'Childhood' from SamuliS: For Whom the Bell Tolls

My first bonus round for the year! I didn't really have any projects on going that would have had suitable minis for any of the previous ones, but through some weird perversion I figured I had the perfect mini for this one with the theme of Childhood!

 Now how on earth is warpstone crazed rat riding a Bell prophetising doom and death for all somehow relevant to childhood? Having been born in the latter half of the 80s I found out about wargaming sometime in the mid 90s when one of my cousins introduced me to Warhammer Fantasy. He used to play Skaven and when I saw his army for the first time one miniature in particular really caught my attention almost immediately, the Screaming Bell! It's been more than 20 years and still this particular miniature really holds a special place in my heart. It was one of the minis that really captured my imagination and got my hyped about Warhammer Fantasy and it's world. Eventhough I never played Skaven myself, my Wood Elves, Vampire Counts and Chaos armies fought them on many occasions and I remember the Screaming Bell and it's accompanying unit causing havoc on more than one occasion.

Don't ask-ask for whom the bells toll man-thing! They toll-toll for you-you!

- Ernest Ratlingway

I always wanted to start a Skaven army, but realistically speaking my attention span at the time was limited and there was no way I was going to paint hundreds of ratmen. That didn't stop me from trying though and not surprisingly due to my early encounters with this particular mini it was one of the first Skaven units I bought. In the early 00s the whole project quickly died down and I don't think I ended up painting more than a handful of rats.

With Total War Warhammer 2 introducing Skaven my old love for all things ratty quickly rekindled and I went around digging through the few old minis I had from my childhood and luckily I had kept the old screaming bell. My old paint job was done with all the care and love of a hyperactive preteen so it quickly got dumped into paint remover and taken apart to be properly reassembled with green stuff to fill gaps etc.

As a nod to the 90s GW painting style I wanted to incorporate some brighter colours even if otherwise I try to stick to more muted and natural shades even in Fantasy minis. One shade that to me really defines the 90s GW paintjobs is red. Every model seemed to have some bright red areas whether it was clothing, jewelry, bows or bolters. And it really made everything pop rather nicely. So that was a pretty clear choice especially as it pairs rather nicely with green tones that my other Skaven will have.

Another memory from childhood is listening to a lot of Metallica. Being a Finn I've been quite a metalhead from a rather young age with my primary school music listening including a ton of punk and trash metal. Since then my tastes have maybe been refined a bit and nowadays I don't really listen to Metallica that much, due to it being pretty darn repetitive and a bit dull. But thanks to this I've probably listened to more Metallica in the last couple of days than in the previous few years combined. Not surprisingly Ride the Lighting has been played through multiple times with For Whom the Bell Tolls getting even more plays. It's a pretty special song as well because one of my childhood idols, especially when I played ice hockey, was Jere Lehtinen who had a pretty epic career in the NHL and Finnish national team. When he retired his jersey was also retired by his old team here in Finland, which I'd played for as a Junior as well. As he is a massive metalhead as well the song that he'd chosen for the occasion was For Whom the Bell Tolls. That was pretty darn epic to watch...