There Were Rats, Dad...

"There were rats, dad."
"Rats?"
"Yeah. Big ones."

I think my very first GW purchase was the yellow "Monsters" deck from the original Citadel Combat Cards, and it was definitely the start of my love of Skaven. That deck included a picture of one of Jes Goodwin's classic Rat Ogres (I don't think both were depicted, but might be wrong). It's weird that, to this day, I have never actually acquired and painted one (or both) of those classic models... that's something I might have to remedy. When I got my first Warhammer army book a few years later, it was - inevitably - for the Skaven.

Of course, I wasn't able to afford a whole army, let alone have the patience to build and paint one - especially one like the Skaven that demanded huge numbers of troops! By the point where I had the time, attention, and disposable income to indulge my wargaming hobby (thank-you skirmish wargaming!), the then-current Skaven range didn't really appeal to me as much and I found other models more to my liking.

Fast-forward more years than I really care to remember and, with the Choleric Order of the Yellow Bile an appropriate home for them, I decided it was time to paint some rats!

The Plague Monks are one of the older kits still in the Skaven range, and definitely have the older, more bandy-legged design that newer sculpts have eradicated. Still, they are incredibly on-brand for my army, with hunched poses, bandages, ragged robes (that serve to hide their bandy legs), and boil-marked flesh. With the addition of wire spears and some Oathmark Human shields to tie them to my Templars and link them more into the force as a whole, they fit right in.

Painting was a doddle - they're relatively simple sculpts and took to my wash-heavy style nicely. I opted for a really pale flesh tone to offset the darker robes and applied a light red wash to their eyes to give them a rheumy, albino effect.

I have five more of these guys built and ready to go, and I'm toying with the idea of adding some more to the Cult in due course, perhaps a banner, an officer figure, and another three spears to fill out the unit to a full 15.

And, of course, now I also want to track down those old Jes Goodwin Rat Ogres...

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