Bats, man (Part 1)

 Bats. Swarms of bats. 

Sorta. 

While poking around the Neverness Archives I stumbled upon these old bats. Much like a lot of my Warhammer Fantasy models, that weren't acquired for inclusion in a specific army, these were purchased for use in one of my D&D campaigns. Specifically D&D 3.5, and expressly for use as  Firebats in a 3.5 conversion of the classic 1st Edition module The Tower of Inverness. They are part of an awesome encounter involving a Fire Giant and a lot of lava.  These firebats performed admirably in the game, but that was their only rodeo, and they haven't been touched since. That was around 2003-ish. 

The goofy stands that were molded onto these things did not sit well with me back then (and less so now). So I chopped them off and drilled a rod into their posterior.  Then I mounted them to a flight stand rod which in turn was mounted onto a 20mm base. 

This worked out wonderfully in the game as these creatures operated independently and not as a swarm in the Warhammer sense. My original idea was that I would use greenstuff to sculpt flames onto them. I still believe this would have looked rad as hell, but time was more persistent than my vision and what you see in these pics are as far as the whole project got. And yes, they kicked ass in the game! 

When I recently dug these guys out of the archive, the plan was to magnetize them to a 40mm base and make them removable. Very much like I did with the Tyranid Ripper Swarms I assembled awhile back. But when I double-checked their stats I found that they have 5 wounds per base, and not the 3 that I thought they had. Oops. 

And that just isn't going to work like I originally envisioned. 

So my current plan is to remove the bats from their 20mm bases and attach them at different heights to a 40mm base. I am fairly confident I can make this work. So confident that I am going to save that whole process for the eventual, but inevitable,  Part 2 of this series.