Ratkin and Mawbeasts and Hackpaws, oh my

What do you get when the mutant spawn of the Abyssal Dwarfs encounter the underground warrens of the Goblin mawbeasts?  Hackpaws, that's what!

Way back when the first playtest for Ratkin was going on it gave me an excuse to pull out the unfinished Skaven from the company which shall not be named (but it rhymes with Wames Gyrkshop).  However one of the units which that company did not make was any type of rat cavalry.  That didn't stop me, and I pulled out some Reaper Bones giant rats and converted my own (though I never finished painting them).

I still kind of like the idea of Rats riding Giant Rats

Well Mantic now has rat cavalry - Hackpaws.  This an all resin set.  We have seen a little of it before, as a single Hackpaw was included in the Kings of War Vanguard Ratkin Booster (check it out here).  But now we have them as troops for full games of Kings of War.

The box contains three models of Mawbeast ( two of two of the models, and one of a third).   Each model has a body (on the A sprue) and a head, tail and paw/paws (on the B sprue).  Each body has specific paws that only fit with it, though I believe that the heads are interchangeable (as they have a flat join) and the tails appear to be.  (I'm sorry to let you down, but I didn't think about this until after I had glued most of them together, so don't have pictures mixing/matching them).

(The tail was broken off from MB3B sprue, but no big deal).

The box then has three models of riders (again two of two of them, and one of a third).  Again, these are a body, then a second sprue with head and arms.

In the bag, the single model for RHP6 was not only broken from the sprue, but his left foot was also broken off.  No big deal, I've glued things like that on before.  Unfortunately, in the mess that is my desk, I managed to lose that tiny little piece (which explains why this ratkin is riding instead of walking - he has lost his foot in a rat trap, so rides his mawbeast instead :-) ).

These, like the heads and tails of the mawbeasts, are all interchangeable (both between bodies, and even if you want to switch arms around).

There is no set rider for each mount - so just fit them as you can.  I did have to use hot water on one ratkin because the legs were too close together to fit onto the mount - a few seconds in hot water and they spread back into place.

Of course I am actually planning on multi-basing these - so I won't be gluing anything to bases (or the riders, for that matter) until they are painted.  Still a bit of blu-tac and you we can see how they will look.

Quite a bit of an improvement on my conversions.  I should have taken a bit more time to mix the parts up so no two of these riders or mounts are the same, and these are definitely easy enough to do that.  Ignoring the left hand, there are 81 combinations (243 if you include it), though many are very subtle.  I should have switched some of the heads around though.

I also did notice more bubbles in the resin with these and I had seen before.  None of these were big enough to actually be a miscast - and if any are noticeable then they are easily filled with a tiny bit of green stuff.  

Overall some really nice rat cavalry, and a great way to get multiple uses out of the resin mawbeasts (which are also used for the new goblin heroes).

Because it is all fun and games . . .