Rogue Trader RT601 - Pirates - Part 1

Hello, welcome as another new oldhammer project begins, the Warhammer 40,000 Rogue Trader RT601 Pirates, over the last 30+ years I have painted up most of these and stashed them away in various boxes in the loft, some painted as jungle fighters of Catachan, Imperial Army and even renegades and I've always had the urge to revisit them but didn't want to go sorting through the loft and the ensuing 'strippathon' so I sorted through my doubles and traded a few I was missing and committed to having another go. 

This project is part of a wider goal of mine to complete all the non imperial humans of the Rogue Trader era.  The RT601 Pirates range consists of 24 miniatures sculpted by Bob Naismith and Michael Perry and released July 1988, I think the majority of the range are Naismith's as they reflect his chop shop approach of the time or maybe Perry sculpted the first 12 miniatures and then Bob chopped them up for the other 12, who knows?  whilst prepping the first 20 minis I noticed that some of this miniatures are badly executed sculpts, either the anatomy a bit off or some cases pieces are missing, maybe this was why they weren't available that long, this quirkiness is probably what makes them so appealing to me. Most of the range carry modifications of the same pre cast autogun and bolter and I will be focussing on miniatures carry these first, the rank and file before moving onto the more characterful sculpts.

Spaceway scum, autoguns blazing

As the Citadel Miniatures moved away from individually naming each miniature and slowly moving towards unified catalogue codes, this change makes it a bit more difficult to identify and collect these ranges years on so for my own sanity I have numbered the original advert and will use these numbers as their identities.  The slightly later catalogue numbers had discrepancies especially the later catalogues.  When blogging this project I am going to pair up the pirates based on the bodies they share, some have donor heads from other pirates and some completely fresh sculpts.

Original Advert that appeared in White Dwarf 103

Enough rambling let's move to the miniatures, first up we have pirates 13 and 5.  Pirate 5 is a fun miniature typical bicorn pirate hand, I have 5 copies of this miniature and all have a funny cast hand with a missing thumb.

RT601 Pirates 13 and 5

RT601 Pirate 13 - front

RT601 Pirate 13 - back

RT601 Pirate 5 - front

RT601 Pirate 5 - back

Next we have pirates 12 and 22, 22 has some really nice disc armour plates on his shirt, 12's head is used on another pirate 14 who will appear on my next pirate blog post, I thought the scar on the face was a mould line at first until I inspected pirate 14's face and there it was under the eye patch.

RT601 Pirates 12 and 22

RT601 Pirate 12 - front

RT601 Pirate 12 - back

RT601 Pirate 22 - front

RT601 Pirate 22 - back

Next we have pirates 21 and 15, on my other version of 21 I painted the neck as flabby fat similar to the original advert and I started to do that again on this one but it didn't look right so I repainted it as a scrim neck scarf, I think it looks ok.

RT601 Pirates 21 and 15

RT601 Pirate 21 - front

RT601 Pirate 21 - back

RT601 Pirate 15 - front

RT601 Pirate 15 - back

And finally for this post we have pirates 23 and 18. Pirate 23 has pirate 2's head and 18's head is a bit of a mash up, they have slightly different autoguns, I really like this advancing pose not as bent over as some of the mercenaries or imperial army miniatures.

RT601 Pirates 23 and 18

RT601 Pirate 23 - front

RT601 Pirate 23 - back

RT601 Pirate 18 - front

RT601 Pirate 18 - back

Thanks for dropping in, get following for more pirates in the near future

J