You may remember a while ago I was painting up Advanced Heroquest Prototypes. Thanks to some generous folk they were mostly acquired as gifts, swaps and at generously low prices. The only one I didn't have was the Skaven, along with the elf the rarest of the set. Thus when I was able to buy said model for a large but not ridiculous amount I decided it was worth it to complete the lineup and balanced out amongst the others still meant a bargain for the entire prototypes collection. Here is my first ratman acquisition painted up. He's a bit shiny, hasn't had his matt varnish yet. I also haven't done the sand fill-in between his paws on the base.
He is bolder than the rats in my Skaven army. My goal was to go some way towards imitating the image below which I first saw in the Marvel Heroquest Special, I don't know if it was published anywhere else. The printing is grainy even by the standards of the photography of the era. I guess Marvel's coarse comic paper isn't ideally suited to printing of little photos, a little like newsprint. You can just make out from the photo that this is a mix of the plastic and metal Skaven and henchmen, though as far as I can tell the only plastic Skaven is the one front and centre. There are several plastic henchmen in the other side, I guess to vary the weapons a bit.
The same models (plus as far as I can make out some extras) appear in the full page advert for AHQ as featured in White Dwarf. I have been using this to try and pair up the figures and see what the paintjobs actually look like.
Then there are the actual models from these images in the cabinets at Foundry. I looked through my own photos and whilst I had taken many of the Heroquest and AHQ Heroes I didn't have any good ones of the Skaven or Henchmen. Idiot. Thankfully Ian Stuart did take some good photos of them and sent me the image below. As you can see they're a lot less yellow than the Marvel publication makes them look and more vibrant than the WD advert. I went for the guy on the right in the fetching red attire for my first Skaven. This is pretty simple block colours, no particular patterning except for the marks on the face. The hoods on these guys are definitely good territory for chequerboarding, diamonds and stripes. I can see a few of these in the various photos. Also that shield is harder than it looks, getting the three-pronged-swastika central and evenly spaced is tricky!
My first Skaven? Well, yes. Since I mentioned that I was looking I had contact with a nice gentleman who might be able to help me get a bit closer to recreating that childhood image... There might be a few more painted Skaven coming up along with some henchmen counterparts.
I might stop short of doing the Warlock of Firetop Mountain heroes that can be seen on the shelf below the Skaven in Ian's photo. Much as I love that game (my copy got lost in a move, boo) the figures are not a wonderful example of GW from that era!
A ratty rarity
