Building Stormfiends for the League, One Overloaded Rat at a Time
We love those hobby sessions where enthusiasm collides head-first with the reality of a modern Warhammer kit. This week, Michał ran straight into that wall with Skaven Stormfiends.
The short version? These absolute beasts have so many parts that one model was taking about an hour to assemble. And that was only the beginning, because there were still four more to go at that point.
Very relatable hobby content, honestly.
Big rats, big workload
For anyone who does not know the unit: Stormfiends are not exactly subtle. They are huge, heavily modified Skaven shock troops, and according to Michał they are currently one of the most juiced melee units in the Skaven roster in the current meta.
And naturally, if you are taking them for a league, you do not stop at one box and call it a day.
Michał is putting together six Stormfiends for league play, which immediately creates a very specific kind of hobby problem: every single one of them comes with multiple weapon options, and if you have six of them, the temptation is obvious.
If we have six, we build six different ones
Instead of repeating the same loadout, Michał went for the much more entertaining route: building each one differently.
That means every Stormfiend gets its own flavor of horrible Skaven engineering. Depending on the build, you can end up with:
- warp-grinders instead of hands,
- ratling cannons,
- and some extremely questionable warpstone weapon designs that are, let us say, hard to describe in polite company.
Which, to be fair, is a very Skaven design philosophy.
We also had the usual hobby confidence crisis in the middle of it all. Michał was very clear that the models are awesome, but in his words, with his current painting skill they might end up looking… less awesome after paint.
To which the only correct response was delivered immediately: painted however is still better than unpainted. Always.
We stand by that. A roughly painted army with personality will beat grey plastic every time.
Built for the table, not the display cabinet
What we like here is that this is exactly the kind of army-building decision that comes from actually planning to play games. This is not just buying a cool box because the models look great. This is building toward a real event, thinking about loadouts, and trying to get reps in with a list that should actually do work.
Even if, in classic real-life fashion, the schedule is trying to sabotage the plan.
League reality: hobby first, logistics second, life always wins
The slightly painful part is that Michał will probably have to forfeit his first league game. The match has to happen between 16 February and 1 March, and he is going to be in Warsaw for basically one day during that period.
And, very reasonably, that day is more likely to be spent repacking and seeing family before heading off again than pushing toy soldiers around a table.
A walkover is rough because an actual loss still gives some points, while a forfeit gives zero. But the good news is that everyone gets at least six games in the round, so one missed game is not the end of the world.
And honestly, the goal here was never hardcore tournament glory.
As Michał put it: he is not going there to win, he is going there to learn the rules.
That is probably the healthiest possible approach to starting league play.
The real win
So this is where the project stands right now:
- six Stormfiends planned for the league,
- a mountain of parts,
- one hour per giant rat-ogre-cyborg nightmare,
- lots of weapon options,
- and a very realistic understanding that hobby plans and life plans do not always line up.
Still, this kind of project is exactly why army-building is fun. You get a unit that looks ridiculous, hits hard, takes ages to assemble, and somehow makes you even more excited to get it on the table.
And if all else fails, maybe someone else can borrow the army and roll the dice for him.
Very Skaven. Very practical. Very league season.