You dirty yellow bellied rat(kin)

James Cagney said it 

(and no, he never said "MMMmmm, you dirty rat!"), and now Mantic have finally made hard plastic ratkin, in a sprue that makes 10 warriors or 10 spear warriors (or any combination you prefer between them).  Currently they are only available in the new 2 player starter set for Kings of War (War in the Holds) that appears to already be sold out on the Mantic web store (though check your FLGS).  However they have said to look for them to be available sometime early next year.

Like many of the newer Mantic plastics, these are two sprues.  The first holds the bodies (2 each of 5 types), a plague pot and the hand weapons (6 styles (5 pairs plus a whip)) (plus a pair of spears) and one shield (the whip and shield can be used as command options).

The second sprue has 13 heads (I can't imagine why anyone would associate 13 with skaven ratkin :-) ).  This also has 5 pairs of shields, 4 pairs of legs (for 4 of the 5 bodies), 4 more pairs of spears.

This makes for 3575 combinations from the kit, so plenty for any army.

So here are some I put together (blue-tacked onto bases, as they will be easier to paint separately, and I plan to multi-base the units)

Spear Warriors

There is also a plague pot on the sprue, which can be used to mark a unit that takes it.

Here are a couple of the new hard plastic rats next to the Abyssal Dwarf metal Ratkin slaves (i.e. wretches).  While I like these minis - you can only take wretches in hordes or legions - and so right now getting them in metal is a bit cost prohibitive.

Of course you can use the plastic Veer-myn sprue to make ratkin - and since the warrior sprue has three more heads than can be used for it, and the scifi sprue does have 1 unarmored head.  I think these would most likely fit for Scurriers (you could even use the veer-myn guns as Blight Throwers).

It would have been nice if the shields and left arms were separate instead of being molded together, then you could have modeled wretches without the shields (and paint them to cover up the armor).  

Or we can just wait until next year when the rest of the Ratkin army will be released.  There are now 9 units for Ratkin (out of 25) that Mantic makes:

• Warriors
• Spear Warriors
• Wretches (slaves) (metal)
• Nightmares (Veer-myn) (hard plastic as well!)
• Tunnel Runners (Veer-myn)
• Brood Mother (Veer-myn)
• Warlock (Twitch Keenear)
• Night Terror (Veer-myn)
• Tangle[1] (Veer-myn)

You could probably make a Brute Enforcer from a Nightmare - essentially putting him on a single base (since Brutes were replaced with Nightmares anyway).

I am thinking of redoing my entire ratkin demo army with Mantic models - though perhaps I should wait to see what else is in the pipeline.

EDIT:

I had someone ask where the tails are on the new models.  Among those who play rats, tails are somewhat like beards on dwarfs - the longer and more luxurious they are, the better.  However those same players will also note how easy and often the tails break off (a bit less so for multibased units than when you are constantly removing single models and putting them in/out of foam or piling up the dead (from some other game)).

Yes, all the Ratkin have tails.  However, to simplify thing Mantic has molded them onto the legs of the models, instead of having them as separate parts.  I little bit of editing shows you where the tails are on each of the bodies (except for the one on the far left in the picture, the tail there is actually on the leg.

They will most likely be much more prominent when painted a scaly pink (that contrasts will against the 'normal' browns you would see on their clothes.

Because it is all fun and games . . .