TFOG Slann colour scheme and my first sculpt

Trying to get some Slann painted for the Tale of Four Oldhammer Gamers project is like wading through treacle! I'm really struggling with these little frogs. It's partly me being indecisive about a colour scheme, partly I'm finding it difficult to paint detail on the frog skin, and finally it's just a case of committing to a painting project and then finding I want to paint anything but that project!

So in the interests of trying to write at least one blog post per month on my progress, here's a side-by-side of two different colour schemes I'm contemplating:

"Traditional northern European" green vs "Amazonian tree frog" blue and orange. So what do you think? Any preference?

I've managed to get this blog post in on the very last day of the month. This is due in part to much of my hobby time this month being spent on a new pursuit - sculpting. I enjoyed converting my Odo figure last month so much I figured I would try to sculpt a complete figure, and here he is:

He's based on a painting that can be found on the rear cover of the Lost and the Damned Chaos book. I'm pretty pleased with him as a first sculpt, although I acknowledge of course that there's a lot of improvement needed! But the main thing is I really enjoyed doing this, and I hope to do a lot more next year.

I wish you all a happy, healthy and hobby-filled 2016!

Odo the Melange-addicted mutant space pirate

The Oldhammer Forum has been running a painting challenge organised by Jon Boyce (aka axiom) as part of their Oldhammer Legacy Warband theme. The premise is simple - contributors paint a themed model (this year's theme is "space pirates"), all contributors enter a draw and the winner gets to keep the entire warband. Due to the disparate nature of entries, a spot colour of turquoise has been chosen, and the eventual winner will do the basing, to tie the warband together.

My contribution was originally intended to be an "alien bounty hunter". I had the idea of converting an old Citadel Fiend Factory figure, but somewhere along the way I lost it! It was while I was looking for the figure that I hit upon a different idea after discovering the body of an old Citadel AD&D Umber Hulk and the head of an old Citadel C Series giant in my bits boxes. Odo was born:

A Tale of Four Oldhammer Gamers: giant spider painted

In my last post I assembled this brute and applied a small amount of greenstuff to mould the legs into a striking pose and fashion a pair of mandibles. I've now finished painting it:

I'm pretty happy with how it's turned out, particularly given that when I started to paint it it felt like it was all going wrong. One of the things that's really helped to turn it around is a good bit of drybrushing.

I'll be basing it at some point of course, but I haven't settle on a base design yet so I'll leave this for the time being.

A Tale of Four Oldhammer Gamers: giant spider

When I revisited the Slann army list in the Warhammer 3rd edition Armies book prior to starting this project, I was pleasantly surprised to read that Slann animal handlers can take giant spiders. I'd been looking for an excuse to paint up one of these guys for a while, so this was the ideal opportunity. The figure I had in mind was this handsome chap:

I was keen to try to construct the figure in a bit more of an "attacking pose", which was slightly daunting given that I've never converted a figure before. So armed with greestuff, a fair amount of patience, and Google results of "tarantula attacking", I came up with this:

I'm pretty happy with how it's turned out. The figure is unbalanced (hence the support in the images) but I will compensate for this when I base it.

I started painting it last night. So far I'm not massively happy with how it's turning out, but I hope I'm just going through the "it gets a bit crap before it gets better" stage of the painting process!

A Tale of Four Oldhammer Gamers: flogging a dead mojo

This month I bring you the gift of scantily-clad eunuchs, and I dedicate the post to my three fellow Oldhammerers Chico, James, and Paul. Simply because they are a great bunch of lads. Why, what do you think I meant?

So here we have them (the eunuchs that is):

From left to right we have: Nolg, Zolg, Lolg, Dolg, Folg, Molg, Tolg, Solg, Holg, and Clarence.

I heavily borrowed the painting scheme for these guys that can be seen in an advert from White Dwarf 96:

I used Foundry paints and I particularly like their Sky Blue triad, which you can see on the warpaint and shields, and goes on like a dream. It's going to be the spot colour for my army.

I need to tidy up the bases but every time I enter a painting challenge my painting mojo just shrivels up and dies!

I'm also a few points short this month. According to da roolz these guys come in at just 45 points. Ah well, Paul's excess points on his wraith rider this month restores the balance!

Happy Halloween from Wargames Foundry!

The sculpting genius that is Kev Adams has turned an inspirational piece of design by Maria Ansell into this little "beauty" in time for Halloween:

This fantastic chap – dubbed Ozzy the Bateater – will be sent out FREE with online orders placed with the Wargames Foundry, Warmonger Miniatures and Casting Room Miniatures websites for the rest of October. Foundry request that you put a note in the comments box when you place your order to let them know that you would like him included.

They will also be giving him away free to any visitors to their shop in the village of East Stoke until Saturday 31st October. They are open 9am to 4pm Monday to Friday and 10am to 4pm on Saturdays. There's free tea and coffee as well!

Ozzy is also available free with orders placed via the Casting Room Miniatures website. If you haven’t had a chance to look at this site yet it’s well worth it – there’s a lot of figures on there that can be used in an Oldhammer setting.

Unreleased female Space Marine (1993): the Bryan Ansell collection

During the time I've spent trawling through Bryan Ansell's collection of Citadel Miniatures castings, looking for unusual and unreleased figures, I've uncovered a few gems. The feature of today's post is certainly one of them!

From 1993 I present to you an unreleased female Space Marine:

The Kev Adams collection part 3

In this week's post I feature some of Kev's painted Machineries of Destruction, plus a prize-winning chariot he painted for a Citadel Open Day.

I'll mostly let the pictures do the talking. I've tried to focus on Kev's incredible attention to detail when it comes to the bases.

All three of the Machineries of Destruction featured here are the actual ones from the covers of the boxes in which these kits were sold. You can see the box covers on the Stuff of Legends.

Enjoy!

MD2 Skull Crusher, Mighty Goblin Stone Throwing Trebuchet

A Tale of Four Oldhammer Gamers: tutu evasion

So I got a bit confused this month and assumed that the deadline for the first batch of 100 points completed would be October, but apparently not! So rather than have to wear a pink tutu (don't ask) I rushed to get out 100 points by the end of September deadline. I figured the quickest way to do this was to paint one of my command figures, and so I present to you F'rrr K'iw, level 5 Lizardman hero:

I really like this range of Lizardmen, which started off as preslotta figures but many of them then acquired slotta tabs. I can't remember with certainty who sculpted them but I think it was Trish Carden.

According to Warhammer Armies, a level 5 Lizardman hero with a shield costs 72 points, so I'm not quite up to the 100 pts, so I guess I'll have to make up the deficit next month.

But hopefully it's enough to avoid Chico's pink tutu...

Check out my fellow gamer's progress: Chico's fabulous jade temple dog, and James' stylish (if Nurgle can be considered stylish!) palanquin. Paul promises to have something uploaded by Wednesday, so keep an eye on his blog!

The Kev Adams collection part 2

In the first installment of this series of blog posts I focussed on the goblins in Kev's collection; this week it's the turn of the orcs, ogres and trolls, and features some of my favourite of Kev's conversions and paint jobs. Many of the bases are adorned with Kev's characterful trademark foliage.

First up are some converted orcs which are, for me, the stand-out figures in Kev's collection.

Here's a classic Perry twin orc sculpt, one of the first slotta orcs, a line of figures that Kev went on to dominate. The original sculpt (no. 14 here at SOL) is a great figure, but Kev manages to make it more menacing and war-like with the addition of armour plates on the arms and the helmet protrusions:

A Tale of Four Oldhammer Gamers...ribbit

So this thing is happening. Back in July, just prior to this year's BOYL, the esteemed Warlord Paul of The Black Hole blog suggested we take on the challenge of "A Tale of Four Gamers", an idea that first appeared in White Dwarf 218 back in 1998. The "we" being Paul, Chico (Oldhammer on a Budget), James (Realm of Chaos 80's) and myself. The armies would be of an Oldhammer flavour and we will fight our battle/s at BOYL 2016.

The rules are simple in that between now and BOYL we must each amass a force of 1000pts at a rate of roughly 100pts per month, and to blog about our progress at least once per month. We haven't set ourselves a cash budget in that we each already have most, if not all, of the miniatures we will need. So the bulk of the challenge will lie in the painting and the modelling.

The forces chosen are:

- Chico: Hobgoblins
- James: Chaos (Nurgle)
- Paul: Undead
- Myself: Slann

John Blanche's wonderful Slann illustration from the 3rd edition Warhammer Armies book.

Why Slann? Well, since returning to the gaming scene at BOYL 2013 I've only painted two forces: a chaos warband for BOYL 2013 (that didn't actually make an appearance), and a human/giant force for BOYL 15. Both forces had one thing in common: a predominantly red/gold colour scheme. This was coincidence rather than design but I think it's fair to say that I'm now utterly bored of this colour scheme! So part of the reason for choosing a Slann force was because I could experiment with very varied colour schemes. If you think frogs are just a dull green colour then try googling Dendrobates and check out the wonderful colour schemes of these amazing little creatures. What better inspiration could I have!

I also discovered when researching Slann army choices in the 3e Warhammer Armies book that Slann animal handlers can not only take warhounds, but giant scorpions, giant spiders and sabre-tooth tigers! Brilliant opportunities for painting and modelling there.

So look out: the frogs are coming.

Ribbit.

Previously unreleased "Empirical Squads" now available from Wargames Foundry

The good folk at Wargames Foundry are now selling some of Bryan Ansell's science fiction miniatures that have been unreleased since 1987. Here's an image from their website:

If you want to order a squad of these you can give them a call or purchase them directly from the website. Details here.

If these figures are a complete mystery to you then you might want to look here, here, here and here.

They come with integral solid bases similar to the ones on all their other models.

Here's what the Foundry website has to say about these figures:

We believe that these newly discovered items are the almost mystically rare deathcasts of the elite

EMPIRICAL ABSOLUTION and LIQUIDATION SQUAD. We estimate their value as somewhere in the region of an ENTIRE GALACTIC EMPIRE, probably with a couple of lost mythical lands thrown in.

The Empirical Abs etc. demanded absolute and immediate unthinking obedience to the Empiricator [BLESS HIS NAME!] and not only from the inhabitants of Known Space, but also from the entire population of the Multiverse.

Indeed: after a boozy afternoon of high stake rune casting and seven episodes of the most sacred tapes of STARTREK, the EALS (as they liked to be known) took to speculating as to what their ultimate rewards would be for their lifetimes of ceaseless holy work:

At this point the Empiricator [BLESS HIS NAME!] got a whiff of what was going on. He sighed heavily, made a few passes in the air, clicked his heels together twice, shouted SHAZAM! And he had obliterated the foolish boozy EALS. All that was found was a neat pile of bleached skulls. Each bore the word HUBRIS and each had a tiny lead ceremonial Manikin perched there on its dome.

The Kev Adams collection part 1

As many of you will be aware, Kev "Goblin master" Adams is currently working for Bryan Ansell, producing loads of various greenskins for Warmonger Miniatures, and is also working on a range of chaos beastmen types (not yet released). I was fortunate to share the Warmonger stand with Kev at the last Salute, and after having a good old chat we decided that Kev's collection of vintage painted figures needed to be photographed for posterity. The majority of his collection is at his parent's house, who were wonderful and generous hosts for the day. So I set off with Kev and a camera in early July to take some pictures.

What I saw blew me away! This is the site that greeted me when we arrived at Kev's parents' house:

Iron Wind Metals interview with Tom Meier

David Wood of the Dear Tony Blair blog just shared a link on Facebook to an Iron Wind Metals interview with Tom Meier. Tom discusses how he got started sculpting, and his opinions on working with various mediums. It makes for fascinating viewing!

The video is part of a series that focuses on Iron Wind Metal's recent successfully funded Ral Partha Chaos Wars kickstarter that I blogged about last month.

Let's hope that Iron Wind Metals release more videos featuring Tom!

Warmonger's forthcoming Kev Adams beastmen...and a bit of Blanche

First off, please note these haven't been released yet, so don't go calling Foundry/Warmonger asking if you can get some because they aren't at the production stage. But I couldn't resist sharing them with you.

While I was helping the Warmonger Miniatures crew pack for Salute just gone, I had the pleasure of seeing some of greens of the beastmen heads that Kev Adams is sculpting. There's some proper old skool chaos-y stuff going on here:

It's difficult to pick out a favourite but for sheer bonkers check out the two on the left of the middle row.

Another one I'd like to single out is the one on the top left, which you can see here in side profile:

Unfortunately I didn't quite manage to get it in focus, but there's something about the eye that gives a real look of melancholia, of a beast doomed to follow the path of chaos.

While I was wandering around Stoke Hall packing up various bits and pieces I happened to notice part of a painting sticking out from behind one of Bryan's sofas. Hang on I thought, I recognise that...

It's only the original cover art of the first Citadel Compendium, painted by John Blanche and one of my favourite pieces of art EVAAAAHH! Drool over it ye mortals and despair. If you're thinking that part of the painting in the centre has been erased (that white patch) then don't worry, it's just the light hitting the glass.

Bryan also produced a card that had been sent to him many years ago, that had another piece of original John Blanche art attached to the front!

Beautiful.

Ral Partha Chaos Wars kickstarter: unreleased figures

There's a good chance you'll already be aware of this kickstarter, which only has a couple of days left to run. What you may not know though is that the stretch goals unlock some previously unreleased figures. You will need to scroll down to close to the end of the kickstarter page to see these figures. One of my personal favourites is the unreleased Troll Hag and Children:

You can see pictures of a painted Troll Hag at the Stuff of Legends. It's a great looking figure, as you would expect from Tom Meier, so I'm really looking forward to seeing what her children look like!

So do yourself a favour and head over to the kickstarter page to make a pledge - who knows what hidden gems will be forthcoming!

I'm going to Salute! With Warmonger Miniatures!

I've never been to Salute, and sometimes it feels like I'm the only person in this game who hasn't! Well I'm going this year, and I'll be manning the Warmonger Miniatures stand, together with Kev Adams and Marcus Ansell.

For the past few months, Kevin Adams and Bryan Ansell have been working on their range of new and remarkably strange fantasy miniatures…orcs, trolls, goblins, beastmen…all manner of weird and wonderful creations are starting to see the light of day.

I’ve blogged about some of the incredible works-in-progress previously, and it’s just been announced that some of these figures may be available for sale at Salute; here’s what Warmonger had to say earlier today:

Warmonger will have a stand at Salute, Excel on 25th April. Our stand number is TB13. Look out for our banner.

Kevin Adams will be with us and happy to talk about what he’s working on at the moment. Steve Casey, of The Citadel Collector, will also be helping out on our stand.

We will have loads of Kev’s old Orcs with us and we are working very hard to try to have a selection of his new stuff on display, and perhaps even available for sale! As I type, Bryan and Steve Turton are cleaning up the master castings and attempting to organise pressing a couple of moulds of the new Greenskins. It will be touch and go to see if we can actually get them cast up.

So please some along to say hi. I’ll be the one with receding hairline, a slight paunch, and a dodgy Welsh accent. Well, at least one of those three characteristics should mark me out…

Colony 87 - 28mm Sci-Fi Civilians by Michael Anderson

I just had to share this one. Jon Boyce, my buddy and stalwart of the Oldhammer Community, has teamed up with the uber-talented sculptor Michael Anderson on a Kickstarter to produce a range of 28mm Sci-Fi Civilians. They are fantastic! Perfect for Rogue Trader, or gaming Dune or Judge Dredd!

Check out the character on these sculpts:

You can sign up to the Kickstarter here. Go on, you know you need to!

Some classic Ral Partha sculpts being re-released

Here’s some interesting news for fans of old Ral Partha sculpts. A very reliable source has informed me that Iron Wind Metals is preparing to re-release some of the original Ral Partha 02 Fantasy Collector Series and 01 Personalities miniatures for the classic Elves, Orcs, and Goblins. The project is being announced at GaryCon this week, but here’s a sneak peak for you lot:

Some great classic Tom Meier sculpts here!

These are uncleaned master castings, waiting to be worked on by the Master Mold Room. They still have flash on them because they have not been prepped by the mold room guys yet. These figures haven't been in production since at least 1998.

My source promises me there will be more stuff down the road. Watch this space!

A spotter's guide to recasts part 2: recasts for Comic Relief

A few months ago I published a post on spotting recasts, which was essentially a guide to dispelling popular misconceptions as to what constitutes a recast. In this post I want to take a different stance, which is to give you examples of figures that are recast, but which at first glance seemed to be the genuine article. Before I do that, however, I would like to highlight how this particular situation has affected me personally, and how I'd like to address it by making a "bad thing good".

I recently acquired some unreleased Games Workshop Lord of the Rings figures. The figures looked fine: good sharp castings with no obvious imperfections. But I should have looked at them more closely. Thanks to the keen eyes of one particular Lord of the Rings collector it was pointed out to me that unfortunately they turned out to be recasts (more on that below). Being of an anti-recast inclination I couldn't bring myself to sell or trade them (even to people who know they are recasts but still want to buy them). So I'm going to give them away. If you are interested in acquiring one, read on...

Given that this week is Comic Relief in the UK I'm going to donate £1 to every person who expresses an interest in acquiring one of these figures. For those of you who don't live in the UK, Comic Relief is an annual event here in the UK that raises money to tackle poverty (http://www.comicrelief.com). To get involved in "Recasts for Comic Relief" just email recastsforcomicrelief@gmail.com and I will donate £1 for everyone who emails. By sending an email you are effectively entering yourself into a prize draw, with 6 random people receiving 1 each of the figures.

If you have a particular preference for one figure, or would like to rank your preferences, then feel free to do so in the body of the email. I can't guarantee however that you will get the figure you are after.

You have until midnight on Thursday March 12th to send an email. Comic relief is on Friday March 13th, at which point I will donate the money, and the figures will be posted the following Monday. I will cover the cost of standard postage to anywhere in the world - if you want to add insurance on top then I would request you do so at your own expense.

The figures in question can be seen below, together with a close-up picture of Beruthiel to show the metal "marbles" indicative of recasting. I will leave it to the person who alerted me to the fact they are recasts to explain:

There are what as known as marbles evident on the casts. Marbles appear as tiny balls of metal which are caused by air bubbles in the rubber mould. GW minis do not have these imperfections due to the nature of how the moulds are made. The castings themselves are also slightly less crisp than their original counterparts as they appear to have been gravity poured castings rather than centrifugally spun cast.

You can see on first glance that the figures seem fine, although Beruthiel is probably the roughest casting of the lot (marbles are evident on all the figures). Look closely and you should be able to see marbles on every figure.

Queen Beruthiel

A wish called Wanda

Those us who collect Citadel Miniatures can be a bit obsessive, it has to be said. We are driven to collect all examples of a particular range, or in some cases, of all ranges! Consequently something that really gets our collecting juices flowing are variants: figures that closely resemble one another but have slight differences that mark them out as different. Such figures are usually share the same basic body sculpt, but are noted for head swaps, modifications of weapons etc. Despite the breadth and depth of figure knowledge in the Citadel collecting community, new variants are still coming to light, and this blog post presents what is in my opinion a prominent addition to the range of variants.
The variant in question is that of Wanda, a character who features in the Shadows Over Bogenhafen and Death on the Reik Citadel scenario pack figure ranges (scans courtesy of the Stuff of Legends):

Wanda: top left

Bryan Ansell's Rogue Trader Space Marines: part 3

If you've seen my previous posts on this subject (Part 1 and Part 2) then you'll already be aware that Bryan has some wonderful old Rogue Trader Space Marines in his collection, most of which were painted by the 'Eavy Metal team and appeared in various publications of the time. So today I present some more for your delectation.