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

IC301 - Iron Claw Pirates Part 7

Hello again, today I proud to announce another of my Oldhammer projects has been completed, if you are a follower you will know this one has been a slow burner, it probably didn't help that I recently traded the Iron Claw Space Pirate 'Venk' away as I thought I had a double so had to track that miniature down again. This post features the last two pirates of the IC301 Space Pirates 'Vaal the Asharian' and 'Venk'.

Iron Claw Space Pirates - Complete

First up is 'Vaal the Asharian', a fierce looking alien miniature, I really enjoyed painting this guy with is ugly features augmented with cybernetics, wires and a bionic eye, it was a fun.

Vaal the Asharian - side

Vaal the Asharian - back

Vaal the Asharian - side

Vaal the Asharian - front

And finally we have the elusive 'Venk', this miniature like others looking like soldiers is tagged as 'Trooper' which got me thinking were they proof of concept candidate for the Imperial Army range which didn't fit, well he is very militaristic in a paratrooper jumpsuit, I have always thought Citadel just crowbarred some of Bob Olley's sculpts into other ranges, the IC2003 Jump Troops tagged as Astronaut spring to mind.  With all that in mind I went for a  military colour scheme

Venk - front

Venk - back

If you missed my previous posts you can read each post by clicking on the links below.

Banzai Jones	Loritta	Ooglorg the Cruel	Col. Vlad
Star Raven	Dambo Kweltz	Little Rico	Attitude Gorman
Nightwing	Captain Dunbar	Zandar	Verrington Khosht

Thanks for dropping in.

J

IC301 - Iron Claw Pirates Part 6

Hello, I revisited a stalled oldhammer project this week with the current lockdown in progress I managed to complete Psycho, Nixan and Pop Stewart from the 1987 IC301 Iron Claw Space Pirate range, this was a difficult post to complete as two of miniatures were a struggle to paint, they just didn't bring much to the party for me.

For previous project posts follow links below:

Iron Claw Space Pirates - Part 1
Iron Claw Space Pirates - Part 2
Iron Claw Space Pirates - Part 3
Iron Claw Space Pirates - Part 4
Iron Claw Space Pirates - Part 5

Only one more to finish and that's another range complete so stay tuned for 'Venk' who will be coming soon... when I bloody find him in lead pile, praying I haven't mistakenly traded him.

Psycho, Nixan and Pop Stewart

First up is 'Pop Stewart' who to me is an Amos Brearly lookalike and had me chuckling and muttering "nay, nay Mr Wilks!" while painting him, apart from the face I found this is an unexciting miniature and quite a basic sculpt, I find the eyes on Bob Olley sculpts can be bit all over the place which was the case here. I went for a blue colour scheme and painted the assault rifle with wooden components.

Pop Stewart - side

Pop Stewart - front

Pop Stewart - back

Next up is 'Psycho' armed with a machine gun which I am sure it one of Judge Dredd sculptor aids, this miniature has a nicely sculpted head, facial features and Rambo headband and again apart from the head quite a basic flat sculpt.

Psycho - side

Psycho - front

Psycho - back

Finally we have 'Nixan', I never owned this miniature back in the day and had great difficulty acquiring it and when I did my first impressions were that it was a flat and disappointing sculpt, when looking at the original Iron Claw Space Pirate advert I could never work out what was going on with him but when I finally had in my hands it looked like a sort of space arab, it wasn't until I was well into the paint job it started to appear as a space viking which ties in with a lot of features on some of the other miniatures of this range, more space viking raiders than pirates.  In the end I was really pleased with how this miniature turned out and unlike the other two in this post and will be proud to place in the cabinet with the rest of this range.

Nixan - front

Nixan - back

So that's it for todays post, one more to do for this project. Something special coming soon.
J