Take a shot every time he says "Rat": a Ratking review or, how I learned to stop worrying and love the Grot

At my very first Adepticon this year, I hovered around the Grimdark alley a lot to check out as many small indie games as I could quietly watch and/or demo. Among the few games I didn't get to try out for myself, the one that left me most curious was a game where groups of 2, 3, or even more players tried to race around an industrial complex killing each other with ratmen while fleeing the jaws of one very big ratman, a matted mess of teeth.

This killer board created by Doom and Apathy Adam for Flames of Orion, if memory serves.

I would come to learn about Ratking, the beautiful brainchild of Robin aka Maude Bogbody aka the Queen of Rats by my standards. Unsurprisingly, she had sold out of her hard copies of the zine rules by the time I remembered to ask for a copy, but I promised to check it out at Under the Dice in a couple months, still curious about the rat-fuled commotion I had seen but not yet truly grasped.

Fast forward to Under the Dice fest, once again the last day of the event. I was moments away from playing in a star-studded game with Miscast Trent, "Witty" Wittle Goblin, and Paige @PMCIllustration (and maybe others??), all on the epic Mordheim board made by BlerzCraft and painted by Durzin. At the moment of setup however, my number was called to go get a rat of my own tattooed on my flesh skin for eternity and had to miss out. I was able to buy a copy for myself at least and frantically started pouring over its volumes, like a starved pack of vermin devouring the contents of a torn Hefty bag.

If you aren't familiar with Ratking, the gist is scavenging bands of rat-kin fighting over the collapsed remnants of your classic fantasy "larger than the lands above" empire of rats in the under-corners of the world. It has a great, playing card based set of mechanics and in addition to 2+ players competing for dosh and glory, the malign influence of the rat's long-dead general (betrayed by his subjects, as all powerful rats inevitably are) comes into being and starts absorbing your models into its mass--literally. The world building and lore reasons behind the game are a treat and I encourage you to check it out for yourself, I have hardly done it justice here despite my penchant for little ratling things.

In tandem with Ratking, I've also been reading a nonfiction treatise of rats by Robert Sullivan from a local free book pile. It discusses their history, their intersection with humans and our cities, and other fun tidbits.

There's a lot of good real world inspiration inside, which I devoured (see rat simile above) on my summer vacation before returning home and showing up to play Forbidden Psalm with my new friend Josh. Wouldn't you know it, Josh was also working on a killer warband of techno-lab rats for Ratking. High on inspiration and with someone to match wits and whiskers against, I was finally spurred to start bashing rats like Charlie Kelly.

I really like the Kruleboyz range of models from GW, their ragged, scarred, mostly-humanoid forms a great basis for grimdark kitbashery. I have a ton of secondhand Hobgrots sitting unused in a box, save for when I need a smaller, scrappier model to stand in for Cauldron or Forbidden Psalm. I found one with a snipped off head and gave it some quick-quick skull stitchery and had my first Sniffling (the smallest rat caste in Ratking) taking shape. I sculpted him a quick greenstuff tail with a thin wire armature and wrapping it around his sheathed knife for support; I'm a sucker for the trope of a prehensile-tailed humanoid with an extra knife gripped in it for fighting dirty. After putting the model on a basing scheme reused from my sewer/underground ruin themed Necropolis28 warband it was almost done.

I also cut and reattached the pommel and blade of his knife to be reversed. It helped the silhouette of the model better while also leaning into that dirty backstabbing rat vibe.

For skirmish games, I like to keep an internal consistency to my warbands aesthetically. I wanted to reuse deisign elements from the Kruleboyz for a Teether (the middlest rat) and grabbed some of their basic infantry kindly donated to me by Terry from Hive Scum. Another beheaded orc and a more impressive skaven noggin to suit his stature as my warband's petty tyrant, the giant rat who makes all of the rules. I thought about shaving down the Kruleboyz shield and sculpting some beaten copper or rotted wood, but wanted to try breaking up the source model in a more substantial way. I first tried a bloodletter arm and old Vampire Counts zombie hand, both of which were pretty spot on proportionally for the orc's intact spear arm, then covered the join with some rudimentary sculpting.

Jazz hand rat?

The more I looked at this model though, the less satisfied I became with it. The sizing of the new arm and hand were a great match, but the pose was both boring and confusing with just a limp hand in the air. As I was about to resign this model to the pile of shame yet again however, I found a bloodletter hand sporting a Beastmen(?) banner that I made for an unfinished Khorne Marine force over a decade ago. I really, really liked the way the banner looked with the raggedy rat model, and even the slight lean to the side of the model's pose seemed to compliment planting a standard well. Admittedly, a big horned flag is not the most elegant choice for a skirmish game that invites lots of cramped and vertical movement--but I think the juice is worth the squeeze in this case. I'd take a badass, hard-to-play-with mini over a boring, safe one any day.

Texture tips: Any sculpted GW plastic got a couple coats of stippled liquid greenstuff with some matt varnish to make it look more like old dirty cloth--a grimdark staple. I had some 28mm slipknots tied from baker's twine leftover from another project and liked the asymmetry it gave the banner, so I superglued it on after soaking it in wood glue to harden. On many of her models - rats or otherwise - Robin uses bits of real hair, fabric, and other materials as a combination gap-filler and texture, and I wanted to try this myself. I recently picked up some blue auto shop paper towels on a tip from Totally Not Panicking Matt for oil painting. In addition to not leaving little paper fibers all over oily models, they tear in a much more realistic looking way to emulate tattered fabric. I ripped up some teeny scraps from a used rag, then used extra thin superglue to adhere them while hardening them enough to preserve the edges. Caution: superglueing paper towel WILL cause toxic fumes \m/

I need at least a couple more rats to have a legal cellar band to play a game with and am already cooking up some more models in the background, albeit probably not built from Kruleboyz. Stay tuned, stay hungry, stay alive.