Monday 28 November 2016

Rogue Trader - Space Minotaur

Hi, today we have another of Diego Serrate's Space Raiders miniatures the Space Minotaur from the original Kickstarter campaign, heavily influenced by the original Rogue Trader Minotaur's from the 1989 Easter Sale Flyer.  I found this miniature a lot more difficult to paint and get into than the Piscean Warrior although I do love his gun as it reminds of the Manglore's guns (Zorg ZF-1 Pod Weapon) in the Fifth Element movie.



This is the second miniature I have painted from this range my first was the Piscean Warrior which can be seen here: painted Piscean Warrior.
Unlike the Piscean Warrior I have not seen many painted examples of this miniature except these two great blog post from JB over on Leadplague and Roebeast.


Space Minotaur - side
Space Minotaur - front
Space Minotaur - side
Space Minotaur - side
Space Minotaur - back


The Kickstarter campaign can be followed here: Space Raiders and for those of you who really loved Citadel's Realm of Chaos miniatures checkout Diego's The Pantheon of Chaos.

Here is a selection of miniatures from the Space Raiders campaign.



As you can see there is quite a selection of miniatures, space Zoats, an Ambull, renegade Orks and there's still more in development.


Still on the topic of non citadel miniatures I would recommend you go over to http://blindbeggarminiatures.blogspot.co.uk/ and check out all of Paul's lovely Pulp, Steampunk, Cthulhu type miniature sculpts, Paul sent me a gift of this native Amerian indian looking fellow brandishing what looks like a Vicker's gun I think he would not look out of place in the Cursed Earth or on Rogue Trader's Helsreach.


Thanks for visiting
J


Tuesday 8 November 2016

Citadel Judge Dredd Perps Part 4


Borag Thungg Earthlet,

Here's this months 1985 citadel Judge Dredd miniatures I have been working on in my spare time.

These miniatures are again all from the JD3 Perps and Muties range.



First up is 'Mutie with Bazooka' although it looks more like a Lazooka from Rogue Trooper to me, again another member of the mutant band the 'Mutie Brotherhood' lead by Morgar and appeared in the Cursed Earth saga progs 65-66 plus the superb star pinups below by Brian Bolland where he is sitting in a shopping trolley eating pizza. He sports a Fez which reminds of 'the Turk' character from Kelly's Heroes.

Mutie with Bazooka - side

Mutie with Bazooka - front

Mutie with Bazooka - side

Next another Mutie Brotherhood member 'Brother Jobee' you can see him eating Heinz beans in the pin-up below, armed with a double barrel shotgun and wearing riding boots dressed in jodhpurs, this mutie has style.

Brother Jobee - side

Brother Jobee - front

Brother Jobee - side


Bottom left - Brother Jobee eating beans. 
Bottom right - Mutie with Bazooka sitting in a shopping trolley eating pizza.

Brother Jobee is standing right of Morgar looming over Judge Dredd.

Next up we have 'Monkey Face' another Mutie armed with Spit carbine, I chose an orange jump suit as it reminded me of the old Planet of the Apes movies, I am surprised no company ever made a licensed Planet of the Apes wargame back in the day as there are loads of cool ideas for miniatures in the movies.

Monkey Face - front

Monkey Face - back

Check out the orange jump suits

Next we have a perp named 'Kelv armed with two pistols and sporting some sort of mechanical or armoured trousers, I don't remember this character in any of the stories if you do let me know, I am guessing the name is wrong. His face has real character and reminds me of the leader of the gasoline refinery in Mad Max 2.
Kelv - front

Kelv - back

Lastly we have two 'Citi-Def' miniatures, 'Citi-Def with Machine Gun' and 'Citi-Def', I did these in  the same colour scheme as the last months Citi-Def attacking miniature I blogged about, still undecided on which Citi-Bloc they are going to represent.
These two miniatures have also been sold by FASA as Temporal Marauders for their 1986 Dr Who range and are actually still available on various online shops like this one. I have read somewhere that these were incorporated in the Judge Dredd range in 1986 after the FASA Dr Who range but my Judge Dredd versions have 1985 on the slotta tags and on my FASA versions you can clearly see on bottom of the metal base the outlines of the slotta tags before the metal disc was molded around the tags or that's what the evidence suggests, not that it matters though.

Citi-Def with Machine Gun - front

Citi-Def with Machine Gun - back

Citi-Def - front

Citi-Def - back

Morgar's now prepped and on the painting table along with some wreckers so keep a eye on my twitter feed for work in progress images.

I hope you are following this blog as there is so many more to come, Florix Grabundae
J

Tuesday 27 September 2016

Citadel Judge Dredd Perps Part 3

Borag Thungg Earthlet,

I am back working on my citadel Judge Dredd miniatures as I absolutely love these 1985 sculpts, scale and being a hardcore 2000ad fan trying to identify which characters the each miniature is based on.

Today's work all from the JD3 Perps and Muties range.


Up first is 'Mutie in Dress' was a member of the mutant band lead by Morgair and appeared in the Cursed Earth saga progs 65-66 plus the superb star pinups below by Brian Bolland. She is armed with a spit carbine and sports a ballerinas tutu and tights.


Mutie in Dress - side

Mutie in Dress - front

Mutie in Dress - back

Next up we have 'Brother Gomorrah' who is also one of Morgair's cursed earth muties and also appeared in progs 65-66 and the star pinups below, I do have the rest of the miniatures that make up the mutant band to paint up.  I should also mention like most of the miniatures in the Judge Dredd range this one has a variant of sorts 'Theobald Wen'.

Brother Gomorrah - front

Brother Gomorrah - back
2000AD Star pinups below by Brian Bolland featuring Morgair's cursed earth mutants.


Mutie in Dress is in the shopping trolley top left and Brother Gomorrah top right

Mutie in Dress is standing left of Morgair and Brother Gomorrah on the right


Here we have another Mutie 'Three Eyes', again the name says it all, armed with a large rusty chopper and revolving spit pistol.  This this mutie appeared in the story 'The Fear That Made Milwaukee Famous' which featured in the Judge Dredd Annual 1981.



Three Eyes - front

Three Eyes - side
Three Eyes - back



This next one has the appearance of a Mutie but I believe he is a Perp, 'Fettuchini' he appears to be mix of several sculpts which is very common in this range, he also has three eyes so makes a great mutie. I don't recall him being a in Dredd story but that doesn't mean that he wasn't. I got a bit carried away with this one and opted for stars and stripes muscle pants and vest :D


Fettuchini

Next we have a mutie called 'Mr Fields' a variant of the 'Link Angel' sculpt, I am sure I remember this character but when I put asked for help from the 2000ad twitter community nobody could recall him so I am stumped at the moment. He is armed with a M15 rifle a 20th centuary artifact.


Mr Fields - front
Mr Fields - back



Lastly we have the 'Citi-Def attacking' miniature at the time of painting I only had one copy of this miniature at the time of painting (and now have 4 so there may be a future squad project in the works) and he was in a real bad state, he was badly stripped, very dark grey and covered in oxidation that made the miniature appear like the Michelin man, most of the detail was obscured so I had to rely my experience in cleaning up very old preslotta Chaos Beastman and I dropped it in a bath of white vinegar for a couple of hours, there was some furious fizzy and the oxidation and paint flecks crumbled away, by the miracle of chemistry the miniature came back to life and the majority of the detail was restored. I then had to thoroughly rinse the miniature and dry it before sealing with a good undercoat, paint job and varnish. I know that other miniature restorers neutralize the white vinegar first with bicarbonate of soda first and then rinse in distilled water but I think that's a bit of a faff and just give a good blast of cold water for a few minutes.


Restored Citi-Def attacking - front
Restored Citi-Def attacking - back

A quick observation on the Judge Dredd miniatures weapons, I see many of the same weapons reoccuring all through the range also on the Rogue Trader Fishmen and in the Paranoia range which makes me think that all these weapons were cast up on mass and used by the sculptors when required.

I have recently acquired a massive lot of Judge Dredd the miniatures game Rulebooks and about 50 miniatures so I am hoping to find out some of same characters from the citadel range and do some comparison painting.

Most important is that Prog 2000 of 2000AD is out tomorrow featuring some of our most loved characters return so go buy and enjoy we need to keep british comics alive!

I hope you enjoyed, Florix Grabundae
J

Monday 26 September 2016

Rogue Trader - Fishmen

Hi Folks, I am having a bit of a 2000Ad renaissance at the moment but while painting up my throng of Judge Dredd miniatures I managed to fit in two legendary Fishmen, these miniatures originally appeared on the Rogue Trader RT2 Flyer March 1988 along with the legendary Wolfen, it would be interesting to know if the Wolfen was another repurposed Fiend Factory miniature.

Laserburn/Warhammer 40,000 Rogue Trader - Fishmen Source

"Sometime in the mid-1980s Bryan Ansell had some Sci-Fi Fishmen made based on Citadel's Fiend Factory FF65 Man-Fish models. See CCM for pictures of the originals. These "Fishmen from Space" were used to playtest Laserburn and then WH40K but were never sold to the public. Fast-forward to 2012 when Wargames Foundry discovered the moulds of these in their back-catalog and created a new production-mould. These figures are sometimes available from Wargames Foundry directly or as giveaways at events." 

Citadel's Fiend Factory FF65 Man-Fish models also found there way into the C22 Creatures range




Try giving Wargames Foundry a ring or email they may be able to sort you out with these miniatures. 


There was talk on the Oldhammer forum and associated Facebook group that Bryan Ansell searching for the third Man-Fish miniature so the he could convert it to a Sci-Fi Fishman thus completing the range."


60p each!!!

Sl'Harsh and Pl'Lodor
Sl'Harsh 
Pl'Lodor


They would make good fishy henchmen for my Space Riders Picsean Warrior.



There are other excellent painted examples out there on the web, here is a superbly painted example by Paul over on his Sho3box blog.

Enjoy
J

Ngaaranh Spawn of Chaos - Compendium One, Now that's Oldhammer 1983

Hi, today a post I have had sitting in my drafts for a while now, 'Ngaaranh Spawn of Chaos' is a classic but hideous Oldhammer miniature, this one got a lick of paint for preservation reasons, the lead was getting darker and darker over the years due to oxidation and I was worried that if I let this continue unchecked the miniature would eventually suffer lead rot and go brittle so I cleaned it up and gave it a quick paint job and a dip in Army Painter Quickshade which has completely sealed the miniature in a heavy gloss varnish, an additional highlight and matt varnish et voila a preserved miniature. (in my opinion anyway :D)

This is an early Citadel miniature limited edition from 1983 way before the not so limited edition 'LE' code range appeared in 1988.

Know as the Compendium One Chaos Specials, Ngaaranh Spawn of Chaos shared the article with infamous Leaping Slomm Two Face and Zygor Snake Arms (the links painted examples are from Roebeast's wonderful blog I suggest you visit). 

Ngaaranh Spawn of Chaos - front
Ngaaranh Spawn of Chaos - back
Ngaaranh Spawn of Chaos - side

A snippet from the article that featured in Compendium One.




Another miniature that was sat on my painting table for a year is this Greater Daemon of Slaanesh, I felt this post would make a good home for this miniature, it was a nightmare to assemble and required a lot of filling, I am not overly enamoured with the paint job but it'll do for a battlefield.


Greater Daemon of Slaanesh - side
Greater Daemon of Slaanesh - side
Greater Daemon of Slaanesh - back

Thanks for popping by,
J