More old fantasy figures

I am always on the lookout for old fantasy miniatures. This weekend, I came in the possession of some old figures through wargaming friend Wim VdB.

The figures are a mix of Minifigs and Ral Partha, and all date from the 70s or early 80s.

The first figure, shown above, is still in the original bag. The label says it's  Land Dragon with Mounted Captain 9ES34, or 01-34), from the Personalities and Things that Go Bump in the Night range. However, the dragon looks more like the dragon (with wings!) from 01-083, War Dragon with Knight. The cardboard label was folded over and has a stamp on the inside that mentions "83". More details on the Lost Minis Wiki site.

 Top row:

• Minifigs, Valley of the Four Winds, Forest Orc with Double headed Axe (VFW11)
• Minifigs, Valley of the Four Winds, Forest Orc with Cat O'Nine Tails (VFW13)
• Minifigs, Valley of the Four Winds, Forest Orc with Spiked Club (VFW12)
• Asgard, FM92 Mounted Knight of Chaos
• Two Drunken Gnolls - Citadel - FTG10

Bottom Row:

• Minifigs, Mythical Earth Range, Man Orc w Axe (ME9)
• Heritage - Der Kriegspielers Fantastiques - Lesser Goblin
• Trill (Ral Partha Things that go Bump in the Night, 01-062)
• Ral Partha, E232 Sea Elf, attacking in full length chainmail and cloak
• Ral Partha, E551 Southron Heavy Spearman, advancing Wizards, Warriors and Warlocks
• Unknown Ral Partha, but couldn't identify yet.
• Minfigs, Valley of the Four Winds, Small Winged Fairy Standing on Tree, VFW14

Beyond the Gates of Antares visual look

Last week I received my copy of the Beyond the Gates of Antares rulebook. As most of you probably know, this is the new scifi game developed by Rick Priestly, and published by Warlord Games.

The rulebook is a pleasant surprise. A lot of the scenery used in the photographs is stunning, the miniatures are superbly painted, and the whole atmosphere just blew me away. Mind you, I haven't read all of the rules yet, but the whole lay-out, the imagery, the spirit the book embodies is something that woke up into me the same excitement I felt when I first read the WH40K Rogue Trader book back in the late eighties.

One of the images of the original WH40K book that appealed to me tremendously, was one in which a modern looking cityscape with brightly coloured skyscrapers served as the scenery for a game. It wasa photograph in the back of the book, in the "Modeling and Painting" section, but it was exactly the visual look of a scifi universe I wanted to play games in.

Later on, the WH40K look-and-feel became more and more gothic and dark, and that didn't appeal to me at all. I guess I am more a hard scifi fan rather than a gothic scifi fan. More Traveller and StarGrunt than WH40K.

Anyway, I see the same visuals for scenery and setting in the photographs in the Antares rulebook. Bright figures, in brightly coloured settings. For some reason, such a setting is much more inviting to play a game in.

(warlordgames.com)

(warlordgames.com)

(warlordgames.com)

Now for the crucial question ... will I ever play Gates of Antares? Probably not. We have developed our own scifi skirmish tactical rules over the years (also called Antares - pure coincidence - and using a lot of original WH40K miniatures - probably also no coincidence), but I might steal a lot of clever ideas!

Troll and Ogre, Runequest style

In a previous blogpost, I identified some very old Runequest miniatures in my collection.

They finally got painted.

From left to right: Dark Troll with large Axe, Ogre with Flail, Runner with Bow.

Undead Samurai

A couple of quickly painted Undead Samurai ...

I have these figures probably since the late 80s. They are Citadel Miniatures, and according to solegends.com and Collecting Citadel Miniatures, first appeared in the C18 range in June 1985. There are two other figures here (1st and 3rd from the right), that did not belong to this range.

According to the original names from the C18 range: Bo, Tu, Ne, Jin, Ig, Bek, Yo, ?, Jin, ?

Original catalogue image (June 1985 Flyer):

CWJ added to the index

All 5 issues of the Classic Wargamer's Journal have been added to the magazine index.

Filling up holes in movement trays

Movement trays are very handy in a lot of games. But care has to be taken that the visual look of the game does not suffer. I hate it when half-empty or dirty or ugly movement trays are being used.

For our last game, I quickly made some standard bases with small scenic features which can be used to "fill up the holes". As you can see below, I used some rocks, a small tree, some skulls, a rat, etc.

Place them between your figures in a movement tray, and the visual appeal suddenly goes up by a factor of 10!

As an added bonus, you can give your army some additional flavour: use skulls and graves for an undead army, rats for a skaven army, or general scenery items or wounded figures for any historical army.

Skaven warlord

Another figure I recently finished.

Since Skaven were my original WFB3rd army, back in the 80s, I still have a fond sport for the ratmen. This particular commander was a figure once sold by GW as part of a Lustria campaign setting, and marketed as "Skaven Plaguelord Nurglitch"

Waldvolk

Last CRISIS I bought some Waldvolk from Imaginative Miniatures, the Raven Sorcerer and some Stag warriors. I painted them (not too detailed, my gaming standard :-)) last weekend.

I painted the Stag Warriors in a rather dark brown. I feel this reflects the dark Northern-European mythological feel better. I added some plastic shields to the two miniatures on the right.

The Raven Sorcerer was painted mostly in black and grey. I took the liberty of giving him a red/orangish beak and feet (unlike a real raven), otherwise the figure would be too dark.

WH40K Dreadnoughts and Eldar War Robot

I finished some WH40K, Rogue-Trader-era, Dreadnoughts for our ongoing scifi skirmish campaign.

These are 2 Space Marine dreadnoughts, and an Eldar War Robot (not an Eldar Dreadnought as I also originally thought).

And here are the original ads as they appeared in WHite Dwars during the late 80s (from www.solegends.com):

Some links updated for Great Northern War posts

A few years ago we switched our blog from Wordpress to Blogger. In the process, some links pointing to pdf documents were corrupted, and now and then, some errors still pop up.

I restored links to pdf documents that describe some of our Great Northern War scenarios, in the following blogposts:

• Russians repulse Swedes at Holowczyn!
• The battle of Holowczyn: scenario
• Battle of Ingenstansby

And if you're interested in the GNW, you should check out these posts, lots of eye candy!