9th Day Genetic Program for the Ratking Double Down Snuff Slam

    One of the events I signed up for at UTD 2026 was the Ratking Double Down Snuff Slam. At last year's fest, Ratking was the game that I think I saw played the most. Every time I walked by a group playing, it everyone was having a great time. So I made sure to try and get a spot at this years Ratking event. 

 

Action shot of the Snuff Slam by @thatboardgamedork

 

    For the Snuff Slam, each player would have two rats to control. When I think of a two man team, my mind always goes to a big guy/little guy dynamic. My general idea for the theme of the duo was a couple of indentured or escaped lab rats. A couple weeks before the event, I came across this metal "Ape X" Reaper model at a local game store.

 

  

    It immediately reminded me of a specific creature design from the Genndy Tartakovsky Clone Wars series. So I knew I had to make a giant augmented naked mole rat for my big rodent.

   

   

    Starting with the ape as a base, I sculpted the body around it in stages from, roughly, bottom to top. Legs, then stomach, then arms, then breasts and arms, then feet and genitals. Working this way kept me from messing up one section while working with another. I tried making a texture roll from my own skin texture to add some realism, but the texture ended up being too fine for the green stuff to catch any of the detail.

    The head I initially sculpted entirely from green stuff, but I wasn't happy with my level of detail. So I took the head parts from a Great Gnashtoof as an anchor for the head, sculpting the rest around that. The two front teeth were pretty tricky. I shaped them out of green stuff first, then drilled out a spot in the mouth for them and glued them in place once they had cured. I'm lucky I didn't lose them before during placement, they kept flying out of my tweezers!

    Lastly, I drilled a hole for the tail, cut and bent a little piece of wire,roughly sculpted a tail around it, and glued it in the hole.

 

 

    I liked the modular weapons included in the ape kit, but I did add some brass rod spikes to the bludgeon option.

    For the the smaller fella, I chose to go with this unmodified Gardens of Hecate rat made for Sun Rot. Perhaps a lab rat with it's face melted off during experimentation?

 

   

    I'm quite pleased with the basing that I got on both of these. A few toothpick, a LOT of mud texture, and a dusting of sand/baking soda mixture on top. I'm going to be reusing this for future projects.

    My painting session on these was a bit frantic ( I was finishing them the night before we rolled out for the fest) so my painting notes aren't as robust as I wish they were. I think I ended up re-priming them three times with how frustrated I was. But for less than an afternoon of painting, I'm pleased with the result. I think for the skin I did a base coat of a burgundy, washed the whole thing with a darker red shade, and then sprayed over most of it with a very light pink? And then I believe I hit the crevices with a thinned dark red wash (Either Berserker Bloodshade or Army Painter dark red tone). If I had more time, I would have focused more on trying to get a better NNM effect from the green metal bits. The bases were done by wet blending contrast paints.

 

 

 

    I tried to convey melted flesh off bone with the skull of the little rat by starting with that burgundy base coat, washing it with that darker red shade, and then dry brushing the shit out of it with gradually brightened off white. . I don't know if it quite reads how I envisioned, but I'm happy with it overall. I'm also very pleased with my wet blended tail. I don't usually get transitions this smooth.
 

    As far as the event went, it was a great time! Pulling from the only wrestling reference I'm really familiar with, I named them the 9th Day Genetics Program with Rat Daddy as my top talent and Dog Face as my blister. Dylan, my teammate, and I bumbled our way through the match and ended up being the last competitors in the ring before the ratking consumed all.

 

Dylan's handicap-able rat triumphantly wielding a grenade launcher.

    Thank you to Robbin for running such a fun event!

Painting the Strain of New Birth

    The paint job for these Tyranids were heavily based on a tutorial for veiny skin by The Hobby Collab on Youtube. I started with a white prime and a base bcoat of ProAcryl burgundy. I then airbrushed them with a coat of Berserker Bloodshade. 

 

 

     Another happy accident during this process was the shade pooling up on the back of the tick during application. The pooled shade ended up  looking like a deep vein cluster after later applications of paint.

 

 

 

 

     Next I airbrushed ProAcryl bright warm gray from above all the models. This gray reads more as a "green gray" than a "warm gray" to me, which is why I picked it. 

 

     With that comes the workhorse of this technique: the superglue. A layer of thin superglue acts as both a protective coat for the steps to come, and a way to make the model look super glossy and smooth. Using a plastic tipped brush, I gently applied the super glue to the parts of the model that would have veins. It's important not to get this into any place that you want to keep matte detail. Emphasis on gently: too much force on application can be destructive and remove paint(this can be seen on the back of the tick).

 

    Once the super glue is totally dry, a thinned down wash in the color of the vein is airbrushed on to the model. This color is added only added in places the veins will be over the superglue and so thinly it's barely perceivable. When that layer has dried, I began forming the veins with isopropyl alcohol. This is done by absorbing a small amount of IPA into a fine brush and making little circle in the thin paint layer until the paint starts to coagulate around the IPA. I keep making these circle and moving the paint into vein patterns. 

 

 

   

 

   Once happy with the look I let it dry, airbrush a spot of secondary color (ProAcryl dark blue in this case) on a point of interest on the model (whip, stinger, scythes, etc.). I then repeat the superglue/airbrush/ipa step with a different thin wash color that closely matches the secondary color. More super glue or a gloss varnish could be applied after this, but I decided to leave the blue parts matte to make the model more interesting.

 

 

    Not much more was done after this step. I did a matte clear coat, dry brushed some of the sharper details, and painted the bases. By the time I got to the bases, It was only a couple days before the fest, so they are probably my least favorite part of the model, but pigment powder will always be my saving grace.

    And there you have it: The Strain of New Birth!

 

 

 
 

   

   

    I sadly did not get get to play that game of Shadow War Armageddon these were originally made for, but I did get the next best thing: the Rusted Demon flail! 

 

 

 

    Under the Dice's modeling and painting competition puts so many talented artists under one roof (many of whom I look up to), and I was honored with the top prize of that competition for these models. I am humbled to be awarded the flail, and I'm still in shock that I was chosen for this honor. Thank you to everyone who has had something kind to say about my work. It means the world to me that I have met so many amazing people through this hobby, and I am so thankful for events like Under the Dice where I can feel so welcomed and at home among like minded artist.

 
    All that being said: I'm still waiting on that Shadow War Armageddon game, Jax and Ian ;).

 

 

Sculpting the Strain of New Birth

    Earlier this year I was introduced to Shadow War Armageddon by my friends Jax and Ian. They both said they enjoyed it as a system and suggested we play  some casual games of it at Under the Dice Fest this year. Looking through the different factions, the Tyranid warriors caught my eye, specifically that it was a low model count faction. Recently, Tyranids have been interesting me conceptually, but the combination of it being a swarm faction along with a general disinterest in the official models has kept me from doing anything with them. In Shadow War, Tyranid warriors can have a max of 5 base models with a couple more special units. This was exactly what I was looking for to explore my ideas of what a tyranid could look like. 

 

   

  

    The first two models I focused on were the two melee warriors. With some wire armatures, I formed some very unplanned bodies onto them with Milliput for the tall guy and Milliput+Green Stuff for the shorter one. I've never sculpted full figures like these before, so I just went with what felt right and didn't worry  too much about anatomy. The shorter ones head ended up being very xenomorph inspired due to an excess of milliput while making the tall guy (one of many happy accidents in this project).

  

   

 

    After the first sculpts cured, I added some malstrain arms, termagant arms, and a whip armature to the taller one, and sculpted some sythe appendages to the shorter one. My main goal with these models was to make them look less armored and chitinous and more newly born and fleshy, and I think that comes through more when the sculpts are combined with the paintjob later.

 

 

   For the Tyranid alpha, I picked up a second hand winged Tyranid prime from my local game store. I liked the base torso, but the bulky armor made it much bigger than I wanted, so I trimmed off most of it in favor of a slimmed down look. For his legs and arms, I used more malstrain limbs along with a pair of termegant arms. Initially for the head, I tried sculpting another xenomorph-like head on the original prime head, but It was not inspiring me. Looking to nature for some inspiration, I found it: worms.

 

   

 

    Really inspired by the branching proboscis of the ribbon worm and the way horse hair worms exit their host, I positioned some floral wire coming out of the head of alpha. This was something I originally tried on the tall melee tyranid, but didn't have enough space on the head to make it work the way I wanted. For the back, i put some brass rod spikes and bulked them up with Green Stuff/Milliput.

    

 

     

    For the grub/worm/centipede thing I shaped some tin foil for the main body segment and glued part of a malstrain torso to the end for a stinger. Bulked out the body with more miliput and textured it with the fingertip of my nitrile gloves. I glued malstrain fingers to the body for legs, and added mor milliput for joint sockets. And finally, I added some nubs around the mouth.

 

 

 

    It's base is a very silly marriage of two circle bases. I made a temporary "mold" around them with parchment paper, popsicle sticks, and magnets to hold it all in place. I then filled in the voids in between the bases with hot glue, let it cool, filled any smaller gaps with excess Green Stuff. None of this is relevant to the models, I just thought it was a really funny amount of work to put into a base.

 

 

    Finally, there is the tick. While it's the last model I put together, it was the inspiration for this entire project. My original idea for these Tyranids came from the idea of a giant floating tick that I couldn't stop thinking about. There's actually a precursor to this model that I made as a gift for a friend that was even bigger and had a more human face (see above). While I was proud of that mini, it wasn't quite what I had envisioned. With the new tick, I started from a ball of tin foil as the main bulk with the legs of a malstrain tyramite glued to the bottom. On that I added a GW skull and some thin spikes as chalicerae. I sculpted green stuff around the foil to form the body, trying to evoke the look of a tick that has been feeding for a while. After it was cured, I sanded the body to get a nice smooth texture, and attatched a coat hanger as the support.

 

 

   With that, the Tyranids were based, primed and ready to paint. You'll find my painting process for them directly following this post!

State of the Work Bench

    I'm currently in the midst of UTD prep with about five different projects in varying levels of completeness. Since it'll be a while longer before any of them are finished, I want to share some of the work I've done recently on my work area.

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    One of the miniature painting tools I've resisted spending money on the past three years has been paint handles. I've had enough of using pill bottles with rocks in the bottom, so I bought a 1.5" diameter dowel and cut it into 2.5" long handles. Such an easy solution, and I'm ashamed it took me this long to see the light.

    Happy with the handles, I wanted to build a tray to hold them while they had models on them. So a took a piece of scrap plywood, drilled 1.5" diameter holes in it, and attached it to another piece of plywood with the same dimensions. A little bit of sanding to the holes and dowels ensure they aren't too snug. Now I have a tray that holds 20 models at a time! I've had four squads of Bolt Action minis I've been painting on and off for the past month, and this setup has made it so much easier to batch paint a little at a time, and put them away while working on kitbashes.

    After I put together the paint handle tray, I needed some place to put it. I've seen the suggestion on the IRWT discord multiple times to put labeled trays with unfinished projects into a rack for a nice way to organize  in progress work. I was very tempted to buy dental trays and racks for this purpose, but I think they would be too small/expensive for what I need. I found a paper tray with adjustable shelves that fit my paint handle tray perfectly, but I'm still on the hunt for some smaller trays for the other shelves

 

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    Another miniature skill I've been trying to improve has been my photography. Previously I've been using just a sheet of white or black card stock behind the mini I'm trying to shoot while it's sitting on top of a paint bottle. This was enough to scrape by, but I was not getting very good lighting from my desk lamp alone. I knew I wanted a foldable light box as an upgrade, but they can get pretty pricey. So I found a tutorial on YouTube that uses foam board and Velcro to make a DIY light box. I scaled mine down and added a paracord loop so it can be wall hung. For the backdrop I picked up some poster board and added Velcro pieces to the corners of both the backdrop and where the backdrop would sit in the box, making it easily removable and replaceable.

 

 

    I'm very happy with the fact that it fits right on my table and my work light can still be used as the light source. I've also got a couple of goose neck lamps that I can use in case I need supplemental light from the side windows.

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    Since December of last year I've been slowly gathering gear for an airbrush setup. I don't have access to a window in my work space, so I followed this YouTube tutorial to build a vent trap for my airbrush booth out of a five gallon bucket, fishtank filter pad, and silicone sealant. 

 

    I don't have a ton of space to work with in this room, so I'm pretty proud I was able to fit an entire airbrush setup, complete with filtration, on a small wire kitchen rack. Even with the bucket trap, I still use a respirator and only put acrylics through the airbrush. But I feel like I can paint with a little less worry about fucking up my lungs after building it.

 

 

  

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    Optimizing my work space is so much fun for me (and sometimes I feel like I'm doing it more than actually using the work space, haha). I could write another 10 paragraphs about all the dumb little things I've added to the room, but I think I'll cut it off here and write a part 2 in the near future.