Painting Skaven #1: Stormvermin

Here’s my first set of skaven finished. Six stormvermin from Citadel 1993 and 1995. I started with these rather than the clanrats. There were less of them, they aren’t all the same and I had a good idea of how I wanted to paint them.

These are all metal figures. While there are two main “poses” here, each of the six is unique. They all have a slightly different weapon, variations in armour, equipment, and heads. Some have chainmail, others small armour plates hanging from their belt. One has a ‘stud’ on his left arm (front far-right) where he should have a shield. I would think that having a shield would make wielding your 8 1/2 foot-long fauchard somewhat awkward, unless it was merely a buckler. (In my game scale, these guys are 5′ high.) I do have some skaven shields, but they look too large. Given some more time I may paint a smaller shield I have to add to the figure.

For D&D/Pathfinder purposes I’m planning to consider all of these to be wielding glaives or glaive-guisarmes. Nomenclature of polearms is a crazy thing, and I’ve spent more than enough time this week trying to get an idea of what each is wielding, but for gaming purposes I need to be able to lump them all together.

If you want a fun look at polearms, watch this video by Lindybeige. Here’s a game from the end of that video: Try to get someone to express an opinion on a historical pole-arm that you made up. Extra points if it has a very silly name.