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.

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!

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.

Painty stuff: Adeptus Mechanicus (Bob Olley/Rogue Trader)

I've been collecting Citadel Miniatures for many years, but until recently I've been one of those stereotypical collectors who tends to stick new acquisitions in drawers to gather dust. It wasn't always so; until the late 80s I was a keen gamer, and over the past couple of years I've taken up that pursuit once more. One thing though that I've never really spent much time on is painting, which is a shame given the number of figures I now have. So I'm trying to do something about it. I've painted a handful of figures (most of which I haven't actually completed), but I'm now going to try in earnest to improve my painting.

There's a good chance that you share my love of the painted figures that appeared in the 'Eavy Metal pages of White Dwarf in the 1980s and early 1990s. Vivid colours and an imaginative approach to colour combination was the name of the game back then, and this is the approach that I'm trying to emulate. Here's one of the first steps on which I hope will be my road to that destination:

There were a couple of techniques I wanted to experiment with when painting this Rogue Trader era Bob Olley sculpted Adeptus Mechanicus: thinning paint, and glazing with inks.

Yes, I appreciate that you painty types who are reading this probably think I'm stating the obvious when it comes to thinning paints, but it's not something that I've formerly been fond of. This has been particularly true whenever I've used colours such as yellow and orange, and I've been of the belief that these pigments are already thin, so why thin more? Consequently I've ended up with rather thick and not too pleasing paint jobs. So on this occasion I was determined to give this thinning lark a go. The figure was undercoated white and the first thin coat of hobgoblin orange/red core (old Citadel paints) was applied. As I suspected it looked very thin, but I let it dry for a couple of minutes and perservered. About 4 or 5 thin coats in my mind was blown! I was so pleased with the result! Thinning subsequent highlight and shadow colour combinations made layering so much easier. My eyes have been opened!

I'm also a big convert to thinning with inks. I used Winsor & Newton or old Citadel inks on this figure, and glazed pretty much every part. The glazes really give depth to the colours and at the same time lift them and make them really vivid. Another conversion for me!

I have to be honest and say that once I'd painted the orange clothing - which I'm really happy with - I got a bit bored with the remainder of the figure, and painting the other parts was a bit of a chore. Ah well, I made it to the end at least.

So now I'm hooked, and I'm looking forward to sharing more painty stuff with you in future, and I genuinely would appreciate your feedback in how to improve my technique. One of my goals is that once I'm up-and-running and gaining in confidence, I'll be turning to painting my collection of unreleased figures.

Have you ever seen a Sphincter Beast?

Well you have now:

Sculpted by Rick Priestley, who comments:

Ah - I think that's a Bouncing Vrubee (or some such) sculpted for Asgard back in the day - pre-dates RT by quite a few years - not sure if it was ever officially released though as it's not on the Stuff of Legends site.

This one is in Bryan Ansell's collection.

Go on, admit it - you NEED one of these...

The Bryan Ansell collection: Space Marine Scouts (Rogue Trader era)

Just a quickie today to showcase some of the painted Games Workshop/Citadel Miniatures Space Marine scouts in Bryan Ansell's collection. A mixture of metal and plastic (from the Advanced Space Crusade set). Some of the plastic scouts are particularly well-painted, and the metal scouts look great with the face paint!

Unreleased Rogue Trader adventurer (Bryan Ansell's collection)

Today's offering from the Ansell horde is yet another unreleased Rogue Trader Adventurer:

This figure is labelled "Feral Shaman" on the tab and was produced in 1987. I don't know who sculpted it but at a guess I would say Trish Carden or Aly Morrison. Could be wrong though. No idea who painted it but it was part of the collection of Bryan's painted Rogue Trader Adventurers that can be found in this advert from White Dwarf 99:

I have no idea what he's carrying under his arm - any suggestions? Also, does anyone recall reading about feral shamans in the old Rogue Trader rulebooks or White Dwarfs, or do you think he's just a "generic character"?

Unreleased Rogue Trader Adeptus Mechanicus (Bryan Ansell collection)

I'm starting to run out of adjectives to describe the figures I'm unearthing in Bryan Ansell's collection. Today's figure - an unreleased Adeptus Mechanicus from the Rogue Trader era - is exquisite. But on first glance you may not fully agree with this sentiment:

New unreleased genestealer in Bryan Ansell's collection

The original Rogue Trader rulebook contains a section on the alien races found throughout the Imperium, and includes an illustration of a prototype Tyranid that later made it into very limited release (essentially unreleased). It now appears that the "proto-nid" was not the only Tyranid-related illustration to have resulted in a miniature: the original Genestealer or "Ymgarl Genestealer" seems to have been produced but not released. This figure was found in Bryan's collection of castings in a zip-loc bag labelled "Genestealer":

Unseen Rogue Trader Space Ork Weapon Platform: Bryan Ansell collection

Here's a curious little item that I unearthed in Bryan's collection: a weapon platform for Rogue Trader era Space Orks:

The gunner and weapon are standard issue from the Ork War Buggy of the period. It's the platform that is unreleased. Here is a view from the top-down:

You can see the hole for the weapon mounting on the left, and two indents where the gunner's feet sit on the right.

Here is a view of the underside:

Are those three discs on the perimeter some sort of anti-grav devices that allow the platform to hover? Have you ever come across rules or descriptions for this in one of the old Rogue Trader rulebooks?

So it may not be much to look at, but this particular collector thinks it's a lovely little piece of kit.

The Tim Pollard collection: unreleased Space Marine with guitar

It is not known if this Space Marine was ever intended for release, or if it was simply an in-house cast. The front of the tab is labelled "MARINE" and the rear "GW 1987". I've looked through my back catalogue of Rogue Trader era Space Marines and I can't find any obvious candidate for a donor figure, so it's possible that this is a completely new sculpt. If anyone spots a potential donor then please leave a message. Slaanesh had their Noise Marines - is there anything in the fluff of the period that mentions Space Marines wielding guitars? Not that I'm aware of.

So here he is: pretty crude, but great fun!

The Tim Pollard collection: unreleased multi-part Space Marine metal kit

Back in the Rogue Trader era Games Workshop produced the RTB01 Space Marines, a boxed set of multipart Space Marines in plastic. They were and still are today a very popular kit. Multipart kits of Space Marines following the RTB01 model with multiple options of heads, bodies, arms, guns, knives, backpacks etc were only produced in plastic, right? Well it seems not. At least one multipart Space Marine set was produced entirely in metal, but was never released. Fortunately it was discovered in Tim Pollard's collection:

The Tim Pollard collection: Dark Future and Rogue Trader vehicles

Last June the excellent Realm of Chaos 80s blog posted an article about Tim Pollard, former stalwart of Games Workshop back in the glory days of the 80's. This blog post, together with a subsequent one, revealed the incredible painted miniature and original GW artwork collection in Tim's possession. Tim revealed during the course of the blog post that he was involved in the advertising of GW minis back in the day and remarked that "in order to advertise the minis I got sent at least one of each to photograph, and then I got to keep them". This raised an intriguing possibility: if Tim still had these miniatures in his possession, could they include some previously unknown rarities? Not being one to miss a potential opportunity to mine for hidden treasure, I got in touch with Tim and he agreed to let me trawl through his collection of castings (which was very kind of him given that Tim is incredibly busy being Nottingham's official Robin Hood and that he is about to become a proud parent!).

Tim was initially concerned that he might not have anything of note in his collection of castings, other than a large number of general release figures. As it turned out he didn't need to worry! The first thing I was presented with on meeting Tim was a large box of mainly preslotta figures of mixed manufacturer. I immediately spotted some parts of the Citadel Giant (you know - the Citadel Giant) lying in the box. Nice, pretty rare, but OK not an eye-popper. But then my attention was drawn to a metal vehicle lying amongst the figures. It gradually dawned on me that I was looking at a metal casting of a prototype Dark Future Interceptor (production castings were plastic). Here is a view of Tim's metal prototype followed by a plastic production casting:

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.

Unreleased Rogue Trader Trooper: another mystery solved

Last week I reported on the discovery of an unreleased Rogue Trader era "Trooper" sculpted by Bob Naismith. I also reported previously on a further mysterious figure that can be seen lurking in the background of an image from the original Rogue Trader rulebook. Well, a couple of sharp-eyed readers of this blog have left comments regarding another mysterious figure in the this image, which I completely missed, the "8 ball head", circled below:

It is of course none other than the "trooper" that came to light last week! So a big thank you to those of you who pointed this out; no idea how I missed this one...

Unreleased Rogue Trader era Trooper (the Bryan Ansell collection)

This is the last of the five unreleased Rogue Trader era adventurer types that I've discovered in Bryan Ansell's collection:

Adeptus Administratum: latest unreleased Rogue Trader Citadel Miniature (Bryan Ansell collection)

The good news about the latest "new old" unreleased Rogue Trader figure in Bryan Ansell's collection is that we are able to positively ID it from its base tag: "Administratum":

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?

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.