo.
I’ll take this opportunity to talk b🌄riefly about the Ushoran model itself. His cloak is an impressive technical feat of modelling, itself containing more pieces than the Mortarch’s body. All the glue points and mould lines are cleverly hidden within folds and on invisible interiors, and the whole thing pieces together like a 3D jigsaw puzzle.
There are some tricky positions, but once you realise how it’s meant to work, the model fits together beautifully. It’s a testament to the sprue designers that the dynamic model goes together this well, and with so f🤡ew mould lines to remove or gaps to fill.
So what’s my Skaven monstrosity going to be? I see it as a Greater Daemon of the Horned Rat, the corporeal embodiment of the Chaos God. The Horned Rat has practically ascended to the Chaos pantheon at this point in the Age of Sigmar lore, so why wouldn’t it have e𝓰ffigies and avatars on the battlefield? In-game, if I ever actually play with it, I’ll be forced to run it as a Verminlord, but that’s fine with me.
While I’m no lore-master, especially with regards to Age of Sigmar rather than the Old World, Skaven tend to be either religious plaguebearers, mad scientists, or cunning assassins. It all depends💫 on their clan, you see. So I’m thinking Not Ushoran will be a part of a hyper-religious cult of Skaven who have fully embraced the winds of Chaos and whose sheer willpower and volume of prayers forced the Horned Rat onto an equal throne alongside Khorne, Nurgle, and Tzeentch.
I don’t know why I pr🧔efer Skaven to Undead. It’s just my natural predisposition, I guess. I might not even build a Skaven army to follow this centrepiece. But I find the lore more engaging, my cre♋ations more exciting, and the art of conversion more appealing than building anything straight out of the box. Now I just have to crack open the Green Stuff and start brainstorming some rattish clan names.
Games Workshop provided the model featured in this article.
