Clawing their way up

Ratkin were created by the Abyssal Dwarfs, so of course they use gunpowder weapons.  But they also copied some of the less evil dwarfs and really like their long guns.  So in a twisted version of the Dwarf Sharpshooters, the Ratkin have created the Clawshots.

These is a resin conversion kit on the ratkin warrior plastics.  It comes with a sprue of those plastics (so you not only get the Clawshots, but also 5 additional warriors (though this set only comes with cavalry bases - so you have to provide your own bases for these extra models).

It then includes several resin sprues.   There is a single copy of RCS1-RCS3 

and two of each of RCS4-6

These are not complex - some heads, four guns with a left hand on them (and 4 left arms), a larger gun with hands that are NOT attached to the gun.  There is also a big shield for each gun to rest on.

However not being complex does not mean these are simple to put together.  The larger, center gun is the worst - to get it perfectly aligned you have to glue 5 points together simultaneously.  This is a bit easier with full hard plastics, as the plastic cement allows you to attach parts and then manipulate them into place before they set.

Doing this with super glue is 'challenging'.  I ran into issues with the glue not setting on the model, but, of course, instantly setting on my fingers, even when my fingers were not directly touching the glue (it is called capillary action, and the detail of models tends to pull thin superglues along those tiny crevices to touch your skin, where it instantly bonds).  

So this was causing my fingers to get stuck to the pieces before they would stick to each other.  I used some accelerator to avoid this - but it has the side effect of turning white - so you can tend to see it on the model (of course you won't notice this at all once painted).

Now let me be clear, these resin parts are MUCH, MUCH better than metal parts, which have all the drawbacks, but are also heavier and harder to work with.

I found that assembling the model in a specific order did make it a little easier.  You need to dry fit everything together so you can see where it goes, then glue the gun to the shield first.  You can try using blu-tac to hold the model and the shield both to a base (or even glue the model to the base first, unless you are multi-basing your unit - when it is easier if you attach the models to the base AFTER they are painted (otherwise you can end up with areas that are extremely hard to reach between the models).

If this is the RCS5 or RCS6 gun, glue the arm holding the gun to the body next, but making sure the left arm fits before gluing.  Then glue the left arm in place.  

RCS3 is a little trickier, as neither arm is attached do the gun.  But the idea is all the same.  I glued the gunbelt to the gun to help hold it before I attached the arms to help with stability.

Since you only get three resin heads, you need to use a couple of the plastic ones from the sprue - I thought the ones wearing goggles seemed to fit the resin ones the best.

After all of that, they look great!

Of course, people are going to want to compare these to geedub Skaven Warplock Jezzails.  I have some of these in my Ratkin demo army (which I plan on replacing now with all Mantic models), so we can compare them.

The GW ones come in pairs - one shooting and a second holding the pavise.   Their models seemed (to me) to be from the 'monkey' version of skaven.  They are thin, and the guns looks much more like flintlock type of rifles.

The Mantic Clawshots are bulkier and generally larger.  They do not have an assistant carrying the shield.  In fact, both the shields and guns are a bit more modern and 'steampunky'.

While I may be a little biased, these are nice models once assembled.

I generally don't comment on price, but the difference between paying $29.99 for five models (plus an extra five), or $55 for three models, is significant (coming down to $6/model for Mantic v $18.33 per model for GW).

Because it is all fun and games . . .