Skaven Siege Equipment

As our campaign moves into its second half, my Skaven forces need to focus on the city in the center of the map. The fortress city of Malko is worth an additional 10 victory points, and attacking it while occupied requires a siege battle. Since the General's Compendium was a 6th Edition supplement (and 8th Edition doesn't really have adequate siege rules) we'll be using the siege rules from the 6th Edition rulebook.

That brings me to the equipment necessary to attack and defend a castle. I've had the old metal siege defenders kit collecting dust pretty much since I began playing Warhammer, and finally got around to assembling and painting them. (Proof that the phrase "I'll build them someday" is not an empty promise!) I took the time to convert them with an appropriately "Skaven-themed" aesthetic.

 

 

Some of the items are scratch built, like the ladders and rock buckets. All the defender's rocks are painted to look like warp stone. This makes them useful as scenic elements in a Skaven mine, or as Mordheim objectives. And having warpstone dropped on your head from the battlements not only hurts, but it will probably give you some kind of crazy space-cancer.

 

 

These buckets were made from wooden cups I got from the craft store, filled with talus rocks.

 

The log ram and ladders are all made from basswood strips and dowels. A few of the ladders incorporate bones from the plastic zombie kit as rungs.

 

 

This boiling oil cauldron has been modified with extra gears and painted with a sickly glow from the hunk of warpstone infusing the oil.

 

The rock droppers have been decorated with bells. The large bell on the first one is a metal bell from the Warmaster Screaming Bell. I used it and the bucket as a counterweight to balance the model because it was so front-heavy from the metal rock.

 

My Plague Claw Catapult is also finished. There are a few modifications like the slop bucket and ladder rungs running up the back. I still need to paint the crew, and I figure I'll tackle them when I finish my Plague Monks. In the meantime, I'll crew it with spare Skaven Slaves or Clanrats.

 

My crowning achievements are these mantlets and the Skaven siege tower. They were made during my time at GW, and were featured in White Dwarf and Troll Magazine. The mantlet is designed for a unit of Jezzails, and has a row of Slaves pushing it underneath.

 

The siege tower appeared in White Dwarf 292, which had a brief assembly guide and special rules that incorporated the poison gas generators, self-propulsion, and the Jezzail snipers inside.

 

The construction is mostly basswood, with metal and plastic parts from all across GW's model ranges. The wheels are from the classic Doom Wheel, and the engineer with the telescope is the operator from the classic Warp Lightning Cannon.

 

It's definitely a monstrosity you don't want to see rolling toward your fortress!  

'Til next time!