Wednesday 18 December 2013

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:





Image from the collecting-citadel-miniatures.com wiki
If you look closely you will see some minor difference between the cars, a feature that is typical of metal prototype vs plastic production figures.

Good start!

Tim then presented me with were some fantastic scratch-built/converted Rogue Trader vehicles. The first one  is a scratch-built vehicle by Aly Morrison, which was a prototype Rogue Trader vehicle:


It's reminiscent of the original Rhino. Apparently the wheels are ink bottle caps!

The next two vehicles are modifications of existing toys:



The last one has a dreadnought lascannon arm mounted on top as a weapon. Can you spot any other bolt-ons from figures of the period?

Tim wasn't sure if these vehicles appeared in any White Dwarf mags or rulebooks of the time. If any of them look familiar please let me know.

More good stuff to come.

13 comments:

  1. Brilliant stuff - please do keep the pictures coming!
    All the best,
    Kasper

    ReplyDelete
  2. As ever, extremely interesting, intriguing and a bit of a tease!

    ReplyDelete
  3. I didn't knew of these last vehicles, they look really into the spirits of RT era. Lovely!

    ReplyDelete
  4. The KIL KIL KIL on the heavy canon tank leaves no doubt about what game it was made for...
    Great pics please keep them coming !

    ReplyDelete
  5. Great to see these Steve! I was wondering how long we would have to wait until you got hold of Tim's collection and began photographing. I have never seen the vehicles before, and I am pretty certain they never appeared in any publications. Nice to see the odd Arcane Armorial on them. What strikes me though, are the shades on the Rhino kit on Morrison's scratch build. It makes you wonder which came first doesn't it? More, and soon!

    ReplyDelete
  6. The scratch builds are amazing. It really reminds me why many of us got into GW games back in the RT games in the first place. You could kitbash a speeder from a stick of deodorant and that was encouraged...

    ReplyDelete
  7. Gonna have to build me some of those...

    ReplyDelete
  8. Lovely. I always remember the plastic container anti-grav vehicle from WD back in the day. That set the standard for RT vehicles' in my young impressionable mind.

    ReplyDelete
  9. If anyone fancies it I'd be happy to provide a template for the card 'Rhino'...

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I'd love to give building that 'Rhino' a go Tim!

      Delete
    2. That would be a great idea ! the seocnd you post it, I'm building one to go with my deo-stick grav-attack !

      Delete
  10. I like the scratch built Rogue Trader vehicle.

    Very original.

    Tony

    ReplyDelete
  11. The ki one is made from 2 zoids - a cannon zoid and a scavenger zoid!

    ReplyDelete