The Island of Blood rat ogre is commonly used as a blood bowl player, no wonder as he’s a great looking model. I didn’t want my version to just use the standard model, so did add a few extra parts; the face mask from a Storm Fiend, shoulder pad from an Ork Flash Git and knee pad from another blood bowl model. With the normal skaven getting enormous tails I had to use a suitably impressive one from the Dark Eldar Clawed Fiend to make his really stand out as prehensile. Having seen the forgeworld rat ogre I am glad I didn’t wait as I really am not a fan of him.



Painting was done in a similar way to the rest of the team. I started with a darker base coat for his skin as I wanted him to be a little more weathered and tough looking. I also went with a different fur colour, starting with dark brown and adding grey for highlights. The fur was sculpted strangely being large flat patches with the occasionally tuft. So I ended up painting on some more tufts of fur in place of this.

His armour took 2 attempts as the washes went wrong on the first and it ended up looking a bit too dirty, even for skaven.



With the Rat Ogre completed that means all 16 normal players are finished aside from their numbering and bases.



On top of the normal team I wanted to do some stars as they are fun to paint. I also wish to complete every star in the game and part of the reason I went with skaven was because they had several stars I needed to do. Glart was finished last month and I just finished Fezglitch this week.

I used the plague priest model rather than a normal censer bearer for him as being a star I thought he should be more impressive. Even so I didn’t want to just use the model as is and so gave him a headswap with the rat ogre from the screaming bell, the bandages over his face represent foul appearance. I also added an extra censer from the same model (that is super fragile and will probably break after 1 game) to make him look even more deadly. Finally I gave him a should pad to appear somewhat like a Blood Bowl player.



The model itself looked quite different from the rest of the team which provided a few challenges when choosing a paint scheme. Most of his clothing was robes and I followed the same convention as the gutter runner cloaks, making it dark brown to match the clothing of the normal players with orange inner lining to match the armour. As he was a plague monk I painted this orange a little dirtier than normal since he’d be even less clean.
I went a different route for his skin as well, adding more grey into the mix than with the other players. The idea was that he’d look unhealthy and diseased but not too much like a zombie. The pustules on his skin were painted brown and then highlighted yellow with a brown wash to make them look disgusting and puss filled.
For the skulls I used grey and white rather than brown and bone for highlights, this makes them look more ancient and matches better with white being the tertiary team colour.
His censers were painted a dirty bronze whilst the silver spikes and banding were also made to look suitably rusty and tarnished. I went for the classic green warpstone cloud coming from his censer. I had been tempted to paint the inner parts lighter and the edges darker, but thought that would look more like green fire than a warpstone cloud.



There are less than 4 weeks until the tournament (tickets still available, just go here for more details) and I’m also expecting to be pretty busy at work. To that end I won’t be painting up any more players and will use the rest of my time to work on the player numbering, bases and display base to make as good a job as I can. Should any time be left over I will use that to work on the markers and footballs.
I have already bought a photo frame, plasticard and foamboard to use as the base. I like the idea of making an underground pitch, with damaged and overgrown flagstones along with the NAF logo. There is also a possibility of turning it into a sewer or adding some extra details from my bitz box such as rats, debris or chunks of warpstone.