The Scavvy Plan

When I was but a wee nip my grandparents used to refer to the Rubbish Lorry (Garbage truck/Dustcart/Refuse collection vehicle) as the 'Scaffie Cart' and the people that worked on it and did similar jobs keeping the world clean (street sweepers, rubbish dump workers) as 'Scaffies'. Obviously being kids, this word was used as an insult at school, anybody that was a bit scruffy or dirty got called a 'Scaf' or 'Scaffie (insert swear word of your choice). It always amused me therefore that 'Scavvies' (ostensibly a derivative of Scavengers) should appear in the warhammer world and refer to scruffy, smelly, bottom dwellers.

Scavvies first appeared in the background to that long forgotten game 'Confrontation'. Below you can see John Blanche's sketches for these undercity lowlifes.

 

And above you can see the 3 official figures that were released. I kind of wish I'd bought them now.

Why am I wasting your time chatting about rubbish and Scavvies? Well... I have a plan.

One of the great things about Blogger is that you can see where people are coming to your blog from. This often leads to other peoples blogs and search engines but sometimes you see strange names and decide to follow the link and see where it goes. The best of these links are where someone has linked to your blog in a forum that you never knew existed, sometimes they are Spanish (hello Suber and friends) and sometimes it's a whole new community like happened this week. Yaktribe are just such a forum who are dedicated to promoting Necromunda, Gorkamorka and Mordheim. I had a little poke about and signed up. They are a lovely bunch of people. It was this little injection of enthusiasm that has made me come up with a new project. Yep, a new project. And I've got a deadline!

At the end of January my lovely wife is taking the boys to visit her mum and dad for a week. This leaves me with lots of time for toy soldiering. So I've wasted no time in arranging for my two oldest skumgrods to wing their way down for a weekend of shits and giggles. I've been trying to think of a theme for a central game to play and the visit to Yaktribe was the inspiration I needed, all I needed to do was combine Gorkamorka with Necromunda with a bit of RT thrown in for good measure.

Think Mad Max 2. A isolated outpost is attacked by a band of psychotic scavvies/muties mounted on ramshackle buggies. The defenders are desperately defending their homes with the help of some off world support from some kind of visitor (Rogue Trader perhaps?)
So this means I need to convert (obviously) and paint a load of figures. I've got a mix of scavvies and diggas and a couple of other random figures and these will make up my band of desperadoes. I've bought a couple of 1/48 armoured cars that'll be converted into jallopies alongside the 'Death Taxi' that I built for BOYL.
I've also got 5 mutie steeds but they need riders so i'll convert these as well and add these to the raiders threatening the settlement (if i've got time!). The nice thing is, if I get this all finished I'll end up with a gang for necromunda and a couple of gangs for gorkamorka!

But more of that in future posts.

Back to Scavvies!

When the Confrontation background was recycled for Necromunda, Scavvies were not one of the original gangs but were later included in the 'Outlanders' supplement. They even made the cover!

Which is weird. Cos if Confrontation had been published then this image, that appeared on a White Dwarf cover, was likely to have been the cover.

They look quite scavvy-ish don't they. Popular subject for glamourous cover shots?

The miniatures that were released to go along with the supplement were a nice little bunch.

Here you can find A Scaly, some Scavvies, The Boss and some zombies. The range is larger, most figures have at least two variants plus there were several mutie figures as well.

There was a second set that was released for the 2nd Edition of the game. Again all the troop types are present but they have separate arms and weapons.

 

So far, so accessable. Now, this wouldn't be a blog about citadel if things were that easy. The confrontation figures are hard enough to get a hold of but there are nearly as many 'unreleased' scavvies. I'm not an expert on such matters and I must give credit where it's due to the Collecting Citadel Miniatures wiki and of course Stuff of legends but have a gander at the figures that never quite made it.

First of all there were the Scavvies made by Marauder for Confrontation. These gangs were only ever released at Gamesday in the states and occasionally appear for sale.

 

Another officailly releaed figure that seems to be a pain in the arse to find is King Redwart, a character figure from the Outlander book.

And then there is the holy grail of Scavvy Land. This is a set of unreleased Scavvies sculpted by Jes Goodwin. They are nearest in style to the original confrontation figs and are as rare as hen teeth but christ I would love to have a set.

And Finally, The Scavvy King.

(all pics from the CCM wiki)

And just because I found it, here is a pic of some of them painted just to make even more depressed.

(By Darkstar - Coolminiornot)

 Why oh why did this range not get and official release? They are fucking gorgeous figures! Oh the miniature gods are so fickle and cruel!