Mid-Life Boneripper

Before the period when Games Workshop killed off loads of characters and created Age of Sigmar (I think of it as the Great Trashing), characters didn't change much and the story never moved on. One of the few characters that did change was Boneripper, the rat-ogre bodyguard of the skaven Grey Seer Thanquol. To begin with, Boneripper was a three-armed rat-ogre. Then he became a kind of undead robot based on a three-armed rat-ogre (except one arm was now a gun). Finally, as GW seemed to give up entirely on the idea of the skaven being a horde of rats, Boneripper became a gigantic four-armed monster with a metal leg. As you do.

I got hold of a mid-period Boneripper, when he was in undead mode. (For what it's worth, I think GW implied that these might be different, replacement Bonerippers, and not the same chap going through some major life changes.) It's not a bad model, and quite dynamic in a way, but it looks as much like a steampunk zombie as it does a giant rat. Anyhow, it's in the same colour scheme as the rest of the Frostgrave skaven and fits in well with them.

I also painted another couple of goblins. These never seem to come out very well when I take pictures of them, but I really enjoy painting these smaller, more characterful models. The first guy was the loader of a Mantic weapon called the War Trombone, which resembled a massive blunderbuss. The second guy (or gal) is a "lady of the court" from the sadly discontinued Relics game. I really like their models - they do goblins really well - but I've never been able to get hold of many of them.

Last and most definitely least is an old metal orc that I got in a sale of broken chaos miniatures on ebay. I suspect that he's an old savage boy armed with a spear, but his spear had broken off and he was slightly battered. I gave him an axe instead, and filled in the holes with green stuff. To be honest, he's not a great model, and there's a lack of sharp detail to do anything interesting with (I couldn't even find any eyes!). I suppose I could have given him tattoos, but I'm not a great freehand painter and he wasn't terribly inspiring. Still, he will make a decent thug for the chaos warband.

In these dark times of war, plague, pestilence, famine and shenanigans, many desperate souls turn to crazed cults for salvation. One such sect is the Brotherhood of the Truth Laid Bare, who believe in the twin disciplines of killing everything and wearing only underpants. While orcs are not naturally religious creatures, some find the cult's beliefs strangely appealing.

The blue things are the shafts of arrows