From the Desk: Uh oh! What's this? Rats!

Yes, I've found myself asking what the heck I've done. I picked up the Warhammer starter box (Island of Blood) with the intention of starting a Skaven army. How did I arrive at this point? Well honestly I'm still loving Warmachine and Hordes, but sometimes I find myself not quite up to the brainpower challenge for it. My work is sometimes quite mentally taxing. When that happens on the weekly gaming night, I find myself to be a pretty meager opponent. Warhammer being more of a "beer and pretzels" game will be a nice option for those times when I just don't have the capacity for the intricacies of Warmachine. As much as I enjoyed Malifaux before, it's even more mentally taxing than Warmachine, so it has fallen by the wayside.

So what's my plan for Skaven? Well quite honestly, it's going to be a while before I get much done since I'm going on a family vacation in a couple days. However I've started to mull over a theme for this new army. That theme: AquaRats! This was sort of a goofy decision, so let me elaborate. First off, I was very inspired by the theme work my friend did on his "Magma Trolls" recently. You can read lots about it on his blog here. The theme really ties them all together and they look striking on the table. So in that same spirit, I wanted to try to have a solid theme like this as well. So I was looking at my pile of Skaven bits and debating what I could do. Well, first of all, I picked Skaven for a couple reasons. First, I dig the models. I really like them a lot actually, and I think I can paint them relatively fast as well. Second, I was born in the year of the rat! Coincidence? I think not! Second, I'm an Aquarius, so going with a water theme was a quick inspiration. I like the idea of a swarm of rats all wearing various shades of blue so that when they rank up, it looks like a flowing stream.

So with a theme idea chosen, I need to start deciding how to make that theme really solid and obvious in the army. I'll be posting a bunch more as I work through the details. It's going to be several weeks before I start any real painting anyway, so I've got lots of times to think about how I'm going to do things like convert a Doomwheel into a Waterwheel.