Fantasy Oldhammer distractions

Hey, another little post today as you can see from my blog posts I mainly paint sci-fi miniatures related to Warhammer 40,000 Rogue Trader or 2000ad but I often get distracted and start a classic Oldhammer fantasy miniature on the side, I find them exciting and fun as it catapults me straight back to my teenage years, many of the fantasy miniatures I paint are ones I have painted back then and have stripped them of their original enamel paints to have another go. I have some cracking fantasy on the go which you will see soon but in the meantime have a look below at some of the fantasy miniatures I have finished in the last few months, it's a bit of a dump blog post, enjoy.

First up is a C Series 1985 C02 Wizards female sorceress 'Samantha Phox' sculpted by Aly Morrison, I was dying to give this miniature an update from it's blocked in bronze flesh enamel original, there's lots of lovely tiny little details like rings and garter that make this miniature so sweet to paint, I think she would be at home in any 1980's fantasy painting.

C02 Wizard Samantha Phox - front

C02 Wizard Samantha Phox - back

Next is a C Series 1986 C25 Minotaurs 'Bhovus' sculpted by Bob Naismith, This was the second Minotaur I ever owned and used it for AD&D originally painted in human flesh colours, I went for a Yeti feel with this one, a snow Minotaur from the frozen chaos wastes if you like, I just love the absolutely massive muscles with a realistic sized bulls head.

C25 Minotaur Bhovus - front

C25 Minotaur Bhovus - back

I still have my 'finish every Oldhammer Beastman ever created' project on the back-boiler so occasionally get one out to do and this time I chose a 1988 Realm of Chaos Beastmen of Khorne sculpted by Jes Goodwin, he is a bit of a mini minotaur, it was a joy to paint, my original paint job was dreadful as I had painted him for my whacky Genestealer cult army.

Realm of Chaos Beastman of Khorne - front

Realm of Chaos Beastman of Khorne - back

Realm of Chaos Beastman of Khorne - side

Finally we have 1988 Realm of Chaos Champion of Khorne with technology sculpted by Jes Goodwin, not too pleased with this paint job the red feels a bit flat and bright but it's better than my original version that was painted as a Champion of Nurgle!!! so I'll take it as I am not stripping it again.

Realm of Chaos Champion of Khorne with technology - front

Realm of Chaos Champion of Khorne with technology - front

Well I hope you have enjoyed these odd paint jobs now back to my space pirates I go.

Cheers

J

C Series - C05 Oriental Heroes - Fox Priest

Today I have an interesting oldhammer miniature for you, the C Series C05 Oriental Heroes 'Fox Priest', this miniature appeared on the Citadel Miniatures June 1984 flyer, I think it was sculpted by Aly Morrison but I am not certain of this, someone had mentioned the Perry T
twins.

The miniature is obviously based on the Kitsune of Japanese legend and every time this miniature crops up that fact is immediately pointed out, a fun fact that always make me laugh is that in World War II the U.S. forces were planning an operation to play on the Japanese peoples fear of supernatural fox legends by parachuting illuminous painted foxes over Japan territories, almost as bonkers as the bat bomb :D 

The paint job is my typical feudal Japanese (Nippon) scheme, patterned and colourful very much in the style of my recent Oriental Ogre (Oni).  It's a lovely little miniature, very old school 25mm in scale, a nice details are the priest's staff which is carved into the shape of a oriental dragon and the priests traditional hat.

Along with my ogre the fox priest will certainly be a welcome addition to a future Nippon warband I am planning, I have all sorts of ideas bouncing around in this space so expect to see something else one day.

Kitsune requests the Oni joins him on his quest to topple the Sun Wukong

Fox Priest - side

Fox Priest - side

Fox Priest - front

Fox Priest - back

Thanks for dropping in, for the next post I am back to Judge Dredd miniatures.

J

Oldhammer Chaos Beastman and Runequest Broo

Hi Folks welcome back, 

Lately my legions of Chaos Beastmen and Broo have been feeling a little neglected but while I have been getting back to my Rogue Trader and Judge Dredd projects I still managed to flick a bit of paint on a few Beastmen and enter them into my new Beastmen gallery.

First we have Tiger Man a C27 Chaos Beastman from 1985, a really lovely miniature from this range just before miniatures started appearing with plastic slotta shields, coincidentally I am currently rereading Meltdown Man a 2000AD story from 1980 progs 178 to 227 collected into one volume by Rebellion and the main villains Leeshar's chief henchman is Tiger Commander who I think you will agree is almost a perfect clone of Tiger Man, I wonder if this story and the plethora of animal men had any influence on Trish Morrison's Chaos Beastman sculpts which are very different to the Runequest Broo that Citadel had did before.

Tiger Commander from Meltdown Man

I also think Tiger Man might fit nicely into a Frostgrave Pan Tang Warband like this one I recently enjoyed viewing on Axiom's magpieandoldlead blog, go and have a look it's brilliant.

Tiger Man - front

Tiger Man - back

Tiger Man - side

Next up we have Runequest Chaos Broo Runepriest from way back in 1982, a menacing looking creature, he will certainly be performing blood ritual with my blood priest.  I discovered that this miniature was used as the base miniature for the C27 Chaos Beastman Half-Man, I had never noticed until I started thinking I've painted this miniature before which is quite a common experience for the first few ranges of Citadel Beastmen.

Chaos Broo Runepriest - front

Chaos Broo Runepriest - back

Lastly we have a Broo with Spear or pointed stick in my opinion maybe hardened by fire at the point, a pretty basic and early Broo sculpt lacking in details and quite fragile, although it did require careful restoration due to it's thin legs.

Broo with spear- front

Broo Runepriest - back (not much going on I know)

I hope you enjoyed my latest efforts
thanks for visiting
J

New Chaos Beastman Gallery

Hello again,
I am on a bit of a roll and have added a new Chaos Beastman Gallery a showcase and reference for all my painted Oldhammer era Chaos Beastman Miniatures, more miniatures will be uploaded and added soon.

I am really getting the hang of this so expect more galleries to appear when I get some spare time.

ENJOY!

Low output - Beastmen and other stuff

Hello! Welcome back, it's the end of my holiday season (if only work would stop ringing me during said season) and my miniatures are getting some well deserved attention so I have got back to the task in hand and finished some more Chaos Beastmen, speed painted a classic Citadel limited edition miniature and got caught up in a Yogi frenzy (see below).

First we have preslotta C38 Chaos Beastman 'Horseman', well not much to say about this miniature other than it's a naked bloke with hooves who you would struggle to outrun, I remember as a teenager tittering with my rocker mates at this miniatures todger, I'll leave it at that :D

Horseman - side

Horseman - front

Horseman - side

Next we have a CH4 Chaos Beastman 'Vrak', I don't think he was meant to be based on any animal in particular which seems to be the case for many of this range and he even has a true Beastman name 'Vrak' departing from the old names like 'Koala-man' (if only he existed :D), the miniatures were very bestial a precursor to where we are today I think.  For the shield I did not have time to paint it so I dug out a arcane armorial decal (another example here) and stuck it on and in this case the gum was faulty so I had to set it with Microsol, a must have for any serious painter/modeller as it sets the decal, sinks in and follows the contours it is adhered to. 

Vrak - side

Vrak - side

Then I had a day off and was sorting out the thousands of slottabases into a new box I purchased from Aldi and low & behold I found the missing foot to Tinman (mentioned here in the comments back in 2013, thanks Orlygg :D) stuck to a 40x40mm base so after breaking off the crudely sculpted replacement and a bit of pinning and medium Superglue he was good as new.  Tinman was a limited edition miniature (LE14) who appeared in the Warhammer Fantasy Battle scenario 'The Crude, the Mad and the Rusty' with his maker 'Oxy O'cetylene' the dwarf engineer (I am not a big fan of dwarves so I won't be painting him in a hurry), I went on to paint him aiming for a heavily corroded look, I was testing the new Citadel Nihilakh Oxide techinical paint as I don't seem to be able to find a good copper oxide colour, for the normal rust I used my tried and tested method detailed here. Overall I am happy with the results and to compliment the rusty colours I added some Autumn tufts with leaf fall, which are widely available on ebay.

Tinman - front

Tinman - back

The last miniature on today's post is 'Yogi Yakamoto' from the Citadel Judge Dredd range JD13 Sky Surfers, he appeared in the Judge Dredd story 'The Midnight Surfer',  I painted this miniature after being inspired by several pictures of this miniature on the Oldhammer Facebook group. I copied the colours he was in the comic strip except I accidentally painted his chest which should have been flesh coloured. More will follow as I enjoyed painting this miniature.

Yogi the Sky Surfer with original Citadel flying base

Banzai! Yogi's Sky Surfboard

Here's my new box from Aldi with all my spare slottabases neatly organised, we'll see how long that lasts, plastic shields next. :D

Thanks for visiting now get following this blog.
J

C13 Kaleb Daark and other work

Hi Friends, today I finally got around to finishing Kaleb Daark, I am not going to go into his history as it has been covered in countless blog posts, here and here are two good Oldhammer blog examples. He has been sitting on my paint station for about 6 months and after several disasters during his paint job I almost threw in the towel as this is the third time I have painted this miniature from it's original purchase back in the late 1980's, be warned neat Vallejo game colour Black wash is very dark, I spend hours getting the perfect black following the teachings of an artist I once read saying there is no such colour as black and after several shades of grey (ooer) I was almost finished and then decided to give the miniatures a wash of Vallejo game colour Black wash to add more depth, the miniature turned out like a lump of dusty coal, anyway I put a lot of work in salvaging rather than stripping the miniature and am sort of happy with the end result, I have tried to stay true to the comic strip a homage to the late Brett Ewins with the shield and helmet design but the miniature did deviate from the comic strip in many places which also wasn't always the same in every illustration, I hope you like.

Kaleb Daark on his mutant warsteed

Side view displaying his shield design

Front view with Dreadaxe

Side View 2

Front view 2

Next we have C27 Chaos Beastman 'Kiss of Death', a collection I have now completed :), this miniature I managed to acquire for £2 from a member of the Facebook Oldhammer Trading Group as it had a broken club which I easily replaced with a club from the Warhammer Empire Militia plastics, heresy I know but it looked right to me. 

Kiss of Death - front

Kiss of Death - back

I  always like to do my own research on my miniatures and try to stay clear of others findings as this can be taken as the final answer, I have convinced myself that the 'Kiss of Death' Beastman was not a new sculpt but a modification of another which is very common in early Citadel miniature ranges so after much searching I think the base miniature for this sculpt is from the C32 Slann range either Polo Slave 1 or Slave 2, I think you would agree that the club on Slave 2 is very similar to the 'Kiss of Death' Beastman's original club (if you have him to look at close up), other evidence is that the C27 Chaos Beastman were sculpted by Trish Morrison and the C32 Slann Trish and Ally Morrison are credited as the sculptors.  Not a easy miniature to find painted examples of but I managed to find one by Orlygg on realmofchaos80s, go check it out here.

Next we have some Runequest Broo, the original Chaos Beastmen, it's funny that I acquired these miniatures in a battered none padded envelope in the pub when meeting up with a mate, we were both wrecked and the miniatures were too, originally painted in the early 80's they required a lot of TLC to bring them back from the brink of destruction, not the greatest paint jobs but I had battered painted miniatures with dark grey patches and lead oxidation in places to play with so I was happy with the restorations.

Sometimes charity costs you dearly (well in time anyway)

FF68 Goat-headed Ogre always considered a Broo with the addition of a old, old Citadel Orc axehead

The next 3 are from the Runequest Box 4c: The Broo

Broo with Dagger

Broo with spiked mace

Rhino Headed Broo (I have many more of these to paint up :D)

Thanks for visiting, now get following
J

More C38 Chaos Beastmen

Hi, for today's post we go back to 'C' series Chaos Beastmen, luckily they vary so much you don't really get bored of them.  I have painted four new additions which all are being drafted into my Morcockian 'true' Beastman regiment.

Four new Chaos Beastmen ready to join their friends

The first Beastman in this post is not actually a Beastman but a Devil from the much loved C18 Night Horror range,  This miniature started life as a Runequest Broo (the original Chaos Beastmen, see Broo previous mention) and he can be seen here but at some time later must have had his arm re-sculpted with the bottle removed replacing it with him making a demonic sign before going into the C18 slottabase molds. His head was available separately too in the Runquest Broo range.  Last thing I would like to say about this miniature is that the original Runequest Broo swigging the bottle appears in the ranks of Byran Ansell's Chaos Beastman regiments here's a photo (thanks Steve), a great pedigree for this miniature indeed.

Devil Night Horror - front

Devil Night Horror - back

Next we have have Sea-horseman from from the C38 Chaos Beastman range, a bizarre creature with armour festooned with all sorts of aquatic creatures and a nicely sculpted chaos star on it's shield, you may have noticed that many of the later Realm of Chaos Slanneshi Chaos Beastmen resemble sea life of some sorts, could Sea-horseman have been inspiration for these miniatures?   I have two more variants of this miniature, Fishman  and Fishman with Slug man's head. (I think Sea-horseman is another miniature I have to thank Steve for)

Seahorse man - front

Seahorse man - back

Next we have another C38 Chaos Beastman simply named again as Beastman who appears to be a variant of the C38 Eagleman, I was not overly keen on this miniature and only painted him for completeness, it's not a great sculpt, he appears to have a grotesque little head grafted onto the side of his head.

Beastman - front

Beastman - back

And finally we have another C38 Chaos Beastman that you don't see around often again simply named Beast man, he was in a terrible condition with lots of brittle metal, the bow just fell off and needed gluing back on, oxidation needed brushing off with a hard brush but the nice thing about this one is that is he is armed with a bow  a rare option for Beastmen, I did not really feel the Beastman vibe with this miniature as it looks more like a Half-Orc or Goblinoid, I wanted to give him an unusual skin colour as I did not want him to be mistaken as a goblinoid so I opted for Vallejo Pale Blue which worked well then I realised the finished miniature looked like a cross between Rogue Trooper and an Avatar Na'vi but I am happy with it and he fits in nicely with the others. This Beastman is a variant of the Horned C38 Beastman (better picture to come) who also has variant not standing on a rock when it was later converted to a slotta base mould.

Beast man with bow - front

Beast man with bow - back

Beast man with bow - side

Here is how my Beastman units are forming up on the Chaos shelf in my display case.

Chaos Beastmen regiments ranked up

The chaos shelf in full.

Chaos Shelf

The display case in full, a recent present from the in-laws.

Showcase with my favourite miniatures displayed

I hope you enjoyed this post, now get following

thanks
J