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 . . .

Comments

  1. Replies
    1. Actually there are tails, they are all just molded to the legs. With the amount I've had tails break off of models (rats and horses especially) I don't have an issue with this.

      I'll try to do a bit of follow up highlighting the tails.

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  2. I can see them now you mention it. I agree about the GW ones snapping off, but it would be good if these were more prominent.

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  3. They look pretty good and its nice to get some hard plastic non-GW skaven models. I just cant wrap my head around why they'd add a plague pot to every sprue instead of a few giant rats as "pets" that they usually do. Seems like a huge missed oppertunity to me at least. I agree having seperable shields from the arms, i guess it saves sprue space but it limits the options a lot.

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    Replies
    1. There is actually a reason there. Since Mantic started, they have put 'pets' on their plastic sprues, and added some type of rules for these pets. Then with third edition, they made most of the pets into swarm units (great use of these little models, and everyone needs chaff (Dwarf Mastiff Hunting Pack, Elf Battlecats, Northern Alliance Snow Foxes, Abyssal Dwarf Mutated Mastiff Hunting Pack, Forces of the Abyss Imps, Orc Orclings, Undead DeathPack)).

      And it came back to bite them in the butt big time. Because now people wanted/needed a LOT more of the pets than the 1/2 per sprue, and it has caused a lot of headaches for them. What was intended as quick idea to use what had been markers blew up on them. So they have gone back to just having them as markers - thus the mawpups on the goblin sprue, and the plague pots on the ratkin.

      Yes, you will have a lot more plague pots than you probably need, but if they had put giant rats on the sprues for use as Vermintide then people would have wanted many more and caused the more of the headaches that happened with the others. So plague pot markers instead of vermintide. Now when the full ratkin army comes out next year - I would not be at all surprised to see them do a vermintide unit.

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  4. Hey... tried to write this five times now from my phone, but that doesn't seem to work: I was wondering, if you probably could provide some size-comparison pictures of these? comparisons with the other kow minis and if you have some GW would be really appreciated. same goes for comparisons with the new goblins.. would be really appreciated!

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  5. I have ordered a Clawshots unit for Firefight and I will mix those great plastics from Clawshot set with Veer-myn. Two Simple ideas. One to make ratkin into creepers. Love the dirty look ratkin Has for that role. They will work great with creeper heads/arms.

    Second one is to make thralls out of those. I do not like metal minis in skirmishers and thralls is something i would love to use in Deadzone. And since those are less armoured than Veer-myn they are a Perfect for the role.

    And there is also an option to mix those with Veer-myn. Have seen mixes like that and they were great. I believe ratkin and Veer-myn sprues gives countless or at least another 3000+ building options. Both for Deadzone and KoW and I highly recommend mixing them. Especially if You like sticking out tails.

    I will try to mix few Veer-myn bodies into a Clawshot unit as well.

    What a great sprue.

    ReplyDelete

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