Rogue Trader Joff Zuckerman

Hello, todays miniature is of a character that many of the old guard of Oldhammer community know and love the infamous Rogue Trader Joff Zuckerman, he made his appearance in the first Warhammer 40000 Rogue Trader supplement - The Book of Astronomican on the beautifully illustrated page 47 and there is a short piece of Rogue Trader background that goes with the illustration which pretty much still holds true today.  I have included this text below for completeness. 

Rogue Trader Joff Zuckerman

"Rogue Trader Joff Zuckerman, Hero of the Kynblax Genocide"

I have read somewhere that the 'Kynblax Genocide' got a reboot in Forge Worlds literature and that Joff made a cameo appearance but that's all too new and expensive for me to follow up on.

"The Rogue Traders of Earth are a simple breed.  They are the ultimate human adventurers, explorers and conquerors.  Operating beyond the frontiers of Imperial space, it is their task to uncover alien civilisations, eliminate possible dangers to the Imperium and to investigate new and potentially useful technologies.  The hidden dangers of the galaxy claim many Rogue Traders every year, but there  is still no shortage of volunteers.  Every Rogue Trader receives a charter from the Emperor as well as a special banner and badge.  Example of these are shown in the illustration above.  In addition, each Rogue Trader is entitled to recruit fellow volunteers and may even be put in command of whole units of Marines from various Chapters.  Troops from units of the army are also advocated, often numbering many hundreds.  All of these crusading warriors swear allegiance to their new master, adopting his badges, and wearing his colours upon the special tabard which is worn over their armour."

Joff is equipped with Powered armour, a bionic left arm incorporating a Power Glove and carries a Power sword and Bolt-pistol. (and an antique WWII German respirator case!)

The miniature was sculpted by ex-citadel golden era sculptor Goblin master Kev Adams in 2016 for Knightmare miniatures and it was part of the second Space Raiders kickstarter campaign, eventually being released for non kickstarter backers via the Knightmare miniatures website in the Space Raiders range.  This range has so many nods to the Warhammer 40000 Rogue Trader and Realm of Chaos era, I cannot recommend these miniatures enough, they are nice clean crisp casts and I am proud to say I recently learned they are casted in my hometown of Birmingham, UK by Griffin Moulds JJP LTD.

When it came to the paint job I wanted to try and be as close to the original illustration as my skills allowed and when I started I used the Book of Astronomican scanned picture that has been on the web since it was created in 2004 which I probably shouldn't have done, why? well the scan is very bright and yellow with scanning lines across it the distort some of the detail and it wasn't until I went up in the loft to retrieve my Astronomican, I opened it and started to see details and colours that kind of different but it was too late as when I say a miniature is finished I've probably lost interest.  

The very yellow scanned image of Joff, see Joff as he should be in scans at bottom of post

What I would have do differently, more browns and ochre's on the armour dirt, I totally missed his scar and missing eye until I looked in the book but having a closer look I did spot that the sculptor missed or omitted his Khan like beard, maybe he was using same scanned image as reference? The revelation of the beard had me thinking that this miniature would be a prime candidate for a Whitescars Primarch.

Assembly was straight forward enough, it's a tall miniature so went on a larger round base it would fit in nicely with the more heroic scale miniatures of today, he has a separate power pack which was fun to paint and is huge, fitting it is very tricky but I like it.

Anyway no more waffle to the photo's.

Rogue Trader Joff Zuckerman - front

Rogue Trader Joff Zuckerman - front

Rogue Trader Joff Zuckerman - side

Rogue Trader Joff Zuckerman - back

Rogue Trader Joff Zuckerman - side

Joff Zuckerman with his away team

Page 47 Book of Astronomican

Marines and Imperial Army in tabards, no thank you

A nice very muted brown Joff

Now it's time for big shout outs to other notable Joff Zuckermans I have spotted out there, of a wonderful and first example from JB here, Dr Mathias knocked a great version here, there are other great ones tell me about them if you see them.

Thanks for stopping by.

J