Update on unreleased unseen Heroquest prototype figures (Bryan Ansell's collection)

Back in May I posted about some fascinating figures I found in Bryan Ansell's collection that appear to be unreleased and previously unseen Heroquest prototypes. Well I recently had the pleasure of discussing these figures with none other than Jes Goodwin, and he appears to have solved the mystery.

Firstly, Jes confirmed that of the seven mystery figures, he sculpted the following five:

 

 

He suspects that the remaining two were sculpted by the Perry twins:

 

Now, with regards to why these prototypes do not resemble the known prototypes, Jes' theory is as follows:

Jes seems to recall that the seven prototypes above were the very first prototypes created for Heroquest when the game was in development. He suspects that the two knight figures were dropped and didn't make it into the final game. The known Heroquest prototypes (seen here) were later created to be painted and used in the box art. So the known Heroquest prototypes are in fact a second incarnation of prototypes. The neat thing about this theory is that it explains why the known metal prototypes closely resemble the plastic production figures (for example, here), but most of these previously unseen prototypes do not!

Thanks Jes!

The Bryan Ansell collection: Rogue Trader Eldar (Citadel Miniatures)

Last month I blogged about the wonderfully-painted Eldar in Dave Perry's collection, many of which date back to the original Eldar of the Rogue Trader period. This months kicks off with yet more Eldar, this time some of the ones from Bryan Ansell's collection. I number of these figures appeared in the Rogue Trader rulebook and the Book of the Astronomican.

What I particularly like about these Eldar is their colour schemes, which really "pop." You will notice that some of them are clearly unfinished, having had just a base coat applied. I'm guessing that these figures either formed part of a step-by-step painting guide, or else were part of a larger force destined to be photographed, with time pressures meaning that they faded into the background and didn't need to be finished off to high standard.

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.

Unreleased Citadel Rogue Trader era Adeptus Arbites in the Bryan Ansell collection

It's not unusual for images of previously unseen unreleased Games Workshop figures to appear on the internet, and probably the best overall source for these is the Collecting Citadel Miniatures wiki. What is unusual, however, is for new figures to appear in older ranges that might previously have been considered to be completely documented; I recently discovered two figures in Bryan Ansell's collection that fit this criteria.

The figures below are labelled "Arbites" on the front of the tab and "GW 1987" on the rear of the tab. So here I present two unreleased Adeptus Arbites from the Rogue Trader era:

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.

Coming soon: the Dave Perry collection

I'm such a tease...

Beastmen unit for Oldhammer weekend

Here is my current WIP - a beastman unit for Oldhammer weekend.

I'm putting together a Khorne unit, with 5 Bob Olley "goatmen" and 5 Jes Goodwin "dogmen." The unit champion can be seen front row on the left.

Here is a cloe-up of one of Bob's goatmen, a lovely figure:

I've gone with traditional Khorne colours for this unit. My new best friend for this particular painting exercie is the old Citadel brown ink, which gives a fantastic depth of shade:

I'm currently building up a narrative for my Oldhammer weekend chaos force, built on the stats I rolled, which I'll cover in more detail in a future post.