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:

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:

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:

Unreleased Rogue Trader era adventurers and a mystery solved (Bryan Ansell collection)

There's a mystery that's been bugging me and fellow Citadel collectors and Rogue Trader enthusiasts for some time: who and what is the figure on the top left of the image on p. 11 of the Rogue Trader rulebook? Is it even a Citadel figure?

Nico's Oldhammer Realm of Chaos army

Over the next few days I'll be making a series of posts about last weekend's Oldhammer event at Foundry, and I couldn't resist by starting with a series of pics of Nico's stunning Realm of Chaos figures. Those of you who follow Oldhammer are probably already aware of Nico's figures and games reports on his Realms of Chaos blog; indeed, many of the figures below have already been seen on his blog and elsewhere. But if you love this guy's work as much as I do you're probably quite happy to see these figures again.

As an aside, you may notice a chaos dwarf juggernaut in this lot - Rick Priestley insists that some rules were produced for this war machine, and were packaged with the machine itself. I've never seen these but if you have, please leave a comment below.

It was great to finally meet Nico in person and to chat about his figures. I make no apologies for the number of pictures that follow, or for my obvious obsession with his mounted units in particular - his conversions are among the best I've ever seen:

Bryan's cabinets of chaos 5

Today's glance into Bryan Ansell's cabinets of chaos reveals some of Dale Hurst's chaos conversions. Issue 135 of White Dwarf featured an article by Dale on converting and painting some classic (well, contemporary at the time!) chaos figures for a Tzeentch warband. Dale's warband is heavily focussed on beastmen/minotaur/spawn with a solitary chaos champion and his familiar. To date I have managed to locate the beastmen and minotaur/spawn in Bryan's collection but the champion and familiar are yet to be found (sadly they are possibly among the "disappeared" as is often the case with Bryan's figures).

Personally I think Dale's article is a great inspiration for those (such as myself) who are relatively new to converting and painting, and is also a useful model to follow for the forthcoming Realm of Chaos Warband Mega Game in August's Oldhammer Weekend. In summary, simple but creative modelling and colour schemes, and a small number of models. I'll leave it to Dale to set the scene:

Bryan Ansell's Genestealer cult

On 15th December 2012 Foundry Miniatures in Nottingham played host to an old school Rogue Trader participation day. It was a fun day with some gorgeous old school figures and game boards on display. Bryan Ansell had brought along some of his old Citadel figures, including his fantastic Genestealer cult. I took a bunch of pictures of the cult, and decided to get blogging...(6 months later!).

Many of the figures below featured in Bryan's Khornate Genestealer Cult that was described in a series of articles in White Dwarf issues 114 - 116. These issues featured a background to Genestealers in Warhammer 40k written by Paul Murphy, some fabulous artwork, and a number of figures painted by the 'Eavy Metal team (together with "how to" painting guides). Not all of the figures below were strictly speaking part of the particular cult featured, and sadly not all members of the cult were present on the day.

My blog post starts with the pictures of the figures from the day, followed by some of the 'Eavy Metal figures and painting guides.

Apologies that some of these are out of focus - I was so wrapped up in the figures that I didn't check the pictures as I went along! It was only after I arrived home that I realised my mistake.

Genestealer hybrids

Golden Demon awards in the Golden Age: part 3 (1992)

In this third and final installment of Golden Demon awards in the Golden Age I will be sharing with you images of figures from the 1992 awards (from White Dwarf 151). I say "final" because I was unable to find a reference to subsequent awards (1993, 1994 etc) from the White Dwarfs of the period. If anyone knows different please let me know and I would be happy to scan them and put together a pdf doc. You'll notice that the majority of figures featured in this article are from the 1980's and very early 1990s, so there's a good chance that the Golden Demon awards from the mid-90's also contained such figures. SO it would be a shame if White Dwarf hadn't featured these.

If you are new to Scribd then clicking on the expand screen icon at the bottom right of the Scribd box below (to the right of the + and - zoom buttons) gives you a full screen view.

Anyway, enjoy!

Games Day 1992 by bridgend_steve

Xaxus Chaos-Thrall: a Bryan Ansell/John Blanche chaos conversion from the First Citadel Compendium

So yesterday I commented  that I have something special lined up for my next post. I've already revealed that Ivan Bartleet's Chalice of Doom and War Altar of Nurgle reside in Bryan Ansell's collection, and here's another treasure from that collection. I would like to present to you Xaxus Chaos-Thrall:

Bryan's cabinets of chaos 4

This week's glimpse into Bryan's cabinets focuses on some of the chaotic beasts on display. As usual, there's some well painted treasures together with cool conversions and rarities.

Golden Demon awards in the Golden Age: part 2 (1991)

In this second installment of Golden Demon awards in the Golden Age I will be sharing with you images of figures from the 1991 awards. This was the first year that Golden Demon was also held outside the UK (in the USA and Canada) and pictures of some of the overseas entries can be seen. The Scribd document begins with a two-page introduction to the awards (from White Dwarf 139); next are the entries themselves as seen in White Dwarf 140 including those from the USA and Canada; and finally (from page 22 on) some more Golden Demon finalists as seen in White Dwarf 141.

Golden Demon 1991 by bridgend_steve

War Altar of Nurgle by Ivan Bartleet

My posting of images of Ivan Bartleet's Chalice of Doom has provoked a number of comments, largely centred on the relief people feel at the thought it is safe and sound, residing in Bryan's collection. Well, another old classic is alive and well at Bryan's....

White Dwarf issues 125 and 128 featured the War Altar of Nurgle, another one of Ivan's, and something I remember clearly and very fondly from my youth. You can imagine my surprise and delight when I discovered it residing at Bryan's. I really do apologise for the quality of the next pic, suffice to say it was taken in haste and without any preparation:

John Blanche's early fantasy/scifi conversions

I'm a huge fan of the miniature artwork of John Blanche, and his Blanchitsu column in White Dwarf has kept me entertained and informed for many years. I continue to buy White Dwarf, and I've noticed that much of the focus in recent Blanchitsu has been on converting fantasy figures (or parts thereof) to scifi, often with an inquisitorial slant. This trait of converting fantasy figures to scifi is by no means new, and is something that John has been taking great delight in for decades. I recently had the opportunity to take some photographs of such figures in Bryan Ansell's collection. Figures 1 - 9 below all started life as early 1980's preslotta Citadel fantasy (OK, with a couple of exceptions). See how many you can spot (what I believe to be the answers can be found by clicking on the figure captions).

Figure 1