Off with the Old and On with the New: Fantasy Adventures

Yet another of my repaint projects in the works.  This one is from the pre-slota base era with some Fantasy Adventures.  These two lads are FA-24 Anti Paladin and FA-22 Evil Cleric.  I seem to recall that these may have been Citadel miniatures manufactured and distributed by Ral Partha in the US under their imports brand.  I have a few more in the range that I'm sure will meet the same fate as these.  Here they are in my pre-teen paint jobs.

 Not as bad as I would have thought, clearly I have moved from the Testors enables to acrylic paints but no real detail work like shading or highlighting.  Now naked lead, remarkable they came out very clean

Primed up and apex painted.  I'm beginning to like the results that I'm getting using this technique and much thinner paint and ink coats.

 

I haven't decided on color palette yet, on one hand I actually like the red/black/yellow scheme but I might want to try something new.  I'll have to play around with some different looks to figure out how to proceed.  More WIP soon.

Off with the Old and On with the New: Iron Claw Chucker

 As I was filling the new IKEA display cabinet with miniatures I realized that my old Iron Claw goblin chucker was in poor shape.  Not sure when but at some point in time it appears that I lost the catapult arm.  Clearly I was aware of this because as I dug through a bits bin I found an extra one!  My memory of the whole event is very sketchy but I'm glad that I was smart enough at the time to order a replacement one from the old Bitz Service that Citadel/Games Workshop used to run.  For those that lack the requisite amount of grey in their beard, you used to be able to buy any part of any metal model that they made.  This was an incredible service that lead to unlimited opportunities for conversions!  I dont always say this but in this case I do miss the good old days.

I digress, back to the project.  Clearly this was a bit of a later era paint for me as the quality is better than some of the other OwtO projects I have in the queue.  Here are a few of the Old pictures

My biggest concern was trying to match up the wood colors to the new arm so I just decided it was time for a re paint.  Here we are stripped down to naked lead

And here they are queued up for painting

Let the painting begin!  Base coat on everything and in some cases a 1st highlight

Next WIP soon.

Off with the Old and on with the New-FTS

I think this is the second or third installment of my project to strip off old paint jobs from when I was a wee lad and update to something more modern.  No question the old FTT troll with the female captive on his back looks much better.  As I was rummaging around I ran across an old bag of mins that go all the way back to my first purchases ever, something like 45+years ago.

Yes these guys need some TLC! 

These are pre-slota base skeletons from Citadel's Fantasy Tribe Skeletons (FTS).  I have always been fascinated by skeletons especially fantasy miniature ones.  I place that blame squarely on Ray Harryhausen and the skeleton stop motion scene from his 1963 classic Jason and the Argonauts.  It seems that this has been mentioned by many other hobbyist similar in age.  As noted in my Digging Up Bones post, I've been collecting them for my entire hobby career.  Citadel was clearly head and shoulders above most miniature companies in terms of quality, detail and variety of their products in the late 70's and early 80's.  The Fantasy Tribe series dates from 1979-1983, after that it became the C series of codes.

I immediately knew I had to get some of these great miniatures.  Wargaming and RPG mins were not easy to come by back then but I was relentless in my search. Whenever I went on vacation with my family I would comb the yellow pages (if you dont know what those are I dont know that I can explain them to you!) finding any and all hobby shops in our destination.  If they were close they would indulge me, if not I could only dream of the treasures that I was missing out on. I'm fairly confident that these miniatures we actually ones that Ral Partha produced under license from Citadel and distributed in the US in the Ral Partha Imports line.  I managed to find a pic of one of my actually mins on ebay still on the blister.

I had these guys in an old 2L bottle diorama that I learned how to make from an copy of Military Modeling magazine back in the day.

 

They had what I thought was a brilliant idea, nowadays I think it would be referred to as a hack.  Back in the 1900's, (okay 1980's but using 1900's sounds older) the the 2L bottles of pop were a two piece creation.  They had a clear bottle that was rounded on the bottom and a black or appropriately colored bottom that squared it off so it could stand up.

The article shows you how to pop the bottom off the bottle, cut the top off where it started to taper and then attach the bottom to the freshly cut piece, instant display case.

Or you could attach it to a wooden base and accomplish the same thing

There guys were in a similar work with lots of cotton balls stretched out to simulate fog.  Actually quite brilliant of my younger self if I don't sound too boisterous.

Fast forward to today.  Like anything old they clearly need a fresh coat of paint.  So off we go.  First are a few close up starting pics.  Clearly I had no knowledge of inks, washes, or dry-brushing yet.

 

 

You have to love the menacing red eyes!

After a good soak in Green Stuff for the better part of a month or two.

 

Primed black in preparation for apex shading.

 

Some apex shading with pure white.

Next update will have some color blocking.

Hello, my name is...........

Hello my name is Warlord Kcam, and I'm an addict.  Lead addict that is.  I simply cannot help myself, I have to buy more lead miniatures, I need to buy more miniatures.  Yes, sure I'll get them painted someday.  Soon, I promise!

Does that sound like you if your reading this?  I was motivated to share my addiction after doing some work this weekend.  As I mentioned in the previous post, I decided to put together my Knightmare Games Feral Goblins unit to paint up for Orctober.  I totally missed that target date but that is now water under the bridge.  I received the new additional troops along with some Bugbears.  I really don't have a plan for the larger fellows, I just thought that they were cool.  To get the unit ready I dug out the box with all the Knightmare figures to get the original Greenskin Wars Kickstarter goblins out as well.  I was surprised how heavy it was.  Then I became embarrassed at how many unpainted miniatures I had to dig through to find the other Feral Goblins.  Wow, at the rate I'm painting it will take me at least a year just to get all of Diego's stuff done.

That doesn't doesn't include all the lead that is sitting in these tubs!

 Or these drawers!

Or the boxes in the storage area!

Good lord, I'm not sure that I'll ever have enough time to get them done.

Surely I'm not the only one who does this right?   Does anyone else have this collecting addiction?  As I started this confession I began to think about this and clearly I was destined for this from an early age.  My mom recently sold my childhood home and I helped her pack things up including much of the residue of my childhood.  By the way, I'm still pissed off I didn't find my original 1st edition Deities and Demigods as we started to clean out the house.
 

As I packed things up or unpacked things at my home I realized that my drive to collect started very early with things like rubber eraser animals, Lego's, comics, and various collecting cards.  Darn my nerdyness, I of course collected everything but athletic cards which is where the big money is at!  Well it was never a matter of collecting as an investment just for enjoyment.

Clearly I have what must be some genetic per-disposition to collecting, thankfully I have been able to keep it in check for the most part.  I occasionally catch the show American Pickers, for those unaware it is about a coupe of antique/re-sale guys that travel around the US "picking" other peoples junk and collections for hidden treasures or items that they can resell.  I always used to get a chuckle when they found something and made an offer on it and the person replies "No I just don't think I can let that go" mind you they say this while standing in a room, or house, or even a barn that is filled with 100's of other items just like the one they just cannot do without.  Please note that I said "used to chuckle", after digging though all the stuff that I have around the hobby room I realized that I might just be one of those "people" who is so obsessed with their stuff they simply cannot let it go!  Please share if you have any of the same issues!

A Little Old School Novel reading.

I recently completed the first two books of the Night Lords Trilogy by Aaron Dembski-Bowden: Soul Hunter and Blood Reaver.  I haven't been able to find the third, Void Stalker, as of yet.

I was desperate to find something to read and couldn't bring myself to start the Legend of Sigmar Omnibus so I perused the shelf and decided it had been awhile since I read the Gotrek and Felix novels so I grabbed the first book in the series, Trollslayer to give it a re-read.

I made a funny discovery while opening it up to get started.  The original receipt fell out of it and I was amazed to find out that I have had this for over 15 years!  I think it is certainly time for a re-read!  And in fact I think I will give the entire series a re-read.

I like King's writing style and enjoyed re-reading the first novel.  It is an interesting layout in that it is really seven short stories presented as a recount of Felix's adventures with Gotrek.  This keeps the interest level up and was a fun read.  Nothing like Felix's recounting of how they dispatched the agents of the chaos gods such as the abandon mutants in Geheimnisnacht, the warpstone amuleted troll in The Dark Beneath the World (damn those Skaven bastards), the tainted Fredericksburg noble in The Mark of Slaanesh, the beastmen and mighty female chaos warrior Justine in Blood and Darkness, or Felix's old classmate Albericht Kruger in the The Mutant Master.  As you can see their struggles against the spawn of chaos are a common thread throughout their many tales.

Well I'm off to start Skavenslayer and reacquaint myself with Grey Seer Thanquol!

Back to the green tide.

As I mentioned in my 2018 recap, I have decided to get back to my roots and paint up some greenskins for 2019.  Orcs and goblins have been my first fantasy love since watching Bakshi's animated Hobbit and Lord of the Rings movies.



Diego with Knightmare games has some great miniatures out there by the greatest orc and goblin sculptor ever, Kevin "The Goblinmaster" Adams.  I have done a few of his Kicksarter campaigns and really liked the feral goblins so they were my first choice to work on.

After giving them a look while basing, it appears that they fall into 4 categories; wolf skins, boar skins, goat skins, and reptile and bat pelts.  I don't want to get overwhelmed with trying to paint too many varying styles so I made sure I had enough caps to get all the wolf skins ready for paint.  I have focused on them to keep the group manageable for the month that I am going to give myself to get them done.  I am gong to try a little different approach and go with a very strict base coat them wash then highlight process.  While this is my typical method I tend to focus on a single color/area with this technique and then move onto the next.  I often end of repairing/repainting areas that were already done but got contaminated by a wash or highlight from a nearby color or area.  This round of miniatures I aim to try the more traditional method and do them all at the same time. 

I'm also gong to start a new themed project appropriate named "Off with the Old, On with the New!"  The plan is to take some of my ancient mins and strip off my poorly skilled pre-teen paint jobs and redo them with what I hope are better paint jobs.  First up, in keeping with the greenskin theme, I picked out a troll from the old Fantasy Tribe Troll series (FTT04).

This was a very attractive model to a prepubescent boy in the late 70's with the nude captive slung over the troll's shoulder.  Not sure how I ever managed to slide that purchase past my mom, glad she really didn't pay too close attention to what I was buying!  I doubt that GWS would get away with that in today's market.  As you can see from the before picture, limited pallet, poor details and just average skin tone on the captive.  Not bad for younger me, lets see if old F@#% me can do better!  On to the painting.

The Great Painting Bust of 2018! A year in Review.

It appears that 2018 will go down as one of my weakest blogging and painting efforts in awhile.  I had these great ambitions for 2018: getting 52 blog posts in, working my way through the pile of lead sitting in my hobby space, actually gaming some, participating in Orctoer (which them became Gobvember) and Deadcember.  The list goes on, it turns out that my efforts were a bust.  I could come up with a dozen or so excuses like "the dog at all my paint" or "the bosses at work are so mean I just didn't have any time to paint" but lets be real, I was just lazy.  Or more positively spun, I just wasn't as motivated as I should or could have been.

Here is the misses.  I managed a whopping 12 posts for all of 2018, none since August.  Didn't come close to Orctober and totally missed Deadcember.  Honestly a post a week probably isn't realistic,  so I set myself up for failure.

While I lament away about what I didn't do lets change the focus to what I did accomplish.  First up was fighting off my adult ADD and focusing on collecting a full set of figures.  In this case my Champions of Khorne project.  Just getting the set purchased without blowing my entire hobby budget was an accomplishment.  The first group, the hateful 8 are close enough for me to consider them done.

A few minor details to clean up and finish.  White stuff on bases is sparkling compound to hide the slota base tab.  As with most of my projects I'll complete the bases once the rest of the crew is painted.  Here is the next group.

While I missed being able to complete a unit for Orctober I did manage to get a unit of Diego's Knightmare Games feral goblins based up, mounted on caps for the Hobby Holder painting rig and a few base coats on.  Speaking of the Hobby Holder, Kit currently has a second Kickstarter campaign going with a little less than a week left.  I would highly recommend it!

I also kicked off some Gaslands/Dark Future/Car Wars projects that I was able to wrap up.  To be honest these were lots of fun and actually pretty quick and easy to knock out.  I do need to get them a couple of coats of matte finish to protect their paint jobs.

And last but not least, 2018 did see one of my biggest hobby collecting journeys come to an end.  I finally completed my 40 year quest to collect the fist run of White Dwarf magazine.  That wonderful little magazine was one of the contributing factors that enticed me into the hobby and keep me engaged with it even though I wasn't always able to fully participate in it.  It certainly changed over the years but it was still a good read most of the time.

Goals for 2019: simple GET BUSY! I just need to make the commitment to getting more done.  I'll shoot for more regular posts, more like one every couple of weeks.  Painting wise I'll be trying to get more paint on lead with a quick goal of getting the green lads painted up by end of January. 

That is it for 2018, lets hope 2019 bears more hobby fruit!