In the lair of the goblin wererat, my players encountered a lot of rats. Large rats, small rats, rat swarms. Reaper was so nice to include a dozen of Rats in the first Reaper Bones Kickstarter. But this post would be boring, if I only show you the old and plain regular rats. So I also include the wererat miniature I used for the goblin wererat. However, at the time we played the session, the mini was only primed. Baltor, one of the player characters, was bitten by the wererat goblin during this session. He became a wererat himself! A great chance to finish painting the miniature and use it for the hybrid rat form of my player.

The Rats (77016) come in packs of six. They are sculpted by Sandra Garrity and are based on the metal versions which are called “Dire Rats” The Kickstarter included two packs, so I had twelve of them. They come with square bases attached to them.

Reaper has a lot of wererats in its portfolio. They remind me of the Skaven (ratpeople) from Warhammer, and maybe that’s why they have so many of them in their shop. Four wererats were included in the first Reaper Bones Kickstarter, and I went with the Wererat Berserker (77293) and used it for the wererat goblin and later for Baltors wererat form. I already posted a picture of the wererat in the post for Baltor.

Basing and Priming

I didn’t like the square bases, so I removed them from the rats and replaced them with round bases. The miniatures are tiny – even for dire rats – so I used 20 mm bases instead of 25 mm (1 inch) bases this time. The wererat berserker is medium-sized, so I used a standard 1-inch base here. As usual, I decorated the bases with some sand and primed the figures via airbrushing in black and white.

Painting

At first, I thought about painting the rats in different fur colors. But then, meh. They are just rats and will look good enough if I paint them all the same. So I used the same color scheme from the Barrow Rats again. Painting these figures took me just an hour or two while watching TV. I’m not to emotionally attached to them 😉

I usually prime minis first and paint them up later. Sometimes even years later. I primed the wererat with the other rats, but as I had no real need for a wererat at the time, I didn’t finish painting it. Unfortunately, I didn’t have enough time to finish it before the game session in the goblin wererat’s lair. So I used the black and white primed mini there. Later, when Baltor was bitten and it became clear that he would need a permanent alternative miniature for his hybrid rat form, it was a welcome reason to finally finish the wererat.

As Baltor’s miniature uses brown, black, and gray colors, the wererat should also reflect these colors. Funny, now this wererat also has gray fur, but it was the best match for the player miniature. Overall, the wererat was fun to paint!