For my Warhammer Tone Pro review, I thought it would be fun to try out the paints using actual miniatures I’d actually like to keep around. But I didn’t want to start a whole new gang until I knew where the paints would sit in my collection. So there’s always something you can build and use, maybe not every game but you’re never sad if you have too many of them. Hive scum!
The scummers kit is a great kit from Games Workshop for Necromunda. They represent the lowest fighters on the totem pole of the Underhive. They’re not affiliated with any clan but… they’re not exactly drudges either. They’re fighters, usually a little less talented than your average ganger and far more limited in their approved weapons list.
That said, even though they only stick around for one game at 30cr per scummer, you get to outfit them with whatever you want from their weapons list up to 60cr in value! You’re basically getting a 90cr ganger for 30cr for a single game. So it makes sense to outfit as many as you can in as many different combinations of approved weapons as possible so that when you need to hire a scummer, you’re bringing one in with the right payload.
Hence, a perfect vehicle for a painting test.
But first I had to build them!
When it came to the basic bodies, I didn’t do anything crazy. No sawing them in half to mix and match tops and bottoms. I put them together in the two part construction every body requires. As is typical of a GW kit, the construction of the two bits looks awkward but, when put together, looks perfect and has a surprising range of dynamism. I don’t shit on GW as a rule because I have spent a lot of money with them and enjoy playing their games. But I also don’t usually go out of my way to praise them either. What I’ll say, though, is that the hive scum kit is about the biggest blank canvas kit they could ever gift us with. Four bodies, infinite combinations. Especially once you start kitbashing other bits onto them.
For one of my guys, I wanted to put a two-handed hammer in his hands since I saw that was a legal scummer build. Turns out, the Orlock kit was a great source of bits. And I’ve never built an Orlock with a hammer so I have a lot of those on the weapon sprues lying around.
I assembled the whole thing first and then let the glue cure before sanding the arms on the inside flat. Orlock arms are designed to fit in a socket on the body which helps guarantee a specific pose but is a real pain when trying to magnetize arms or fit them on flat bodies like the scummer kits have. Fortunately, I was not trying to magnetize them, just fit them on a body, so a little bit of work with my file took care of business.
For another guy, I knew I wanted to put a hand flamer on him with a maul because I’ve always liked the Orlock wrench and, courtesy of N26, it no longer grants a +1 armor save, so it’s actually useful! But this required cutting a gun off of one hand and a hand off of the other arm so I could fit both weapons on.
I’ve written about doing this before, swapping weapons and hands, and how it’s the absolute most basic form of miniature conversion one can do and, sometimes, might actually be the most satisfying. And the best part is, there’s nothing really to it. All it needs is a sharp hobby knife and a little bit of plastic cement. And the result is almost as good as the original piece. And where it fails… sing it with me, now, “paint hides a myriad of sins…”
The last guy I built was a little more tricky, only because the bit I wanted to kitbash had spent some serious time in the gym. Because I was kitbashing with so many bits from the Orlock kit, I thought it would be great to use the Arms Master combat shotgun in a new context. But once I sanded down the slotting bit so the arm sat flush, I realized that the other arm I intended to use, the standard scummer axe arm, looked like a withered stem in comparison.
Fortunately, the Arms Master arm had another arm, pointing. If I cut off that hand and attached the scummer hand, all is well, right?
Wrong!
The scummer hand was significantly smaller than the Arms Master hand. So, then, I start looking through my Orlock sprues and find a knife hand. Once I take that off its arm and remove the knife, I find it fits pretty well on the Arms Master arm and then I put the axe and axe handle underneath.
Holy shit! One arm and it’s five pieces! But, again, it’s just pieces cut off other arms and weapons and attached with glue. Not a single thing I did required a bit of sculpting. Could it be better with sculpting? Yeah… I mean… maybe! But if you can achieve your aims without it and it’s not something you’re comfortable with, skip it. Because this is the end result.
For the first time, I actually used the scummer heads on scummer bodies but I was okay with this because they haven’t been used before. So they look unique. Which is what we all want for our models. It’s why even people who play Space Marines bitch about single pose models. To some degree, they want all their minis to be unique.
Yes, I used the standard scummer bodies and scummer heads. But the arms and weapon loadouts are so unique I feel like there will be no confusion between these and what comes out of the box.
I definitely feel like I’ve caught Conversion Sickness, a disease I just diagnosed today
On the other side, I definitely feel like I’ve caught Conversion Sickness, a disease I just diagnosed today but something I think a lot of people I know have. And that, simply, is the idea that I can’t just build a miniature out of the box any more. I will always have to modify it in some way. With the new Escher minis, when I build a new gang, there might be a miniature or two that I use more or less as is (just because of the mathematical odds) but I can’t see the rest of the gang at least getting a weapon swap here or there. In fact, I would call it almost unlikely.
And, because I caught the Conversion Sickness plague, if I had one ask, it would be that in the journals they open up weapon choices to scummers for specific cases. This way I always have something new to build. For the GW shareholders, it would mean I’m always buying scummer kits. Orlocks who take a scummer can give them a plasma pistol or Escher can give one a needle pistol. Nothing crazy but it would open up the number of builds one could do with scum to an almost infinite point, so that when I don’t know what to paint, instead of just doing another set of Munitorum containers, maybe I’m doing a scummer set instead…?
I’m not unhappy with the announced new minis and the new sprue it looks like they’re adding to the lineup. This is not a complaint. Rather, it’s an ask! Give me more scummer options and, I promise you, I’m going to be building a lot more scummers in the future…
