Rat Ninjas for the League, Sky-Dwarf Browsing on the Side
Sometimes army-building starts with a rule, not a model
This time the hobby spiral started with a very practical need: Michał decided he needed Nightrunners for his last league match.
And honestly, the reasoning was solid from the start. On paper they sound like a really fun toolbox unit:
- they can make a move during deployment, after everyone has set up,
- if they stay within 1” of terrain, they are invisible from more than 9”,
- they have a 10” range,
- they can spike mortal wounds on crits,
- and they can shoot in combat.
That is exactly the kind of unit that suddenly makes us go from “maybe later” to “we need this right now”.
The classic problem: great rules, ancient models
There was just one issue.
The official models are, in Michał’s words, basically from another geological era — 1982 — and… well, they did not exactly inspire confidence.
So instead of forcing it, Michał went digging for something with a bit more style and found a rat-ninja proxy that fit the vibe much better.
And from there, things escalated exactly the way they should.
Printer goes brrrr
Once the idea landed, the printer got put to work. According to Michał, it had been going since morning — and that is a sentence every hobby group understands immediately.
We really like this kind of army-building moment: not just adding “the good unit”, but finding something that actually feels right visually. If a unit is supposed to be sneaky, fast, and annoying, then “rat ninjas” is a pretty convincing way to represent that on the table.
Ender’s reaction summed it up nicely: the proxy looked really good.
Side quest: Kharadron browsing
Because no hobby conversation ever stays on one track for long, the topic drifted into dwarf proxies as well.
Michał found some very cool dwarf sculpts, although he wasn’t fully convinced they matched Kharadron Overlords perfectly.
Still, they were cool enough that Ender immediately called dibs for future use — maybe for roleplay, maybe as proxies, maybe eventually as reinforced Thunderers. That last part is especially relatable: sometimes the real challenge in list-building is not deciding what you want to play, but finding models you actually want to collect, print, and paint on the road to 2000 points.
Proxy browsing is a dangerous hobby by itself
Then came the truly dangerous part: looking at more proxy ranges.
Some of them were gloriously over the top, but in a very funny way. The best comment of the evening was probably Ender saying that he could instantly tell what units they were supposed to proxy, even if visually they looked nothing alike.
Which, honestly, is a whole design category of its own.
There were also some hero options that looked promising, plus at least one flying model that produced the eternal question: where exactly is top and where is bottom?
Thankfully, Ender identified it immediately: clouds/base at the bottom, balloons at the top — so apparently everything was under control.
The real bottleneck: painting
As always, the conversation ended in the most realistic place possible.
Michał offered to print something once he finished the urgent league jobs.
Then came the correction:
actually, only after some painting gets done first.
And that might be the most honest army-building lesson in the whole exchange.
We can theorycraft units, hunt for perfect proxies, browse weird STL ranges, and keep the printer busy all day — but sooner or later the pile of grey plastic/resin starts asking difficult questions.
Final thoughts
This was a very familiar kind of hobby evening for us:
- start with a competitive need,
- discover the official models are not exactly what we want,
- find a proxy with much better energy,
- print first, ask questions later,
- get distracted by dwarfs,
- accidentally plan three more projects,
- remember painting exists.
Honestly, perfect.
And the Nightrunner idea itself still sounds great. If a unit gives you deployment movement, terrain tricks, ranged pressure, crit mortals, and shooting in combat, it is not hard to see why it suddenly jumps to the top of the shopping/printing list.
Now we just need to see them hit the table.