Favourite 10 Miniatures Of All Time

So following on from Axiom's and Orlygg's blogs; here's my list of favourite miniatures over the course of my hobby experience. A very hard list to condense down from my initial shortlist of about 20 or so miniatures that in some way or other have inspired me by their design, character, dynamicism or relationship with me as a young boy or aging man... So in no particular order:

MARAUDER GOBLIN BOSS

I remember buying this model (along with a command group if I recall correctly) at my Reading branch of GW back in the very early 90's. I loved and still love his pose; the little guy all armoured up and looking tough, ready to challenge a worthy adversary with a raised fist. I love his downturned mouth too When I returned to the hobby quite a few years ago I was inspired by JRN's painted version of him. This is my painted version and my Avatar over at the Oldhammer Forum.

MINOTAUR



A similar pose to the Goblin (I've only just realised as I post these two pictures together!), but this Minotaur was always on my "want" list as a youngster and it wasn't until my adult years that i was able to get my hands on it. Again this is my painted version, I've rarely enjoyed painting a model so much as this one!

GREAT UNCLEAN ONE

Classic Nurgle Great Unclean One that just reek all that is Realms of Chaos. I espcially love the one with all the Nurglings hanging out of his gaping wounds and the expressions on their faces. Of course back in the day they were a large, heavy lead model, but they seem tiny now which adds to their charm. I have one ready to be assembled and painted.

KINKY CHAOSETTE

I still yearn for this model, for me it epitomises the relationship between GW and John Blanche and I would love to paint this in his style (when I get my hands on one!). So much attitude and character.

OGRE CAPTAIN HROTHYOGG

Such an imposing sculpt. When I was a kid my mate had one that he used to use as the leader of his Mercanary Contingent during 3rd Edition and he was also awesome on the battlefield. I now have my second one having sold my original some years ago.

CHAOS DWARF (KHAZEK DOOMLORD)

I could have used any number of the Chaos Dwarfs from this range, but this is my favourite, again because of the character imparted from his pose (this is definitely a theme that I hadn't explored before). One day I'd like to have all the Renegades in a unit.

ORC LEADER

One of my first purchases (a troglodyte was the first) and this miniature set me on the road as a collector. During my teens I amassed a huge 3rd Edition Orc and Goblin Army that continued into 4th and 5th I believe. This guy was my original General because he looks so tough and menacing with his double cleavers.

PALANQUIN OF NURGLE

Obviously I love Nurgle and Realms of Chaos and this model epitomises it all for me. The different characters are all perfect, my particular favourite is the Plaguebearer with Autopistol where we can see the 40K crossover with technology in WFB. The Nurglings carrying the Palanquin are genius and still stand the test of time, as does the whole piece - it seems to fetch good prices on ebay still! When I painted my first one I was amazed by the level of detail on the sculpt, whether it is the moon faces on the side of the throne or the expressions of all those mischievous nurglings.

CHAMPION OF NURGLE

Again this could be any number of models from this range as sculpted by Jes Goodwin (my favourite sculptor) but I went for this particular fellow because it was my first Nurgle "want" largely because of the Nurgling on his shoulder and his slightly crouched pose. The helmet ornament always makes me smile too!

MANTIC ZOMBIES

Perhaps slightly controvesial, but this is a cracking set of plastics. It's the best version for zombies, bar none and is a heads up to what good, modern kits should be like (and priced like). Lots of interchangeable parts that fit well together and that still create good, dynamic poses. This is perhaps a nod towards the future rather than the past (although the rest of Mantic's stuff is poor!).

A pile of old lead

So behind the scenes of the finished painted pieces I share here, here's a small accumulation of some of the lead that is waiting to be painted for my Retinue Table challenge:

(Actually not all of it is lead and there are a few newer figures in there too - including a part converted Shaggoth for the Dragon Ogre entry and a Skaven character) and you may also notice some Foundry pieces in the zip-bags to the left which I recently purchased; they will be used as Mercanaries/Bandits and Human Runaways.

The more eagle-eyed of you may notice from this photograph that I am missing the full compliment of 6 Orcs, a Troll, 2 Marauder Goblins and a Minotaur - well I'm still trawling ebay for 2 specific Orcs; the Troll is currently being painted, the 2 missing Goblins are painted as is the missing Minotaur!

With the summer holidays here I hope to get a few of these finished over the next few weeks, but it is also expected that I will be swapping a detail brush for a roller to decorate our living room, I know which I'd rather be doing.....

Some Mantic Zombies

A little while ago I got hold of some of the Mantic zombies with the idea of starting up an Undead army (another one of those "plans") but never got around to it and the box of miniatures languished, in a torpor, under my bed, amongst old shoes and some of my wife's unused handbags.

So with my Nurgle Sorcerer painted and looking increasingly like a Necromancer I decided to put the zombies together and add some paint - I'm now thinking that this will eventually be a unit of Plague Zombies as described in the army list pages of the Lost and the Damned. Perhaps I'll add a plague cart and some skellies too....

So WIP:

I've used multiple washes and glazes over the white basecoat (using a dash of washing up liquid as always) and tonight I'll add some layering to the clothed areas, some blood splatters using red, purple and black ink mixtures and complete the bases and smaller details.

I love this Zombie kit and would heartily recommend it to anyone.

Retinue Table: Chaos Sorcerer

For my Chaos Sorcerer I've decided to use what was officially a Chaos Warrior when released, but which I think fits the Nurgle Sorcerer well; I see him as dabbling in the dark arts of Necromancy as much as the Lore of Nurgle.

Such a nice miniature to paint (even though the pose is slightly awkward) and I love the Nurgle marking on his head and the decaying skin on the left side of his head. There's also some dripping blood (or poison) sculpted onto his sword.

I've gone for a yellow skin tone here to make him look as diseased as possible, lots of yellow washes over a white basecoat and then some brown and black glazes to make the skin look as disgusting as possible. Finally followed by some Tamiya clear red and purple, red, black washes for the blood:

Bloodbowl Interval

Here's another project which I've started and not finished, the best game that GW have ever made; Bloodbowl! Eventually I'd like to have a selection of teams (and certainly a Lost and Damned team), but for now I've started to create an Orc team using lots of bitz left over from my Orc army of many years ago...

At the moment one of my sources of motivation is to create a pitch, teams etc for my son, who is two, so I've got a fair few years to get this up and ready! When do you think is a good age to introduce kids to BloodBowl?

So here's the start of the team and currently sitting in my "to be painted box":

And here's some more recent photo's with the blue and yellow colour scheme completed, starting off with an old Marauder ogre that has had a bit of converting done to it:

And some Orcs where I've experimented with rust by adding bicarbonate of soda and pva to the model:

And my favourite is a plastic orc added to an old Ork unibike (I've no idea what is was originally called and I've no idea where I got the metal bike bit from!):

Retinue Table: D8 Chaos Dwarfs

So whilst I've been uploading all my recent images, this is what I've been working on in the background - Chaos Dwarfs.

I've always loved the Marauder Slayers and have slowly collected them from ebay (having sold my originals many moons ago) and I've only made a few small conversions to some which I picked up that were already damaged. I decided to use a range of different palid skin tones (washed onto a white undercoat) and brighter colours for their hair to create a chaotic looking group.

When I have time I'd like to add some tattoos too.

And here they are all together (bloody pain to rank up!).

Eventually these will become part of my Chaos Allies (another 6 to be added to make the magical Nurgle 14) as Chaos Dwarf Beserkers, but that is a long time in the future behind many other bright ideas I have....

Retinue Table: D6 Beastmen of Nurgle

Ok so a slight lie at the end of the last post, these were completed a little while ago but are perfect for filling out this the second entry of my Retinue Table challenge. A slight move away from the classic Realm of Chaos miniatures I have mostly been working on recently as I instead delved into my bitzbox and combined some plastic plaguebearers and beastmen (with some other bitz too):

The champion which is a real smorgasbord of different bitz and parts and greenstuff:

And a group shot of the nasty nurgle worshipping Beastmen:

A scenic interlude

A little interlude from the retinue building, to show you some of my scenery - which I've been busy making and mostly repairing for the Shadows of Rensburg scenario that I'll be running at the BOYL 2014 Oldhammer day. Some of these were made 20 odd years ago and needed a good old dust, but you can get a feel of how Rensburg may appear (I'm just missing some forests):

 You can see a few of the NCP wandering around here:

This cottage here was made and painted about 20 odd years ago, straight from a White Dwarf article:

You may just be able to make out the stained glass windows of the burnt out church in the background:

Bridge = Troll

Nurgle sorcerer defending his tower:

Some tough looking Goblins, level 25's?:

Thanks for looking!