A Rat By Any Other Name...Part VII

The concept of Nezumi, Japanese Ratmen, entered into gaming parlance in the late 90s. Whether largely inspired by Clan Eshin or Splinter from the Ninja Turtles (probably a bit of both), its hard to pinpoint where the term in reference to Ratmen originated, but it quickly spread across gamelines and became so pervasive that just last year I came across a forum post where a person was claiming that Skaven were based on the "Nezumi from Japanese folklore".

Sadly, this couldn't be further from the truth. Nezumi is simply the Japanese word for "rat or mouse", and technically "Ratman" should be "Nezumi-jin". There was at least one giant rat who could be interpreted as a Rat-man in Japanese folklore, the Yokai Tesso, who I wrote about way back in my Prehistoria Rodentia, but in general the Nezumi have no basis in Japanese mythology. This does not, in my opinion, make them any less awesome...

​In all likelihood, the Nezumi originated in the Legend of the 5 Rings collectible card game circa 1995, at least I am hard pressed to find an extant example predating this.

​In 2004 the Nezumi migrated over to Magic: The Gathering in the Kamigawa expansion, and have been a pretty regular feature since.

And by the early aughts, the Nezumi were even showing up in Dungeons & Dragons...

Regardless of where it began, one thing that is for certain is that AEG, the creators of the Legend of the 5 Rings, released the first officially titled "Nezumi" miniatures. 

Alderac Entertainment Group is a publisher of RPGs, CCGs, and board games founded in 1993 by Jolly Blackburn, nowadays best known as the creator of the Knights of the Dinner Table comic strip. Legend of the 5 Rings began life as a CCG in '95, then a roleplaying game in 1997.

In 1998, AEG released Clan War, a miniatures battle system designed by Ken Carpenter set in the same world as the CCG and RPG. Sculptors for the Clan War miniature line included Phil Bowen, Chaz Elliott, Sandra Garrity,  Jeff Grace, Julie Guthrie,  Tom Meier,  Bob Olley, Tim Prow, and Dave Summers, among others. 

​The Clan Wars range featured 4 Nezumi figures; 2 awesome ones...

​VELL5NH06 Ropp'tch'tch

...and two not so awesome ones...

At some point in the mid-to-late aughts, Basicks (a company that seems to keep jumping in and out of existence and whose website, as of this writing, is currently down) offered the following packs of heads for conversions...

Okko: Era of the Asagiri was a 2008 miniature boardgame published by Asmodee. They offered the following Nezumi figure for use with the game:

Four A Miniatures, founded in the UK by Andy Coleman in 2010, offer the following Nezumi Ratman sculpted by John Pickford: 

GCT Studios, another British miniatures company that was coincidentally also founded in 2010, are the creators of the Bushido miniatures wargame (not to be confused with the 1979 Skirmish/RPG or the German boardgame Bushido: Der Weg des Kriegers).

GCT offers two Nezumi figures in their Cult of Yurei range:

And Ristul's Extraordinary Market, a Polish company, offers the flavourfully named 
Rat Nangun Warrior Monk...

And then we get to Greebo Games...

An Italian company that's come out of the Kickstarter Era, Greebo mainly specializes in themed Bloodbowl teams (Bloodbowl Ratmen in general will be the focus of an upcoming post), including The Hand of Death, a range of Japanese-themed Ratmen that is, overall, absolutely stunning.

I regrettably missed the Hand of Death Kickstarter, but recently put in a large order with Greebo, and I have to say these are some of the best sculpted figures I've ever seen. Very high quality, no flash or overt moldlines, and impeccably detailed. For anyone looking to fill out their Eshin ranks, I simply cannot recommend them highly enough.

So without further ado...

Hand of Death Line Rats

Hand of Death Assassins

Hand of Death Skitex

Hand of Death Bushido 1 & 2

Hand of Death Horned Bushido

Hand of Death Sorcerer

Hand of Death Eishin

And last but far from least, my personal favourite...

The Hand of Death Oni Rattogre

And as high a point as that is to go out on, as an added bonus here is a Samurai Rat maquette sculpted by Simon Farrell for the Stan Winston School of Character Art "Creature Contest"...

Coming Soon (I may have to take a day or two off): Part VIII explores the world of Bloodbowl after GW abandoned the game, Part IX takes a look at Ratmen minis from the world of boardgames, and Parts X to XIII should catch us up to the present, starting with Reaper and Mantic.