Painting at a Snail's Pace

 And Very Obscure 90s Tabletop Magazines

With work and family commitments, there has been very little time for painting recently. However, I did manage to finish this Rider of Rohan, though. Rather than painting the horse in one flat colour, I added some brown patches to give him a bit more character.

The sculpting of the face is really well done and the painting was nice and easy. Mark Copplestone perhaps? 

Also, found time to start fixing up my rather battered Rangers of Ithilien. 

Gamesman Magazine, March 1992

With a slightly uncomfortable

 looking 90s glamour model

Staying with old gaming finds, I also dug out a very obscure tabletop gaming magazine from the 1990s: Gamesman. This issue is from March 1992 and claims to be “Britain’s best-selling independent gaming magazine”, probably because GMI magazine had already stopped publishing.

Back in the day, I bought this issue for one reason: an article on the Battle of the Five Armies by Martin Hackett, who wrote a fantasy wargaming book. A quick Google search suggests he is still active, though now more on the historical side of wargaming.

The issue also contains a number of interesting adverts with plenty of Oldhammer significance.

For me, the standout is the Kryomek artwork, with its obvious Aliens influence. It is exactly the kind of atmospheric, slightly grimy sci-fi art that makes these old magazines so enjoyable to revisit.

Rob 

A Bit of Sunday Painting

And Alternate Lurtz Done

And time to finish a mini including sculpting a quick white hand. 

And time for a beer before back to work. 

Rob 

I Seem To Have Been Here Before

Work Before Painting 

Been busy away for work in the last couple weeks So, not really any painting until this evening. When I managed to splash on some paint on my alternative Lurtz Uruk-Hai captain. Who  actually only has a very minor change with the Eye of Mordor shield design covered over with Green Stuff. And I just realised he has also got an Eye of Mordor design on his belt buckle that needs sorting. 

Plus picked up some damaged Rangers of Ithilien as one of the many next classic LotR minis that need painting. 

And I made up with the lack of painting with a couple of away beers.

Have a great weekend 

Rob 

Filling a C08 Elf Gap

Nearly Finished the C08 Set

The set of eleven

This C08 elf is a little odd as he only appears in one the Citadel flyers. In the Autumn 1985 flyer, the new slotta based high elves consist of 11 minis including a casualty and it is the same again in the third Citadel Compendium. But in the October 1985 flyer (in  between these two), there is an extra mini - Farseeker. Not sure why he only made a fleeting appearance but anyway he now completes this little set. 

The October 1985 flyer with the mysterious - Farseeker. 

Rob 

ME-23 Rohirrim and ME-53 Southron Riders

Ready for the Muster

Work continues on the latest Oldhammer Lord of the ring minis. This time around it's a mounted Southron warrior and a rider of Rohan. In both cases I didn't manage to get the horse but only the riders. 

In particular I think the horse for the Southron warrior matches very well.

For the Southron I did receive the horse, but it had a truly awful case of lead rot and was completely unsavable and the rider of Rohan was just bought as a separate mini. But both the rider and foot mini were in perfect condition. 

However, in both cases, my old Grenadier models came to the rescue. From the fighting men and the barbarian ranges. Both from the early 90s so actually quite contemporary. 

The rider of Rohan also needed a bit of repair as he was missing the top of his Lance and the Lance was broken. So, a little bit of pinning* and a raid of the bits box to get a replacement spear tip. Some light sanding and a bit of green stuff and he will be ready for a bit of painting.

*Somehow, I actually managed to drill out the spear shaft and insert a bit of paper clip without breaking anything!

Rob

Putting All of the Minis on the Table

 And Joe Devers Awesome Miniature Collection

So, what started as a bit of a mental grumble about working out army lists turned out to be a bit of a rabbit hole. Because my line of logic was why bother working out a balanced points army when I could just put all of my minis on the table...

And if I did what would that even look like.? I have sort of done this before with my Lord of the ring’s minis about 20 years ago. When I put all of my painted minis on the table for one big game. Now I'm not saying that I would actually get round to doing this (again) but it's an interesting idea given that I now have quite a few more painted minis than I did 20 years ago. As this was the gap in time between getting rid of all my classic Oldhammer minis and really started collecting classic minis again a few years ago.

Anyway, you might be wondering why there's a picture of a lot of obscure role-playing magazines from the 80s and 90s. Well, it's because when thinking about putting everything on the table, I remembered A couple of big battle reports in several of them, run by Joe Dever. Using his fantastic collection. So, I decided to dig them out and while in the loft looking for these magazines, I came across a number other more obscure ones which I collected for various wargames related articles.

Now the GM team (Tim, Paul, and Wayne), Had several goes at running a role-playing magazine which starting with the GM magazine and then a while later with the GMI magazine. I even remember Wayne (the guy with the white hair) on a local news programme talking about role-playing games.

And they were obviously in contact with Joe Dever because they managed to get him to run two big Battle Day scenarios for competition winners. I was definitely jealous at the time. They also managed to get a number of big-name Golden Demon winners such as Paul Benson to do some painting articles. Without a doubt Paul Benson was one of the best miniature painters at the time. And very distinctive visual style.

Having now got these magazines out the loft, I shall take a bit of a trip down memory lane and hopefully manage to share some of the best bits.

And as always, thanks to the talented people who produced them in the first place. And provided me some with some much needed inspiration at the time.

And of course I am still working on the classic LotR minis. One more Snagga goblin to complete the set. 

And the other and crazy thing I noticed was the exchange rate at $4.00 to £1.20 in 1989. Compared to $1.33 to £1 today.

And something to finish the weekend. 

Rob 

Why is This Mini Hard to Get?

 ME-12 Strider on Foot

Finally managed to get Strider on foot at a (semi) reasonable price. The reason why I say this is because it seems much easier to get the mounted mini than the mini on foot? In fact I have often found the mounted mini for less money than the foot mini. I can only assume that the mounted mini was produced in the same numbers as the foot mini.  They were only ever sold as a set! But the mini on foot seems rarer and so at a higher price.  Still money has been spent and the painting can commence. 

As always thanks to Stuff of Legends from stopping me, having to root around in an incredibly hot loft to find my Citadel compendium. 

No painting this week  as I was away on business but I did get to see a very nice French castle. And of course a few beers. 

Enjoy the weekend

Rob 

Finishing Up the Weekend

Treebeard has had Enough and the Ruin of Isengard

Hey, we are all feeling a bit a hot and bothered in the latest mini heatwave in the UK. And we can all go a bit far. But wrecking the whole of Isengard is a bit much! Anyway I finished Treebeard a while ago but have just got round to posting a few pics. 

After taking the pics, I think I might go back and lighten up Treebeard's head and and arms as he looks a bit too much the same colour all over.  The other ent in the background is one I scratch built several years ago for my Fae army. and rebased to accompany Treebeard to war. 

And looking at my blog list, I see that Goblin Lee has also just posted about his classic Oldhammer Ents. Last March of the Ents

Plus managed finish off the black rider. Not surprisingly, it didn't take long to paint the rider but the horse took me a bit longer as I wanted it to look wild and unkempt. 

Enjoy the rest of the Sunday 😁

Rob 

Post 587

White Rider & the Dark Lord

Ironically the 'modern' Gandalf the white 

was painted twenty years before the classic one. 

Ok, quick post tonight before I sit down with a beer. Finished off both the mounted Gandalf and Sauron minis. 

Friday night's delight

Rob