Happy Birthday to my blog! A review of the year

It was a year ago today that I started this blog, and what a year it's been! Some incredible unreleased and previously unseen Games Workshop figures have emerged in the Bryan Ansell collection; Tim Pollard's collection has revealed some fascinating surprises; Dave Perry's painted old-skool figures have wowed us; and I've started gaming and painting again after a 25 year break! There's plenty more to come in my second year - and I might even do some more painting and gaming.

The blog has attracted 157 followers, and another 51 people are my google+ followers. Does that count as 208 followers?! I guess so...Anyway, the blog appears to have had around 133,000 pageviews which I'm delighted about because more people need to see the stuff in these collections. So please spread the word!

Please indulge me as I revisit some of my favourite posts of the past year.

The blog kicked off with preparations for the forthcoming Oldhammer Weekend at Wargames Foundry, which was still 6 months away at that time, but much needed to be done. My first post offered some suggestions for chaos beastmen colour schemes, based on some of Bryan's beastmen to be seen in the pages of the Realm of Chaos books. Continuing with the beastmen theme, I began documenting the contents of Bryan's "Cabinets of Chaos" which revealed some truly stunning figures.

The Dave Perry collection: unreleased Heroquest Wizards of Morcar figures

I'm sure that many of you will have played Heroquest at one time or another, and possibly one of its many expansions such as Wizards of Morcar. Part of the appeal of Heroquest and its expansions was that they came with a set of plastic figures based on characters and races from the scenarios covered, and therefore it was unnecessary to purchase additional figures. What you may not know is that many of these plastic figures had metal prototypes which did not see general release. There are always subtle differences between the plastic production figures and their equivalent metal prototypes.

I am planning a future post dedicated to the topic of metal prototypes of plastic Citadel Miniatures, but the focus of this particular post are the unreleased metal prototypes of the Heroquest: Wizards of Morcar figures painted by Dave Perry. Dave has done a grand job of painting these figures using a subtle yet beautiful colour palette.

These figures are very rare, and I would love to acquire some. If you know of any please get in touch - excellent reward offered!

The Dave Perry collection: Chaos Space Marines part 2

In my first review of former 'Eavy Metal 'eavyweight Dave Perry's Chaos Space Marines I focussed on his Plague Marines; this week it's the turn of Khorne and the Iron Warriors. Bloooood! Deaaaaath!

Khorne

The Dave Perry collection: Rogue Trader Eldar part 2

Here is the second installment of Dave Perry's superb Eldar collection. I particularly like Dave's deep and rich oranges on the Fire Dragons. Enjoy!

PS - I've started inserting "read more" breaks into my posts, which I think makes for scanning multiple posts easier. Any feedback would be appreciated.

The Dave Perry collection: Chaos Space Marines part 1

Some old classics here. I particularly like the Nurgle marines and in my opinion Dave has given them the colour scheme they deserve. I've never really clicked with the Night Lords: a bit too cartoon-y for my taste but I can't fault Dave's painting of the figure.

The Dave Perry collection: Rogue Trader Eldar part 1

Dave has quite a few of Jes Goodwin's Eldar in his collection, harking back to the very first Rogue Trader releases. So many in fact that I've decided to divide his Eldar between two posts. Notice Dave has decided to keep the edges of his bases black. You may recall that Fraser Grey did the same thing - simple but very effective.

These particular Eldar are an absolute riot of yellow - Dave has done Eldar in colours other than yellow as you'll see from the next post! In my limited painting experience yellow is a particularly difficult colour to do well, and Dave's results are stunning.

The Dave Perry collection: Realm of Chaos Champions and Renegades

I am delighted that Dave Perry, former resident of Games Workshop's Design Studio/'Eavy Metal team, has allowed me to display photographs of his fantastic painted miniatures on my blog. If you dipped out of the hobby in the 1980s and have only recently returned to it you may have missed Dave's stint at GW, but he's provided a comprehensive and very amusing bio below. Please note these are not my words - I want to emphasise that because I certainly don't agree with the "Never truly great, Dave’s painting was, I suppose, sufficient" comment!

Over the coming weeks I'll be showcasing Dave's work, organised fairly roughly into categories. This week it's the turn of Realm of Chaos era Champions and Chaos Renegades.

Biography

Coming soon: the Dave Perry collection

I'm such a tease...