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

Rogue Trader - Gyrinx

Hello, today we have another one of the more uncommon Rogue Trader miniatures out there the Gyrinx, the Gyrinx along with the Jokaero and Death Ferret were most definitely the quirkiest miniatures of the Rogue Trader era, if only Citadel miniatures had produced more of the fauna that appeared in the rulebook I am sure the game would look very different today. I am sure all you cat lovers out there will certainly have tracked one down to paint.

Not much I can say about the miniature, I don't know who sculpted it, it appeared on the 1989 Easter Sale Flyer.

As for the paint job the miniature is so small you can't do much with it that hasn't already been done, ginger tom, Bagpus, Blue, green, etc so I put the vote out to the Twitter Oldhammer community on what colours I should with and purple won outright so I went with that, I think original ginger came in second. I went with a stack of purple shades and washes on a white undercoat trying to get a dark to light gradient you often see in cats from the paws up then finished it off with a bit of a highlighting, one hour later I was done.

Gyrinx

Gyrinx - front

Gyrinx - back

The Gyrinx appeared in the Warhammer 40,000 Rogue Trader rulebook on page 213 and here is the illustration and rules.

Gyrinx illustration

Gyrinx rules

Almost 30 years on and Games Workshop revisited the Gyrinx back in 2017 with Yvraine from the Triumvirate of Ynnead (£50!!!), I fondly remember the rumour mill up to this release it was incredible, nice miniatures but they are way too busy miniatures for simple old me.

Gyrinx 2017

 

Now my Eldar Trader has a pet or is it the other way round, they choose you don't they?

Awww! don't they look sweet together!

There's quite a few blogs out there featuring Gyrinx's so I have couple of plugs, get over to sho3box plenty of cat/gryinx action over there, Goblin Lee has knocked out a great one here, there are others so apologies if I've forgot you I've not seen any Gyrinx fun posted up in ages.

Thanks for visiting

J

@fuljason on Twitter, get following for Work in Progress and other stuff... no politics!

Rogue Trader - RT01 Space Marine Field Police

Welcome back, I am currently working my way through last RT601 Space Pirate range of the Rogue Trader era and with 10 of 24 miniatures complete so far it's going well but it's hard work batch painting so I'm having a quick break from them to play with a few single pieces and some revisit old ideas while waiting for the enthusiaum for them to come back.  

One of these old ideas that really got me stoked was the Adeptus Astartes Space Marine Field Police and after a bit of a conversation on Twitter I popped up into the loft and dug out my first attempt to show the Oldhammer crowd, after rooting through the myriad of boxes I finally found him. This 1987 RTB01 plastic Space Marine was converted to hold 2 bolt pistols and painted in Humbrol black enamel gloss with the helmet painted in the first Citadel Colour blood red, you remember the one? it was more like light carmine or pink, I have included pictures of him below for a laugh.

Weeks after I was thinking surely I could do this bygone concept more justice so I went through my collection of RT01 Space Marines miniatures looking for what I thought would make the best Field Police Marine, there were several candidates but in the end I settled for Brother Leanman (also listed as Brother Lestrade later on).

The Field Police rank appeared on the beautifully illustrated page 168 of the Warhammer 40,000 Rogue Trader rulebook but was forgotten in the background descriptions and rules which was a shame but it didn't stop us painting them.  There has been modern revisits to the concepts including by Forgeworld but that's all too new for me.

During my paint job I tried best to capture the feel of the Rogue Trader illustration, I always find black extremely hard to get right but I think it works, he carries an interesting style of carbine bolter which seems well suited to his rank, the helmet came out a bit cartoony which I like and I tied him to my Flesh Tearers with the chapters icon on his shoulder pads badge plate.

Space Marine Field Police Brother Leanman - front

Space Marine Field Police Brother Leanman - side

Space Marine Field Police Brother Leanman - back

The original Adeptus Astartes Field Police illustrations from page 168 of the Warhammer 40,000 Rogue Trader rulebook, this style of drawing went on to define how the different Space Marine chapters would be displayed in future codices to come.

Field Police carries a bolt pistol unlike his brethren

 

Field Police rank marking

The things you did back in 1987 that Humbol black gloss will ensure that this miniature survives into the 41st Millennium

1987 RTB01 Field Police - side

1987 RTB01 Field Police - front

I hope you enjoyed my trip down memory lane, thanks for dropping in.

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