Not exactly 'hot on the heels', but my recent Skaven painting gave me the urge to paint a few more of the verminous lads. As I said in that post, it was the old Rat Ogres that first brought Skaven to my attention, and so, in a fit of nostalgia, I went looking for something that hit my impression of what a Rat Ogre should be.
First to be rejected were the official GW ones. Enough said. I did consider tracking down the classic Jes Goodwin ones, but they're a little on the small side these days and there's only two of them - I wanted three to better suit monstrous units in Dragon Rampant and Oathmark.
I eventually found some 3D prints on Etsy of Rat Ogres from a studio called ResinWarfare. They've got a fairly substantial range of Fantasy Rat-Men, including multiple Rat Brute designs. I opted for the most vanilla ones - no weird steampunk weapons or bladed limbs, just hulks of muscle and ferocity. The sculpts themselves are lovely and the prints were very tidy. One pose looks a little like its cocking its leg to relieve itself, but otherwise they're splendid!
Unfortunately, the tails broke in shipping and I just couldn't get them to reattach securely. In the end, I clipped off the stumps and green-stuffed some more fur over the remnants. Honestly, I thought it would bother me more than it does. In any case, the classic Rat Ogres didn't have tails, so this is continuing that fine tradition!
Painting was a doddle too - the size of the models and the well-defined detail on the sculpts meant that it was easy to pick out teeth, eyes, and the like. Even so, most of the work was done with dry-brushing - a bone/khaki for the flesh and, originally, light grey for the fur. I had initial plans of going with an albino-style look, but this didn't really work in practice - the skin and fur weren't distinct enough - so I went back and darkened the fur with a darker wash.
All told, I'm really happy with them, and I suspect they'll be auto-includes in my Dragon Rampant force.
