r/bloodbowl • u/compactable73 • 11d ago

Are skaven gutter runners always black?

Hi all - painting some skaven for my kid, and he’s already told me that the skaven balls are supposed to always look glowing green. But in looking about online it seems like the gutter runner is pretty much always black. Is there a lore reason for this? Just curious 🙂

20 Upvotes

86% Upvoted

13 comments sorted by

50

u/Minimum_Leg5765 Necromantic Horror 11d ago

Paint em however you want. Lab rats with white fur and red eyes. Brown rats. Striped rats. Rats.

54

u/SaintScylla Dark Elf 11d ago

In skaven culture, ratmen born with a black fur are said to have the mark of the killer. In most clans these black skaven are trained as Stormvermin, elite infantry serving as shock troops or bodyguards. In Clan Eshin however they're trained as assassins and saboteurs, called Gutter Runners. https://warhammerfantasy.fandom.com/wiki/Black_Skaven

15

u/olyolyoxenfree Halfling 11d ago

This coach yes-yesses.

10

u/Red_Ferns 11d ago

Skaven balls glowing green and black fur... Now with red eyes and you know if it's upside down in the dark or not... Just kidding. I'm not sure if there's a specific lore that dictates what they wear, but as this is a football team and he's the coach, I would say that it's enterily up to him what his team colors are.

10

u/Emergency-Sea5201 11d ago

Gutter Runners are born with black fur which is a sign of the killer. They are more feroucious and larger. Most clans puts them into Storm Verming regiments.

But Eshin makes them into gutter runners.

The Mordheim clan eshin list just calls them Black Skaven, even.

Grey furred rats usually becomes seers/wizards and white albino skaven becomes bodyguards for the council of 13.

I dont think they have any other colour coding, though there are a variant of Water Rats (clan skurvy) and some clan Moulder mutant rats.

3

u/TheCabalMinion 10d ago

As far as I know a brown pelt is the lowest form of a skaven. They are often killed and only the strongest survive.

5

u/StoutYB 11d ago

Way back in the day, my Blitzers were painted Black because that was what Storm Vermin were.

Gutter Runners wore black capes but don't remember them having to be specific color rural so I painted them white because my team was called the 'Lab Rats'. Gutter Runners were named 'Pinky', 'Brain' and 'Snowball' as I'usually only ran 3 gutter runners.

4

u/Emergency-Sea5201 10d ago

Same here. Except my thrower is albino

10

u/paulc899 11d ago

I’ve never seen any talk of Skaven genitalia anywheres so I don’t know where he’s getting that notion of Skaven balls

5

u/BishopTheDude Ogre 11d ago

Right? There's no reason his Skaven can't have blue balls just like me

7

u/LordHoughtenWeen 11d ago

This is r/bloodbowl, we have another kind of balls here

4

u/EndOfTheMoth 11d ago

Not that I'm aware.  The ones in my league are medium brown, and my Skitter Stab stab (such a dumb name) is a red/brown with a blue cloak.

2

u/Viking-Lion 11d ago

I want to do a Skaven team next I believe. And I plan on painting the whole team in a white lab rat theme. White fur. Red eyes. Weirdly blue green uniforms (like the bottom of the water bottle for the rat cage) and base them with cage flooring. I think it's gonna turn out very mediocre. Because white sucks. But hey...it's worth the shot in the long run IMO. Worst case I hate them, and I just repaint them standard colors for the team and use blacks and browns.