RT601 - Adventurers - Squat Miner

Hello Friends,
I finally got around to finishing the Squat Miner from the RT601 - Adventurers range advertised in White Dwarf issue 99 back in March 1988, I didn't get much enjoyment painting this miniature  and felt it a bit of a chore, my reasons why are the lack of detail and poor sculpting as I think the arm positioning is not right, the details are shallow and I just found it horrible miniature, my paint station is littered with a variety of gorgeous classic chaos beastmen miniatures who deserved attention first but if I am to ever complete this project even the poor miniatures in this range must be painted. 

Progress on my project can be seen here

Squat Miner - front

Squat Miner - back

My RT601 collection is now complete as I finally got my hands on a reasonably priced Astropath Korm thanks to Steve Casey, in superb condition too.

I just have to decide who to paint next.

thanks for visiting and get following :)

J

RT601 - Adventurers - Squat Engineer

Hi Friends, 
Today's miniature is the Squat Engineer from the RT601 - Adventurers range published in White Dwarf 99 back in March 1988, an interesting miniature for a Squat as he seems to be dressed in a spacesuit and using a pair of binoculars while looking into the distance, another nice detail and typical of the humour at the time is that his belly is spilling out of his spacesuit. I imagine he has landed on some distant planet surveying for ore or Promethium.  I painted his spacesuit in a mix of Vallejo bright orange and deep orange with various washes inspired by Russian Cosmonaut's in their orange spacesuits.  I have been painting the Squat Miner too but he is far from finished.

Progress on my project can be seen here

"I love the smell of Promethium in the morning!"

Squat Engineer - front

Squat Engineer - back

Thanks for visiting :)

J

More C27 and C38 Chaos Beastmen

Hello! Today I put the final brush strokes to my  C27 Beastman 'Shearmone' and C38 Beastmen 'Crab man', 'Camel man', 'Owl man', gorgeous old school miniatures from the 1980's, I have many miniatures from these ranges some are preslotta and some are tagged, I even have some doubles that are both so I imagine at some stage the best of the range must of had their preslotta bases removed and tags added when citadel moved to slotta bases.  There has been some good research on these miniatures over at the Collecting Citadel miniatures wiki.

New paint jobs finished and ready to join the hordes of Chaos

First we have C27 Beastman 'Shearmone' from the Third Citadel compedium, now this is how Chaos Beastmen should look, a truly menancing sculpt by Kevin goblin master Adams I believe, note the pincers for pulling teeth out?.  If you look on his back in the photo below it looks like a precursor to the chaos god Khorne icon although the Disciples of the Red Redemption art work carried the Khorne icon long before this miniature was around I think.

C27 Beastman 'Shearmone' - front

C27 Beastman 'Shearmone' - sideview

Khorngor? C27 Beastman 'Shearmone' - back

Next we have a beastman tagged as 'Camel man', I can't find any catalogue entries for this miniature,  he look like a cross between the two miniatures illustrated below.

C38 Beastmen 'Camel man' - front

C38 Beastmen 'Camel man' - sideview

C38 Beastmen 'Camel man' - back

Is this the answer to my 'Camel man' mystery, a head swap? same head, same body.

**Update** I found him in the end in the C27 Beastmen range in an old Citadel Journal or Compendium, can't remember which :)

Next we have C38 Beastmen 'Owl man', this is the second vintage beastman shaman I have come across, this miniature is smaller than most beastmen but covered in great detail, just one example is his feathered cloak which is has magical talismans and fetishes attached, they were a really nice discovery.

C38 Beastmen 'Owl man' - front

Magic cloak? C38 Beastmen 'Owl man'  - back

Catalogue entries were simple sketches back then

Lastly we have C38 Beastmen 'Crab man', this miniature was on a slotta tag without his weapon? I have another preslotta version that has a big club/mace attached to the metal base, I am not sure if this got removed on the later version or my version was damaged but it didn't look like it as the mace is moulded to the base.  There is another beastman made from this same miniature called 'Snake Demon'.

**Update** I managed to find a Crab man on ebay without the mace, HERE, so I pleased that mine is not damaged and citadel removed it at a a later date. 

C38 Beastmen 'Crab man' - sideview

C38 Beastmen 'Crab man' - front

C38 Beastmen 'Crab man' - sideview

Another sketched catalogue entry

Aside from my Realm of Chaos era Chaos Beastmen in previous posts, I am working on  a regiment of 'true' beastmen, here are my efforts so far.

My true Beastmen regiment grows

True Beastmen in warband formation

On the workbench, more C38 Chaos Beastmen, I haven't been able to identify the beastman in the middle yet, he is holding his axe backwards!!, he is tagged 'beastman', the first one is 'Slug man' and the third is catalogued as 'Beast man'.

If you have any old beastman doubles contact me and we may be able to trade.

If you enjoyed this post, get following this blog :)
thanks
J

Citadel Collectors Series - 1204 Chaos Wizards

Hi Friends, This weeks classic Citadel miniatures are two 1204 Chaos Wizards (Chaos Sorcerers to some of you) from the Citadel Collectors Series and two of my favourite Chaos Familiars, I pulled these out of storage as I was getting bored and needed a change from painting Rogue Trader Adventurers and Chaos Beastmen, it was a nice change to use some colours I rarely use.

Ank'tokh Daemon Claw, Lune, Slargash the Defiler and Daemonet 1

First we have 'Slargash the Defiler', I love his pose it screams "alas poor yorick" as he holds a demons skull definitely a demonologist me thinks.

Slargash the Defiler 

Next we have 'Ank'tokh Daemon Claw' who I am envisaging as a blood priest of Khorne, cult leader with gifts of technology, his mechanical arm and technological staff, Khorne dislikes magic and favours technology so it makes sense.  A suitable miniature for W40k and Dark Heresy too.

Ank'tokh Daemon Claw

Here we have 'Daemonet 1' cute little miniature, not particularly challenging but still fun all the same.

Daemonet 1

And lastly we have 'Lune' this miniature was a real joy to paint as it is so leftfield and unique based on the creature featured in the John Blanche painting 'mona and the Moonman', it looks like he is holding a giant can opener which he intends on using to strip knights of their armour although the can opner is a lot smaller in the painting (see below), probably the best Chaos Familiar of all.

Lune

Lune featured in John Blanche's painting 'Mona and the Moonman'

Lots of the Chaos Familiars are still available to buy from Games Workshop, buy now as I don't know how long they will be for sale and show Games Workshop that we still want old miniatures, here are the links to them and other golden oldies on the games Workshop website :)

Famous Familiars
Champions of Chaos
Dwarf Adventurers
Goff Rockers
Armour Through the Ages

Thanks for visiting and get following,
thanks
J

On The Workbench - October 2014

Hi Folks,
Apologies for my lack of posts, here are few photos of what is happening on the workbench at the moment to tide you over until I finally finish the miniatures (hopefully soon), as many of you will know fitting miniature painting in when you have a seven month year old baby in the house it is quite tough but the odd half hour sessions I manage to fit in are starting to bear fruit.  I probably started too many miniatures at once.

This is all work in progress.

Here are C27 Beastman 'Shearmone', C38 Beastmen 'Crab man', 'Camel man', 'Owl man' and an old Warrior Maiden 'Mace lady' from the Citadel collectors series.  All they need is basing.

Next we have Chaos Wizards from the Citdael collectors series and a couple of Chaos Familiars 'Daemonet' and 'Lune', these miniatures still need plenty of work.

Next we have miniatures that are still being prepared, two cats given to me by Cheetor over at Sho3box (thank you mate) and two Squats from the RT601 Adventurers range, 'Squat Miner' and 'Squat Engineer'.

I hope to have these painted and up on the blog soon,

Thanks for visiting and get following.
J

Orctober Fest

Hi Folks,
Now I don't usually get involved in these themed occasions due to time limitations on my hobby but when I was over at Erny's Place (the foremost place to visit for Oldhammer Orc miniatures) it had me thinking back to my youth, back in the early 1980's I was a lean green fighting machine, nothing else mattered it was Orcs or nothing. We were playing Warhammer 2nd Edition and whatever you could carry down to my late mates house you could field as you can imagine we had some massive games, it usually took a 2-3 hours to setup, 4-5 hours to play and then 2-3 hours to pack away, our 6 week summer holidays were ace.

I fell out of love with the Orcs in the late 80's when they were starting to turn generic and green, Harboth and the black mountain boys, Eeza Ugezod's Mother Crusher's and Mighty Ugezod's Death Commandos, the C Series and Chronicles miniatures I owned just did not sit right with all the new stuff that came out, the were noticeably smaller and severely lacked character or uniqueness.

Anyway most my citadel Orcs went on eBay over 10 years ago but I kept lots of favourites for D&D so I dug a few Orcs and Goblinoids out today and thought I would share them with you :)

Here we have from left to right:

C14 Snotling (1987), C36 Hobgoblin (1985), C15 Orc (1985), N16 Cave Goblin (1985), C12 Goblin (1985)

and here we have from left to right:

2 C10 Half-Orc's (1985), 3 ME43 Half Orc's of Saruman (1985)

A paltry contribution to Orctober Fest I know but I hope you enjoy my trip down memory lane

One last word there was only one colour to paint your Orcs back in my day... Citadel Colour Orc Brown! :D

cheers

J

Rogue Trader - Piscean Warrior

Hi Folks,
Here is my Piscean warrior or Saharduin to some of you sculpted by Diego Serrate over on the Oldhammer forum and Facebook community, Pisceans are a xenos race of fish like creatures that first made an appearance on the first March 1987 Warhammer 40K mail order flyer (which I have somewhere), the race never saw the light of day in the Rogue Trader book, I guess as it was a larger miniature the logistics of making them into a viable race at the time would prove difficult.  Due to it's scarcity the original citadel miniature goes for quite a price on Ebay nowadays so Diego done all the Rogue Trader fans out there a favour and sculpted his own interpretation of the Piscean warrior that cost less than a modern day metal space marine, personally I prefer his version as the bolt gun on the original Piscean warrior did not sit right with me.  I would like to think he is equipped with some sort of needle pistol (mini harpoons?), a giant shark knife to fend off the predators of his planet and a reverse Aqua-lung to pipe H2O into his gills for survival.

I painted the Piscean warrior as if he was coming out of the sea and originally I had gloss varnished him as a wet effect but the iPhone camera didn't like it so I Vallejo matt varnished him.

Piscean warrior - right side

Piscean warrior - left side

Piscean warrior - front

Here is the inspiration for my colour scheme, I was Action Force mad as a kid until first year senior school when I discovered D&D

Action Force 'Q' Force Diver

March 1987 Warhammer 40K mail order flyer

Here are some painted versions of the original miniature from Solgends

Thanks for visiting and please follow :)

The Painting Continues... Slowly

Hey  Friends, 
Followers of this blog will know I am slowly easing my way back into the Oldhammer world after the birth of our baby boy and it killed me to miss this years BOYL after attending the first year, this years constant coverage was brilliant, a big thank you to all involved. Now fitting painting miniatures into your baby routine is very hard but the odd half hour when I wasn't exhausted I managed to slip into the spare room and knock out a few more Chaos Thugs to add to my regiment which is now 32 painted strong, only another 40+ unique miniatures to do, I also managed to prep up loads of C27 and C38 Chaos Beastmen which will stand alone from my RoC era Chaos Beastmen as a unit of 'True' Beastmen.

First we have a converted 'Crusher' from White Dwarf 82, you might have noticed that I have painted another version of this miniature before but this conversion with eye stalks was in a trade from Robtimus Prime over in our Oldhammer Trading Company Facebook group and I felt it was too nice to dismantle so I cleaned it up with Dettol and painted it.  I finished him off with a classic Arcane Armorial shield transfer.

Converted Crusher - Front

Converted Crusher - side showing Arcane Armorial shield transfer

Converted Crusher - back

Next we have 'MadAxe Martin' another classic Chaos Thug who first appeared in White Dwarf 92, strange that such a brute would have the name Martin but then I remembered the superb historical/fantasy movie Flesh and Blood 1985 with Rutger Hauer as the hero Martin, really if you haven't seen it watch it asap it's brilliant.

Madaxe Martin - front

Madaxe Martin - back

Next we have 'Punter Dunter' another White Dwarf 92 Chaos Thug, not much to say about this guy, crazy new wave hair cut and a severed head.

Punter Dunter - front

Punter Dunter - side

Punter Dunter - back

Next we have 'Stab Stab' another White Dwarf 92 Chaos Thug, I like this guy I think he gets his name from the two daggers tied to his spear shaft, a totally original chaos weapon.

Stab Stab - front

Stab Stab - back

And last but not least an old school Chaos Beastman, I think he resembles a Tortoise but some say he is a Turtle but I think not, I don't seem to be able to find any reference to him so if you have a link to an advert/catalogue page send to to me please on the comments.

Tortoise Beastman - front

Tortoise Beastman - side

Tortoise Beastman - back

Hope you enjoyed this post

thanks

J