Orlygg's Oldhammer New Year Resolutions

Some twelve months ago I made a series of resolutions, as I am sure that many people do, even wargamers, and I find that in the few remaining hours of 2013 I have some time to reflect on them. Just look here for the original article. Its been quite a year for me, as I am sure it has been for you, and it was certainly a year for the Oldhammer Community! We have had ups and downs but ultimately, its a big well done to everybody! Great blogs, great games, great painted miniatures and great events, big and small.

Well let's have a look at what I set out to achieve this year!

2012-2013

1. Play a game of Warhammer (or related games) with someone on the Warhammer Opponent Finder.

The author of this blog with Rick Priestley and John Stallard. 

It seemed like a huge task back then! Actually find someone who liked Old School GW games and play a few of them, maybe once or twice! It seems a bit naive now doesn't it? Yes, with support from the Ansell family at the Wargames Foundry that ambition was magnified one hundred fold when Marcus emailed me and offered the Foundry's services for our event. I got to meet a large number of fascinating individuals and even a Warhammer Celeb or two! I played in a Realm of Chaos warbands extravaganza and at Blog-Con a few months later where the Deathfist was resoundly beaten by massively overpowered undead units - no wonder Warhammer Armies states that skeletons should be fielded in units no greater than 30! Not in units twice that size with the Lichemaster to boot! Still, it was great fun and I am hungry for more next summer!

Chatting with Gaj and Bryan Ansell. Something to do with beards and whiskey if I remember correctly! What was satisfying, was talking to Garth about an email he sent me in the early days. To cut a long story short, he told me he didn't expect the 'Oldhammer thing to explode' - thankfully, he was utterly wrong! 

A huge scale game! Third Edition Slaves to Darkness warbands game! 

Resolution Achieved!

2. Safely organise my painted models and catagorise my unpainted ones.

The Ironing Board is not Citadel,

This was a little more challenging than I thought. I dreamt of a massive glass cabinets like you see at proper wargames shows but the wife wanted something in keeping with the house. So, like all good husbands, I did what I was told and we used this Welsh Dresser as a makeshift display cabinet for me miniatures. And it does a great job too!

Resolution Achieved!

3. Collect more Limited Edition Citadel miniatures

I love the strange gems of yesteryear. I was sniped quite a few times for this model until I found it incorrectly listed and bought it for mere pence! Bonus!

This one was easier! I managed to get my hands on one of my favourite ever models, the Spined Dragon and a fair few lovely old pre-slottas too; like the Wereansell model and one of the early Thruds. All should see paint in the new year! I have no intention of waltzing along the road of SERIOUS collecting though. So no Ass Cannons or Chicken Dragons for me. 

Beautiful to behold and a bastard to construct!

Resolution Achieved! 

4. Buy a good copy of Advanced Heroquest, Space Marine (first edition) or Adeptus Titanicus.

One day... One day..!

I really tried with this one, but apart from paying well over the odds, I lost every set I bid for. Still, there is always next year!

Resolution Ongoing!

5. Paint The Nightmare Legion.

Thanks dad for buying these in Wonderworld all those years ago. At least you no longer have to ask if i have painted the legion anymore!

It only took me twenty-five years but I did it! Even though painting the miniatures was tough, the finish result really makes up for all the time you invest. The trouble is, every time I pause to contemplate them on the Welsh Dresser I am tempted to do another Regiment of Renown - but which one!

Resolution Achieved! 

6. Complete small daemonic armies for all four powers using Realm of Chaos.

No identikit plastic soulless rubbish here. 

Okay, I didn't manage this one but I did get an army painted. The Khorne force that you can see above which had its genesis in the warband Dan used during out Realm of Chaos campaign a few years ago. Too be honest, in twenty-five years of gaming this is the first army I EVER finished! So its quite an achievement really! Now I just have to finish the Slaanesh one! 

Resolution Not Achieved - but kind of achieved in a way!

2013-2014

But what for the future? What will I set out to achieve in the next 12 months. To be honest, its easier this time around as I have a target of Oldhammer 2014 in August to get myself in order for while last year things were still and bit of a straw clutch. Still, here are my ideas!

1. Collect, paint and actually complete two entire armies! This will include my Slanneshi force and one other. 

2. Develop, test and host a set of scenarios inspired by things like Orc's Drift and Lichemaster. This will include providing all the background, scenery and painted models so that people can just play the scenarios and enjoy them. Narrative gaming, and roleplaying, will be very strong elements to these games. 

3. Inspired the Oldhammer Community to create warbands once again for the Oldhammer Weekend. Only this time using Rogue Trader rules and the 40k warbands described in Dark Millenium, Slaves to Darkness! Much more on this soon!

4. Continue to collect limited edition figures which may or may not help support Resolution 2. 

5. Complete the Warhammer Bestiary painting project by the end of the year. 

6. Buy a copy of Space Marine, Adeptus Titanicus or Advanced Heroquest. 

Well there you go. Hopefully, this year leaves you with lots of happy Oldhammer or wargaming memories and all I have left to do is wish you all a very happy New Year. 

Absinthe, Sambuca and Jagermiester await!

Orlygg.

Imperial Dragon AKA Chicken Dragon for Sale on eBay!

Good evening fellow followers of old school Citadel and all things 1980s Games Workshop. It has come to my attention that one of the rarest miniatures produced by Citadel during the Golden Age has cropped up on eBay recently and I thought that followers of this blog would be more than interested in seeing how the sale progresses. The miniature (as you will have guessed by now) is the famous Imperial or Chicken Dragon sculpted by Micheal Perry in 1982 and moulded and cast by none other than Richard 'GW's Forgotten Genius' Halliwell! 

The model is huge, hence its name, and is said to be of similar size to an actual chicken! Now I have never seen one for sale before so I am intrigued by how much it will sell for. I am sure that Steve Casey from Eldritch Epistles would probably be able to give a more informed estimate by I am going to go for a price between £1000-1500 for this monster.

During the Oldhammer Weekend at the Foundry last September, I was told an amusing, and dare I say rather unprintable, story about the creation of this model by Rick Priestley and John Stallard. The picture they painted was of a far more rough and ready Citadel Miniatures than the one that would become so successful later on in the 1980s and beyond. Looking back, you really have to be impressed by their ambition as the model is absolutely huge, even by today's resin monstrosity standards. Also, remember that these were the days before CAD allowed slot together models on a grand scale and a little bit of (or in this case a lot of) modelling skill was required to build some of the more ambitious kits. Having personally restored a Great Spined Dragon in recent days I can certainly appreciate how difficult building and painting such a model would be. So here's hoping this beast is bought by a collector who actually intends to build and paint the dragon as a model so we someday get to see the monster in the way its creators always intended!

Anyway, here's the eBay link and a scan from Solegends of the guide paperwork that went with the model.

eBay Imperial Dragon AKA The Chicken Dragon


Good luck indeed!

Orlygg.

Slaaneshi Beastman and two Chaos Warriors

I am sure that like many of you the family commitments are beginning to ease now that Great Aunt Agatha has been popped on a bus/train/aeroplane and things begin to settle down once more after Christmas. My household is no exception. Being back at home, I lost little time in getting the next batch of Slaaneshi miniatures painted up, though finding decent natural light to work by (and take photographs with) is proving to be difficult.

I have painted this model before so it too on a couple of hours to complete. This time the colour scheme very much followed the pattern I have been developing for this force. Salmon pink with pastel blues and greens, supported by blacks and golds. This model was produced to complete the 12 model unit I showed off last time if Adolphus doesn't want to be part of the unit. Otherwise, he will relax in the depth of my case until another 5 Slaaneshi beastmen are painted up into a smaller unit. I want this force to be beastman heavy, so I plan to include centaurs and minotaurs some time in the future. But in the meantime, I have decided that the second unit I paint, following the six member quota of a Slaaneshi force, will be Chaos Warriors. 

And here is the first of those Chaos Warriors. This one is one of the models that were produced to be Slaanesh favoured, complete with single bosom and crab claw. I used this model as a opportunity to experiment with painting pink and I feel that I have been quite successful. If I was to have a second go, I think I would include more white in the mix earlier on and get the tone more milky, but that is for a future model, maybe even one of the other Chaos Warriors. A fun, if a little crude, sculpt that seemed to take days to complete for some reason. 

In contrast with the above mode, this miniature seemed to take no time at all. Purple, gold, black and flesh all seemed to merge together pretty well though I avoided using a pink this time. What d you think?

Orlygg.

Rogue Trader: Gadge's Old School Collection

Gadge over on the Oldhammer Community Facebook Group has been delighting us early birds with some of his old school Citadel this morning. After a quick word in his ear, he readily agreed to allow me to share his photographs with you. His collection concerns, mostly, the early releases for Rogue Trader and by all accounts he has a fair few rare models from the period. I'd imagine you could have quite a few memorable games of RT with this little lot.

Big thanks to Gadge for letting me share these with you readers. 

Early Citadel releases for Rogue Trader make an impressive skirmish force with a little bit of thought. I love the way he has used the same models with subtle differences to make an interesting force. 

These were the Space Adventurers and most of the range is represented here. These are lovely, characterful models from the gory days of GW. 

Early Space Elves, or Eldar Pirates. They were less defined in the early days of RT, both in design and background. 

Some nice pieces here! What do you recognise? 

Got to love the Ambull. I have been after one for years (like many of you no doubt) and Gadge tells tales of how he used to give them away at GW events back in the day. You killed one, you got to keep it!

Rogue Trooper miniatures. I have always thought these were quite compatible with Rogue Trader and they design ethic running through many early RT sculpts is clearly derived from 2000AD. 

An Imperial Robot. I loved the rules for these. Create your own programs and attack! 

An early Rhino built from the remains on an old GW display apparently. This is part of a greater Imperial Guard Force. 

More early RT miniatures. 

Yet more RT robots. In the days of little or no defined background the sculpting team drew their inspiration from a wide range of sources, including insects.  

An early Sentinel I think. 

Some very rare and expensive models in this collection I feel. Lovely old school charm.

Old Citadel Judge Dredd models. Again, the 2000AD influences on RT can be seen. 

More of Gadge's old school Imperial Guard force. 

And to finish things off, its time for something completely different! Andy Hoare's Space Slann!

Orlygg.

Slaangor: Beastmen of the Pleasure God

As Monday night draws to a close I have managed to get some Slaangor (that's Slaaneshi Beastmen to the uninitiated) completed, based and have added their shields. Like Adolphus in the previous post, these models were started quite some time ago and were abandoned as my interest was piqued in other areas so its good to get them finished. As I did with my Khorne army, I attempted to match as many of the tones for these miniatures as those used in Slaves to Darkness; namely pastel hues of green, pink, blue and purple. Black and gold were also added for good measure. 

Here we have the first two Slaangor. I am not sure who sculpted these, but they did a good job, filling the models with lots of additional details that were fun to paint. I used inks to add depth to each of the colours in turn before creating highlights by adding white. The metals were painted in my usual way. I was particularly impressed with how the two shields came out. I had opted to use different shaped shields than those used on the Khorne models. There I favoured the round shields but with the Slaanesh beastmen I chose to use the original chaos shield shapes. I have painted on them before in the past, and several of my Khorne army have got them attached on their shield arms but this was the first time I had used them extensively. A change in shape brought about the need to adapt my 'chaos face' designs. Have a look at how the designs came out- what do you think?

Here's a close up of the first design. This is the first time I have painted a design on this type of shield and I must say I feel its once of my best. I opted to paint a more human face but this time in profile. The addition of the glaring eye and gnashing teeth gave the design enough malign presence to be suitably chaos like. Again, I mixed in purple ink with my purple paint to create the depth and richness of tone before highlighting the detail with white. My son, who is three, told me that this shield was 'too scary' and that I should hide it high up in the cabinet!

This design had a great deal more in common with those I have done in the past, with the addition of a few subtle boils to the 'skin' of the face. I also shaded the eyes in with green to contrast with the light pink of the face itself. This colour was achieved by adding a touch of white to a very bright red. This gave a deep pink that was suitable as a base colour. Over this I shaded with a chestnut ink/red ink mix. I added white to create the highlights in increasing stages. 

Next, the standard bearer. This was a simple conversion. I cut away the old spear that this miniature is armed with and drilled through with a pin vice. It was a simple job to push the wire through and create the banner pole. The banner itself is made of paper, a departure from the tin one I made for the Khorne standard. The method was much the same, with the background created through flicking paint in varying shades against a parchment base colour. The large, purple face was added later and was painted in exactly the same way I do the round chaos shields. I added some plastic shields and an orc head from suitable decoration. 

A closure shot of the beastman and his shield design. I stuck with the colour themes of pink, gold and black with this one as well as purple and green as spot colours. The shield was painted in green to contrast with the orc's head at the top of the banner pole and was just a longer variant of the chaos head. I used red and brown ink to create the weeping lips and eyes which I again highlighted by adding a little of the light green. 

A quick top down view to show of the colours on the banner. The shields were taken from the Gripping Beast plastic viking range and the orc head is, of course, from Warhammer Plastic Regiments.

By adding the new miniatures to those that I painted a couple of years ago for the Realm of Chaos campaign I have my first completed unit for Adolphus' new army. These beastmen will act as his bodyguard and I intend to paint an additional beastman for the unit to ensure that he can be replaced if I decide to field him as an independent character!

So far, so good!

Orlygg.

Slaaneshi Champion: Adolphus Tiberius Lewdflail

With my work done for two weeks and the Christmas holidays beginning today after a rather quiet weekend the festive painting begins in earnest. I have quite a cluttered painting table by any standards, with about ten models in various stages of completion. The theme of the week is Slaanesh. I hope to build a force to take on Ulthur Deathfist in the near future. It is my intention to produce two interesting chaos armies for use at other Oldhammer types' houses. I meet plenty of you that say 'I would really love to play but I have no painted models' so I hope that having two exciting forces, a reasonable table and some scenery would help spread the gospel of Old School Warhammer to those who don't have the resources to put on a good battle. 

This miniature has a rather interesting history. It is, of course, one of Jes Goodwin's Chaos Champion range he produced in the later 1980s. It is my opinion that these models have never been bettered by anyone else due to the varied range, twisted imagination and collectability. What really surprised me was flicking through the latest issue of WD in Tescos the other day, as I do, and I noticed that this Nurgle Champion had been inducted into the Hall of Fame. Now I am not naive enough not to know that miniatures selected for this are more than likely going to have to be available now, and that the Hall of Fame is really just another advert, but come on!. Goodwin's range is vastly superior and consists of a great number of different models for all four gods. The one I selected to paint on is one of the best in my opinion. Quite why they haven't been all re-released in the collectors range is beyond me. 

As I said, this model has a rather interesting personal history. It was originally intended to be my Slakesin character in my Realm of Chaos campaign that inspired this blog. In fact I remember starting painting it while my son was very young and he is now nearly four. I am not sure exactly what it was but something caused me to give up on it. In hindsight, it may have been the complex detail as my painting skills three years ago are not a patch on what they are now. So whatever caused me to cease work on it saw the model abandoned to various storage piles and draws until I came across it a few months ago and returned it to the painting station. I imagined finishing it off at some point. Then the other day I had just mixed up a nice chestnut ink wash for a different model, and having finished the application with plenty to share decided to paint this champion with the leftovers. 

That ink wash really brought out the depth in the model and made it pop. It was pretty easy to apply a couple of layers of highlights here and there to finish the model. And here his is! Ready to lead my Slaaneshi army. All he needed was a suitable name so I chose Adolphus Tiberius Lewdflail. I thought it has a suitably perverted ring to it!

Orlygg. 

A Warhammer Bestiary: Chaos Dwarf

Welcome back to A Warhammer Bestiary, my painting project in which I attempt to collect and paint a miniature for each entry in the WFB3 rulebook. So far so good, I have enjoyed every moment of all the miniatures I have painted thus far, and I am just about to start work on elves as they are next in the bestiary. This update concerns the Chaos, or Black, Dwarfs. 

Instead of choosing one of the many heavily armoured examples in the Citadel archives from the 1980s, I opted for this mutated chap. I love this sculpt as the model represents a dwarf who has travelled someway down the path of chaos and has been mutated beyond all recognition of his former self. He has a tentacle arm, a face on his chest and a long winding tail. You can no doubt imagine that this chap's mind has also been duly affected being one step up from ravenous chaos spawn!

The model allowed me to work on flesh tones once more, only this time I was dealing with the warping powers of chaos. With no particular plan in mind the flesh ended up a sickly green to suggest his long descent into damnation and I had a go at blending this green flesh with the malign purple/red I opted to paint the tentacle. Having lost much of his personality, this Chaos Dwarf has lost his sense of pride and how roams the Old World stark naked, with only his matted orange beard preserving his modesty. A lovely comic touch by whichever of the Perrys sculpted this model in the mid 1980s. 

Though hard to see in this photograph, I offset the orange with a purple lip and red tongue. The dwarf is no doubt droolling over the next kill his can make in the name of whatever dark god he worships. When painting him, I didn't really have a god in mind, though with his colouring Nurgle may well have been his benefactor. What do you think?

Orlygg.

Ian Livingstone and Steve Jackson Seminar: D&D, Games Workshop and Fighting Fantasy

Today's post needs little introduction. Its a video of Ian Livingstone and Steve Jackson discussing D&D, Games Workshop and Fighting Fantasy. It was recorded at Dragonmeet (the big roleplaying event in London) and is well worth a watch. Its quite lengthy, so I'd advise a tea, coffee or a beer before commencing your viewing. If you are on holiday now, like me, its the perfect little video to relax to. 

Enjoy. 

Orlygg

Labyrinthe: LARPing in the '80s

Sorry about the recent bout of silence on the blog, but life has been rather hectic of late, what with the end of school and the start of the Christmas Holidays, saying I have been rushed off my feet would be a bit of an understatement. Even so, I have managed to get quite a bit of painting done this week, but I have yet to take any snaps of my freshly based miniatures, and I hope to be able to up the production to a few minis a day over the next couple of weeks.

Well, that's the plan anyway.

Today I have a little clip from a 1980s television programme about Labyrinthe and Live Action Roleplaying, or LARPing for short. Now I have written about this before and have shared with you an amusing television programme hosted by Ben 'I used to be able to write funny sitcoms like Blackadder' Elton, if you cannot recall what I am rambling about here just follow this little link and you'll see.

What strikes me is the way roleplaying is presented here. The 'they are all geeks' angle that prevails in the Ben Elton piece is still suggested here, but there is a darker tone hinted at as well, especially when White Dwarf is mentioned amongst 'magazines like these'. These days its hard to see White Dwarf as anything more than an over priced catalogue but it seems that there was a time when the magazine raised the ire of 'Daily Mail' style journalism. What amuses me further are the ways in which many of the key players have been presented; darkened rooms, shadowy faces and whispered tones. What amazes me is the revenue that LARPing was bringing in during the '80s, £100,000 is even today a considerable sum, but 25 years ago it would have been greater still! Thankfully, the article cuts off before the 'journalists' attempt to link roleplaying to the Hungerford Massacre of 1987. It seems this particular sensationalist tool of poor journalists everywhere is not a modern invention. In the days before Great Theft Auto it was Dungeons and Dragons that encouraged psychopaths to commit mass murder! 

Have a watch and see what conclusions you can draw from it. Feel like sharing them? Well you know how below! 

Orlygg.

Orcnapped? The Perils of Posting Miniatures!

I have always stood back from trading as a way of getting my hands on miniatures. The reason? Models going missing! For some time I have just though 'hey, its me!' and just bad luck but recent events here in Essex are beginning to prove otherwise.

Its seems that employees from the Royal Mail have been actively stealing the contents of people's post for their own ends. So scandalous are the findings that the story has even made the front page of the local rag, as you will have seen above!

The story got me thinking about all the 'disappearances' that I have had to deal with in recent times, including a large trade overseas that just vanished, even though they are supposed to be tracked. 

Then, the plot thickens and I receive a generic letter from the Royal Mail apologising (albeit rather vaguely) about the loss of my property along with some old envelopes that once would have held my beloved lead! Note that the envelope in the photograph is affixed with a signed for notice! Well I never signed for this one and the Post Office swore it was delivered, in 2011!

Yes, that is correct, in 2011!

So the thief not only pilfered my minis but even kept the evidence lying around somewhere, and then the Royal Mail, not able to return my property, just send me out an empty envelope!

Hopeless!

The hue and cry (lots of local people are talking about the items they have lost and the similar letters of 'apology' they have had popped through their letter boxes) has got me thinking. How common are these disappearances? Are rogue posties targeting our minis and stealing them, perhaps to sell back to us on eBay?

So if you have has items mysteriously vanish during transit or any other tales of problematic posties please do share. You know how!!

Back to miniatures proper next time.

Orlygg.

PS: It was an '80s Rat Ogre by Jes Goodwin that vanished from that envelope if you were wondering. 

A Warhammer Bestiary: Norse Dwarf

The long winter evenings here in England seem to be made for miniature painting. I get so much more completed this time of year, and I am sure that is the same for many others out there. The object of my attention this particular evening was a Norse Dwarf. Sadly, these are one of the types that fell by the roadside after Third Edition, much like the Sea Elves that we shall see later in this painting series. Thankfully, there are loads of these wonderfully characterful models out there to buy for very little.

This particular example is nearly all chainmail and this gave me the opportunity to work on a my new metallic technique that I had improved with the first dwarf. I am particularly pleased with the helmet and its horns. As you can imagine, drybrushing and ink washing were my best friends with this miniature and it surprises me just how much you can accomplish with skillful application of these two techniques. The face and beard were highlighted, using the same method as before.

For the shield, I did a Colin Dixon's Bugman's inspired foaming flagon against a blue background. This pice of freehand was great fun and didn't atke very long at all. Unlike previous models, this one had a flat 'boss' which allowed me to paint the design on with the shield in situ. I think that a large tankard of booze is an apt symbol to frequent the shield of a Norse Dwarf. It was a toss up between this and a slice of pie! 

For the base, I repeated what I had done with the previous dwarf, only I sculpted the stones to look less like hot cross buns and more like rocks on the ground. The rest of the base was painted in my normal way.

Job done! And what do you think?

Chaos Dwarf next!

Orlygg