Ratling Squad - Reporting for Duty

In our post COVID-19 world, time seems to have taken on a fairly relative quality. Though it seems longer, a couple of months ago I posted a write-up on the first of my ratling conversions for my Brood Brothers Astra Militarum detachment. I still have some post varnish detailing to do, but I'm happy to report four more converted ratlings have joined the fold and I can now field a squad of five of the little buggers. I plan to do five more total to get a full-sized squad of ten as you can never have too many sniper rifles in the character happy world of Warhammer 40K.

The rest of the squad was built up using both the Blackstone Fortress Raus figure and some of the original old school ratlings with what look more like hunting rifles than the current line with more modern sniper rifles. As before, since humans (and presumably abhumans) infected with genestealer DNA appear to be completely hairless - the beards and hairy feet had to go across the board. I decided to go with the old school metal ones as they appeared to be easier to convert. The poses on the new squad are great, but only one of the five - ironically the one with shoes - would not require almost prohibitively difficult surgery. I may still pick up one of those to provide one of the remaining five.

The three metal figures were fairly simple to convert. I simply removed the head and feet and then hollowed out the collar of the uniform for a likely head. Three of the new conversions use heads from the Genestealer Cult upgrade frame, while the other is from the neophyte hybrid box (the larger head on the pointing sergeant figure). Feet were provided by leftover Catachan figures and one Acolyte Hybrid figure. All of the figures had at least one pouch or a grenade added from the Cult upgrade sprue as well

Raus initially had been troublesome to convert as I didn't want to completely rework his right arm if I didn't have to. I found the solution in a rifle bit on the Astra Militarum Tank Accessories sprue. That particular frame includes a lasgun with an underfolding stock. The buttstock itself has a release and can be folded under the rifle receiver for easy carrying. I simply added a sinper barrel to it and have the Raus miniature holding it by the pistol grip - which required a new hand as well.

As this squad fits in nicely with the rest of the brood brothers, I've painted it using the standard color template used for the Guard infantry on previous projects (click on chart above for details). I had a lot of fun with these guys, and once I've got the varnish on the four new additions, I'll fix up the lenses on the goggles of the new set. Watch out characters - the sneakiest sharpshooters in the 40K universe have joined the battle!