A Second Summer of Citadel: Rogue Trader Orc and Space Skaven Conversion, Heroes of the Enemy Within and an Unreleased Fighter and Druid

 

I managed to snatch a few hours to make more repairs today. Two rare Rogue Trader miniatures start the proceedings (rare for me, not in the collection world I might point out) as long term readers will know I hardly ever paint up anything for the early days of 40K. I do like the early orks and the plastic sets such as the Beaky marines, Squats and Imperial Guard mind you. Kantor Yellowtooth first saw light of day in the Book of the Astronomican in 1988 as park of the Space Ork Command Group. A fantastic sculpt this one and a joy to paint way back in the day when I worked on him and a joy to repair today. Most of the damage was to his knees and hands and it was fairly easy to remedy this today. 

If I ever get back into serious collecting again I must pick up some more early Rogue Trader models as I love the whole look of them, especially these ork models.

Here is my Space Skaven conversion I did years ago and I'm pleased to say he still stands up. At the time I created and painted this model I wanted something that would fit into the hugely imaginative world of the early Fantasy Miniature books. These were wacky celebrations of late '80s Games Workshop as captured in the first few Golden Demon painting competitions. If you've not seen these books (there are three of them all called Fantasy Miniatures) then track them down for an unique view of Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000 that is long gone.

I had a damaged skaven figure kicking about at the time and I removed the weapon and added a Imperial Guard Lasgun before adding the backpole and banner. I used a Beaky Marine helmet to finish of the piece. I like to think it still stands up today. I chose orange for the clothing as a link to the flying jumpsuit the Rebels wear in Star Wars. I don't do many conversions... even simple ones like this as I prefer to work with original figures if I can. 

So much could be written about my love for Death on the Reik. The Enemy Within Campaign was a high point during my original Warhammer run. Playing it at school and later at home where I got to be the GM. What fun it was and I had lots of happy memories of those times when watching the final season of Stranger Things recently, what with all their D&Ding (which I only played on computers). Well here we have the figures put out to represent Harbull and Malmir. The ad for these ran in White Dwarf 89 and I did have many of the other figures in the range once, before my focus switched to McDeath. Malmir was, as far as I can tell, sculpted just for the DotR release. Harbull has a close relative called Logar in the C11 Halfling range and it seems strange that this figure wasn't sculpted during the creation of his tiny cousins. 

I painted these figures up as they were the two characters I enjoyed playing in my turns through the famous Warhammer campaign. I wonder if GMs still run it?

The next two figures are a real mystery. They were given to me by the well known Citadel collector, Steve Casey, many years ago and I painted them up not really knowing much about them, beyond them being unreleased. This first model in now regarded as being an unreleased fighter by the late Colin Dixon produced during his sculpting training run in the early 1990s. He worked for GW for ages (leaving in 2002), and was the first person employed to paint figures by them full time. Perhaps the first person in the world!! 

This figure is much more closely aligned to the post-Ansell view of what the Empire soldiery would look like. Influenced by the 'Landsnakes' of later Medieval history. I've never seen another version of this figure painted by anyone else and I'd love to see what others made of it. If you do, please let me know. 

This final figure is also by Colin Dixon I believe and was another training piece. Often referred to in collecting circles as a druid or shaman his skull like visage makes me think more of an evil sorcerer. With this in mind I painted him up as a Nurgle worshipping magic user. Much of Colin's early work can be found here if you are interested.

Again, I've never seen anyone else ever paint up these models so if you have some yourselves or know some else who has had a crack at them let me know. Considering their extreme rarity these figures had suffered little painting damage, with the Nurgle figure having nothing at all. Much of the pink and white clothing of the fighter had been damaged and it took a while to get the colours right.

Hope you can't make out the repairs too obviously!

Orlygg