Way back, when Warhammer Fantasy Battles was still in its 3rd edition (1987-1991), I played Warhammer a lot. One of the nice features that was available in the Realm of Chaos books, was to give units chaos mutations. Skaven were one of the races that could receive chaos mutations, and it was encouraged to actually modify your miniatures such that they reflected physical the mutations.

The unit shown below is one of the units that featured in my skaven army. Besides some non-physical mutations, the unit received an alternate head mutation, and a changed forelimb. I tried to work that theme into the miniatures by replacing some heads, as well as some arms.

The skaven bodies are all from the Warhammer Regiments box, except one giant rat (giant rat 1) body (front right) and a skaven character (verminlord with halberd) (far left). The head mutations are (from left to right and back to front): unchanged skaven head on character model, goat’s head from Chimera model, fly from a plastic toy, added horns to skaven head, genestealer (Spacehulk model), horse (plastic toy), pelican (plastic toy), lizard (plastic GW), deer (plastic toy), chaos hound, a very weird head mutation — tail from the same chimera and finally a dragon head (also from chimera, he served well!) on chaos spawn. The arms are the following: genestealer, no change, genestealer, space marine bionic arm, crab’s claw (plastic toy), no change, no change, changed weapon, no change, skeleton arm, no change, and the chaos spawn doesn’t have any arms.

A second model that was a conversion for my chaos forces was the model I dubbed the Escargotaurus. A cross-breed between a giant snail (from a plastic toy model) and a minotaurus was the focal model of my army. The minotaur body is from Advanced Heroquest, the wings (which were there to help the creature to keep itsbody straight) are from the same chimera model mentioned above.

I must say I had fun creating these models. I don’t know whether such models would still be allowed under the current WFB rules, but they served me well on the battlefield many years ago!