Hi all, new poster here. :)
Even though this is my first post in these forums, it's a help request I'm afraid... I'm a bit confused regarding the Pendraken 10mm Fantasy ranges, and am looking for some advise please.
I'm planning a 10mm fantasy army for playing Kings of War with, and I am therefore searching for suitable figures to represent the various units. Specifically, I'm after these:
Slaves
- Smaller or more emaciated-looking Ratmen, with a mixture of poses and melee weapons.
Warriors
- Ratmen warriors with hand weapons and/or shields, a few poses/variants preferred.
- Ratmen warriors with spears and/or shields, a few poses/variants preferred.
Storm Troops
- Ratmen warriors with some armour, halberds/big choppy weapons, and/or shields, a few poses/variants preferred.
Blighted
- Ratmen warriors in robes, with a mixture of poses and melee weapons. Flails, staffs, maces, and/or paired hand weapons would be preferred, but not essential.
Skirmishers
- Ratmen warriors in ninja-style clothes with two swords, a few poses/variants preferred.
- Ratmen warriors in ninja-style clothes with shortbows or small crossbows, a few poses/variants preferred.
Death Claws
- Ratmen warriors with impractically long rifles. Ideally, with a second figure holding a rifle support and a pavaise/big shield.
Ratmen Beasts
- Ogre-sized Ratmen, wearing loincloths or a few tattered rags, unarmed. Big claws and a couple of poses preferred if possible.
Troopers with dangerous weapons
- Ratmen with crude-looking flame throwers
- Ratmen with crude-looking machine guns
- Ratmen with gas masks and big grenades (think cartoon-style black bombs with the word "Bomb" written on them)
Heroes
- Ratmen hero with armour and two hand weapons
- Ratmen hero with armour, spear/halberd, and shield
- Ratmen hero with robes and a flail
- Ratmen hero with robes and daggers. Sneaky and/or action pose preferred!
- Ratmen hero with robes, book, and staff. If this figure is horned, that's a bonus!
- Ratmen hero with robes, staff, and scrying orb. If this figure is horned, that's a bonus!
- Ratmen hero with steampunk-looking weapon (to be used as an engineer).
- Ratmen hero with a banner
Sundry
- Various Ratmen suitable for crewing cannons and catapults
- One or two Ratmen with whips or pointed prodders
- A couple of seated Ratmen for crewing various crazy contraptions!
- Some rat swarms. Scaled for 10mm, I imagine these would just be button-sized swarms that I can mount one or two of onto a 40mm x 20mm base.
From what I understand, there are a few Pendraken figures produced for different ranges (Fantasy and Desert Rats?), which would probably provide me with most of the above. But I am having great difficulty finding photos of the models (although this (http://www.forum.specialist-arms.com/index.php?PHPSESSID=rq3hvft1587vhl3tajkdo7ifg2&topic=4118.msg31905#msg31905) does help), and am likewise struggling to get any/many comparison pics of them against other 10mm armies for a sense of scale. Additionally, is there any way to order specific models if they don't appear in a pack on the website?
I don't mind doing a little conversion - say for weapon crews, or lengthening blunderbusses into rifles - or using 15mm models for the big Ratmen ogres, but any help and/or suggestions/clarifications for the above would be very gratefully received.
Thanks in advance for you help!
Cant help with your problem, but HI !
Hi Major G... First of all......Welcome to the forum. :-h
I can't give you the definitive answer.
Leon, aka 'Sir', is probably the only one that can answer properly.
My understanding (but don't take this as gospel) is that the current Ratmen will be gradually phased out, as the moulds fall into disrepair.
I believe......that at some stage I'll be revamping the entire Ratman range...but I think that this is a fair old way down the road.
As I say, Leon's the chap to give you the info you need.
Cheers - Phil
Thanks for the welcome chaps. :)
Quote from: Techno on 18 May 2017, 10:23:53 AM
My understanding (but don't take this as gospel) is that the current Ratmen will be gradually phased out, as the moulds fall into disrepair.
I believe......that at some stage I'll be revamping the entire Ratman range...but I think that this is a fair old way down the road.
Hmm, if that's true then it could be mixed news... Maybe I should cut my losses now and pick a different faction? It'd be a shame, as I really like Ratmen/Skaven armies, but I'd rather be able to just get on with project and complete it in one go if possible - I already have too many partially-complete and abandoned ones. :P
Hello and welcome,
I'll find some of my rats photos later!
I think I have some ratmen... somewhere... along with various other PD fantasy minis, bought... many years ago...
What I would say is, I do not remember there being that many different poses/sculpts. In fact, I doubt ANY manufacturer would have that many different ratmen! You may want to buy up some of PDs, and some of everyone else's you can find...
Well, I don't mind doing a few conversions like adding shields, bending arms, etc to add a bit of variety, and even just two variant models for the rank-and-file units would help break up uniformity quite a bit.
Likewise with heroes, if there's something to work with, I don't mind tweaking the base unit models a bit to get hero versions of them. Again though, some things like a robed model with a staff and book would be a very helpful starting point.
I would prefer to avoid needing to do anything like sculpting robes, adding armour, head-swaps, etc., if possible though. Not because I can't, but because I'd like to avoid getting bogged down with things that take too long to finish - I know I'll just lose interest in the project if that happens.
I also don't mind mixing various manufacturer's models for added variety but (1) I don't know how they match up size-wise, and (2) I don't know how polite it is to request advice for other manufacturer's models on Pendraken's forum...!
@ mad lemmey:
That would be great, thank you. :)
Firstly, welcome to the forum. They're a friendly, helpful (if somewhat eccentric) bunch here.
I don't know if Pendraken can get a few more spins out of the moulds if you ask nicely but the old Ratmen range covered much of what you're after.
Large ratmen for normal warriors, small ratmen for slaves, rat swarms, bomb wielding priests, "dustbin" flamethowers, etc, etc. Stormvermin types might need to be large rats with a particular weapon but many of the other types were there.
You can see the old range here:
https://web.archive.org/web/20160629205054/http://www.pendraken.co.uk:80/Fantasy-c21/Ratmen-sc165/
As with most of pendraken's fantasy figures, they are on the bigger end of the scale (like Kallistra). But how big is a giant rat anyway?
Pendraken are pretty cool about discussion of other manufacturers stuff - especially if it is in areas they don't produce figures.
@ Ithoriel & fred:
That's good news, thank you both. :)
With respect to Stormvermin, I suppose I could use regular warriors painted a different colour (black?) to differentiate them if there's nothing suitable available.
That link looks like it might be promising, but there's no pictures. Are these all 10mm scale as well? And when you say "bigger end of the scale", does that mean they are about the height of a 10mm human, or that they tower over a 10mm human?
Thanks for your patience. :)
http://www.pendrakenforum.co.uk/index.php/topic,10298.0.html
That's my rats.
Welcome Major_Gilbear!
Another thing to consider with 10mm is it's easy to make little vignette's with the figures. So how you place them on the base can also help distinguish units.
For Slaves you could pick rats with just hand weapons and then "mob" them on the base. Making them look disorganized and undisciplined.
Regular Warriors could be in rank and file with all spears. Or a few front ranks of spears and hand weapons behind.
Storm troopers you could have in a clean rank and file formation to show they are better disciplined. Maybe have fewer but better equipped troops.
This is part of the approach I took to making up my Dwarf army.
@ mad lemmey:
They look very good!
Looking through, it does seem that there'd be enough to fill plenty of slots - including rat swarms.
I also didn't realise there were two "bomb" rat sculpts, and the ones without gas masks could probably make good weapon crew (I'd use them as ammo loaders for a cannon or catapult).
@ DFlynSqrl:
Yes, that's a very good point. I think I could probably make a few things work with colour schemes and miniature arrangement, and perhaps get some differences between units that way.
I did see some Ratmen with chainmail and assault rifles, and wondered if the assault rifles could me made into long-handled melee weapons with a bit of filing and careful application of small pliers (to squash the ends flat and create a blade). They'd probably work well as Stormtroopers that way.
Are there any chariot-riding Ratmen? Might be a source of one with a whip. Likewise are there any Ratmen on mounts that come loose? Could be a nice way to get "crazy contraption" crew.
For ratmen with whips, I'd use polearm rats and snip the polearm down to a handle and add a whip from fuse wire, thread or fine chain.
Has anyone mentioned that the Rat CinC is wearing a Napoleon pose, complete with bicorn (my photo of him is awful, there are better ones around)!
Hmm, you mean this (http://www.pendrakenforum.co.uk/index.php?topic=4652.0) one:
(http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5095/5474237306_89097a1e5c_b.jpg)
I think he looks great, although he might be hard to get a couple of different characters from! :P
I don't know if the other two Ratmen in that pic are conversions or not though - they'd make good Blighted/Plague Monks if not. :)
Oh man that's great! I may have to do a Ratman army now...
As the other guys have said, we're removing some of the older Fantasy ranges as the moulds expire, with the Ratmen being one of them. We are still able to supply some of the codes though, so the best thing to do is drop me an email with a list of what you need and we'll see what we can sort out for you.
There are some good images in this thread: http://www.pendrakenforum.co.uk/index.php?topic=14245.0
Thank you Leon. :)
Can I ask how many Ratmen/Desert Rat codes there are, and if there are any specific ones/codes that are definitely not possible please? I don't need any of the steam cars/balloons, but the crews could be useful if they are available separately.
I've put a list of what I'm hoping for in the first post of this thread, but without any idea of what codes/models I can even choose from, it's basically just shooting randomly in the dark and hoping for the best! :(
What I can do by way of giving something back is this: I can photograph all the models I receive, and add a ruler and product code in the background for additional future help to others. Looking through the forums here (I was up rather late last night!) I can see there's been a persistent interest in the Ratmen over the years, but unfortunately that relatively little info has ever been available on them - hopefully my efforts will help with this. Plus, when they get painted, I am happy to post photos here, and for you to use those photos if you'd like (assuming they are good enough, of course!). :)