Middle-aged 'Snow White'.

"I used to be Snow White, but I drifted"-May West.

So Imagine that the Fairytale ending did'nt quite go according to plan. The Prince turned out to be dull or something, or perhaps they just got bored when the magic wore off? So, in middle-age, a little plumper, a little grey-er, and a little wiser,  'Snow White' decided to return to the mountains and catch up with some old contacts in the Dwarf community.

In truth, I had a spare 'FS44-2 Seductive Wench' from Citadels early 1980's Fantasy Series-Fantasy Specials range. So, I painted her up as an older version of Snow White. I plan to use her as the Contingent Commander for a Dwarf Ally or Mercenary Contingent for one of my 3rd Edition Warhammer Fantasy Armies.

Enjoy :)

 Front view.
I gave her a slightly more flushed look to her face, and slightly greying hair.

Rear view, with dagger, or fruit knife, for cutting rosy red apples!

Next update will probably be a Dragon as I have been meaning to paint one for a while.

Hot and cold climate C28 Giants.

For a while I have been sorting out my various miniatures into their respective armies. It has been a long process, and far from finished, but it has brought to light several miniatures which had sliped my mind, and also presented me with ideas for where to place and how to paint certain miniatures. Two of those are a pair of C28 Giants.

Now the early pre-slotta C-series C28 Giants range, from where these two Giants came, were a multi part range, with each Giant consisting of one body, one head, and one weapon. These were often supplied randomly, which could result in a wide range of Giants. A year or two (maybe three) ago I decided I wanted to collect a few parts to create two specific Giants for two particular armies: one for a Norse Army; and one for my Southlands Army. This I managed to do, and then I bagged them both up for later painting. 

Couple of weeks ago, as I was sorting my way through boxes of miniatures I found them again, and decided to paint them. I have lots of ideas for miniatures, regiments, armies, etc, and I thought it would be good to create a couple of them.

The first of the Giants is for my Norse Army. I have based him on the idea of Frost Giants, and painted him with a frosty blue skin tone and white beard. In his right hand he is holding a ball, which originally in 1st Edition Warhammer was meant to be a lead ball, something which Giants could throw according to the rules. I thought, being a Frost Giant, I would paint it as a snowball, as in 3rd Edition Warhammer they can still throw things! I gave him a snowy base too, as will the rest of the Norse army.

The second Giant is for my Southlands army. Both he, and the army, are based on the background story from 'The Bowmen of Oreon' RR7 Regiment of Renown. In the story it states that Oreon joined the Sea-Elf Lord Staleor in his Southlands campaign, where they encountered a Giant whom they killed in a maybe less than honourable manner. Anyway, I thought I would try to give the Giant a more 'Fantasy African' feel, so I painted his skin tone darker, and gave him a scrubland looking base to give that warmer climate feel to the miniature.

The background to Oreon's Regiment can be found here: http://www.solegends.com/citrr/1rr07oreons/index.htm
Incidentally, I also have a pre-slotta C08 Elf army, including the pre-slotta Oroen's Bowmen, to oppose the Southlands army.

Enjoy :)

The two Giants.
Both are mounted on 50mm square bases.

Norse Frost Giant.
I painted the eyes to give the impression he is taking aim.

Rear view.

Side view.
I gave him a hammer as it seemed a Norse thing to equip him with.

The Southlands Giant.

Rear View.

The early C28 Giants range.

I am still sorting through miniatures, and painted random things, so not sure what will be next. As I am a key worker I have been somewhat busy over the last couple of weeks and so have'nt painted much.

Take care. :)

Gnome hero on Giant Shrew.

A little conversion and paint job (if you excuse the pun!) .

I had a spare Citadel Gnome miniature from the C33 Mounted Adventurers range, but with no pony for him to ride. So, I tried him out on a Giant Frog miniature, a spare Gimli's pony from Citadels Lord of the Rings range, and even the Citadel C22 Giant Snail. However, he seemed to fit nicely on another C22 Creature; the Giant Shrew.

The Gnome fitted nicely on top once I had added a small greenstuff saddle. I placed the Giant Shrew on a 25mm base as a 20mm was too small, and the 40mm seemed too large. Painting wise he was quick and easy to paint. Also, I wanted to try out the famous shield painting guide in White Dwarf #101 from 1988. It has sort of worked , it does'nt look too bad, I think I need a little more practice, maybe on a much bigger shield!

Gnomes are one of those Warhammer races who seem to be overlooked. They are only present in the Warhammer Armies book in the Dwarf army list, and to be honest, they are not great, with thier T2 being a bit low. So with many other things to choose from in the Dwarf army, and the limited miniatures range not being easy to come by, they are not often seen, which fits in nicely with their Bestiary entry in the rulebook of a dwindling, rarely seen race.  Still, I like them, and I have been buying the odd one or two here and there in order to build a little regiment of C11 range Gnomes, of which I now have 20 plus the Giant Shrew riding hero.

Enjoy :)

Gnome Hero, riding a Giant Shrew.

Left-side view, showing the shield face.

Rear view, with a purple roll-up blanket.

Right-hand side view, with club in hand.

Pre painting.

I am currently very busy with a whole range on non-miniature releated things. However, in my spare time, I am sorting out ALL of my Citadel 1980's era fantasy miniatures into 3,000 point armies. I have been planning a lot of conversions and organisations of Regiments with a view to a major series of blog updates when finished.
In the meantime I am painting random things, and trying out new techniques for painting and modelling.

Squat Thudd Guns.

I have finally painted the last part of the Squats of Hylgar's Hellraiser: The Thudd Guns.

They were quick and fun to paint. I have always considered the Thudd Gun to be an iconic Squat weapon, and so they really had to be included, especially as they are allowed in the army list anyway.

In addition to the two Thudd Guns, I have included the alternative Thudd Gun, also released as the Imperial Guard Auto-Cannon. This was produced in France under license from Citadel by AGMAT, and is sometimes known as the AGMAT Gun.

To crew the guns I have added a few of the Squats from the wider early Rogue Trader Squat range as the Thudd Gun was only supplied with one crew, and the AGMAT with none.

Enjoy :)

Thudd Gun battery.

Thudd gun.
I added some of the rust effect to the gun to give it a slightly more battlefield feel.

The AGMAT gun.
The rear track and the wheels are the same as the regular Thudd Gun, but that is all. The overall look is the same, and the chasis looks like a conversion ofthe original, but the addtion of a larger intergral footplate renders it different.
I think it looks fine and fits in nicely, and faintly reminds me of late 19th Century and First World War artillery.

Squat gunner.
This is the Squat supplied with the gun. He has a peg under his foot rather than a slotta base so he can be placed on the Thudd Gun itself. I chose not to do this, and filled in the gaps on the Thudd Guns footplates with greenstuff.

Rear view.

RT301 Squat "Blish" Browning".
I think he makes a good alternative crewman as he is holding a comm unit/control pad.

RT303 Squat 'Loader Grigg'.
He is part of the Squat  Heavy Weapon range, and seems to be designed to be an ammo carrier, which I also thinks works well as an alternate crewman.

For a variety of reasons this Squat project has taken more time than expected to complete, and my blogging has been very low key. It was, however, fun to paint them, and in the manner and 'feel' of the early Rogue Trader era from which they derive.

My plan now is to switch focus to what I have been doing in the background for over a year.
I have been sorting through my Warhammer Fantasy collections and organising them in 3,000 point armys based on the army list from the 1988 Warhammer Armies book. By and large this has meant sorting a LOT of miniatures into boxes, and so over the next few weeks I will be writing army lists for them. There is a lot of unpainted lead (and a little plastic) at the moment, but once sorted I can then focus on painting again, and then blogging the progress. :)

Rogue Trader Squat: Barry Schmeisser

This is a little bit of a 'place-holder' update really.
Due to a family bereavement, and my workload of the Xmas period I haven't had the opportunity to do any painting. I have however been e-baying for my fantasy armies, but more on that in the new year.
So here are a few of the Squats I painted last month for the continuing Hyglar's Hellraiser army.

Enjoy :)

A group of the  'Barry Schmeisser' miniature.

 Front view.

Rear view.

In January I plan to finally finish the Hyglar's Hellraisers project, and then move onto Fatansy armies.

Gyrinx

Quick update. I haven't been painting much in the last couple of weeks, although there are more 40k Squats awaiting photographing. I did however paint a Gyrinx.

The Gyrinx is an alien creature from the Rogue Trader rulebook, resembling a large ginger cat. It bonds with characters, and then had the power to store psi points, and augment shooting, close combat, and initiative by +1. I have added the rules from the rulebook below.  The background to the Gyrinx was that it was some kind of familar-empathic creature which formed a symbotic relationship with it's 'owner'.

Miniature wise, it was released in 1987, but more as a limited edition mail order miniature. I do recall that in 1990 there was a 'sticker sale' in my local GW shop (Brighton) as part of a wider promotion, and there were one or two Gyrinx included in the RT601 Adventures and Pirates packs, as well as Jokaero. Like an idiot I did'nt buy them at the time, and I only managed to purchase my Gyrinx this year.

Sculpting wise, it's a big fluffy cat. The sculpting is good, but there's not much else to say about it. I am not sure who sculpted it, but they did a good job. Painting wise, it's described as a big orange-ginger fluffly cat, with blue eyes, and that's how I painted it. I did take care to tone down the orange with a sand coloured highlight to stop it looking too much like a fox. More contempary takes on the Gyrinx have it blue and white, but I chose the old Rogue Trader look. It will probably end up with my Space Slann.

Enjoy. :)

 Gyrinx.

 Rear view.

 Rules from the Rogue Trader rulebook.

 Rules from the Rogue Trader rulebook (cont.).

The artwork of the Gyrinx from the Rogue Trader rulebook.

Next update will be the last of the Squat miniatures.

Unreleased C32 Slann miniature.

Recently I purchased a batch (or Spawning?) of 1980's Slann from e-bay. One of the the Slann in the batch is a Slann which I haven't seen before. I have collected several unreleased or rare Slann before, but I have never seen this one before.

He seems to be based on the sculpt of the released C32 Slann 'Zipanzuma' due to several similarities in sculpting. A few years ago, via the Oldhammer Facebook page, I spoke to Trish Carden (formally Morrison) who sculpted this range of Slann, and she stated that there were two reasons for the existence of unreleased Slann miniatures from this era (1985-7). The first was that some Slann miniatures who did'nt make it into production due to casting concerns. The second was that in the later 1980's, about 1988-90, some sculptors in the design studio converted some test pieces based on her original scuplts, with an aim for later Slann releases to revitalise the range. However, these sculpts, and the idea, was put to one side as there were more immediate priorities, namely the massive success and focus on 40k at the time.

As for the sculpt itself I have mixed feelings. I LOVE any 'new' old sculpts of Slann which I can find and buy. I do like that the Slann seems to be wearing a captured Old World/Norse mail coat. This fits into parts of the 2nd and 3rd Edition warhammer Slann background which suggests that some Slann are adpoting some of the new weapons and equipment brought from the Old World.

On the other hand,  I am not sure on the sculpt of the weapon(?). Is it a weapon, or a standard, is it meant to be made of metal, obsidian, or wood? The whole sculpt excellent, as per the era, but the miniature concept itself is ok. It's in the same vein as other miniatures from other ranges which create variants from one basic sculpt. However, unlike some of them it just seems too different be just a 'Zipanzuma' variant, and too similar in some details, such the helmet, to seem a very separate miniature. Still, I do like it and am glad to have it. :)

Enjoy :)

 Unreleased Slann. 

Rear view.

 Tab.
It's a standard tab used on the Slann from this era.

Rear view.
Again, a standard looking tab. It reads G.W 1985.
Both sides of the tab are the same as that which is found on the tab of 'Zipanzuma'.

 The variant and 'Zipanzuma'.

 Next update will probably be some more Squats.