Ral Partha Ettin

This Ral Partha Ettin is by Dennis Mize, and has evolved extra long arms in order to snap off enough times to make 80s kids learn how to pin limbs properly.

Miniatures. Actual miniatures. In a miniatures blog. Whatever next?

I have been insanely sick with flu this past month, and it is really grinding everything to a halt re: hobbies.  Work and sleep are pretty much it at the moment.  But one thing did happen tonight that was nice.  I got the good camera back.

So though nothing here is recent, the photos are now quality and finely detailed.  You know.  Like finecast.  (cough, cough)

90's Plastic warrior.  Shit just got shit yo.

So first up in my quick photo session tonight between pixel pushing and dying by degrees, is a classic 90's chaos warrior.  After the wonders of the drastic plastic orcs, psychostyrene dwarves and ultra classic skeleton warriors boxed set and purely brilliant plastic space marine box, citadel did a shit stained backwards slide into the single posed dross of the 90's.

No wonder I left the hobby to have lots of sex with goth chicks.

I went with a quick Mike McVey-esque style paint job (painted on crackles and smooth blendin')- Rodney Matthews color scheme and finished it off with a John Blanche style graphic pen attack.  Hate must be written on knuckles.  It must.

The base is also worth noting.  Based on the AD&D battlesystem pictures, the base is made from mounting board card.  You often find old school minis glued to cardboard, and prior to slotta bases this was pretty standard practice.  Beer mats, by the way, where the best material as they are designed not to warp!  I had a theory you could turn it to rock hard plastic instead of freying paper shite by soaking it with superglue.  You can.  It also lets you sand the edges to smooth, plastic like finish.  There see?  No more excuses for not basing that irregular sized mini up.

Minotaur Lord.  Citadel 1980s.

On the day I first bought miniatures, this was one of the chosen.  Sadly, my original is gone, so it was a joy to get my hands on a second copy and do him justice.  The base needs work.  It is merely a poker chip with grit and cork stucketh upon yonder surface.  Mid green and highlight missing.

And to finish up a picture of my mostly done Ral Parth storm giant.  A classic Tom Meier sculpt if I am not mistaken.  Somehow, my money is on the Gypsy.

Ral Partha Storm Giant VS. Citadel Talisman Gypsy

Blending!  Blending!  Yarrrr!

Well, a productive break considering I have not picked up a brush in ages.

Enjoy peoples.

Seriously.  You can enjoy peoples.  I recommend the danish.

New old lead

Shiney new old lead, all mounted up and ready to spray.  Cue thunderstorms and rain.

Yep.  Sydney weather.

I just want to point out The Standard Miniature's Killer Penguin.  My brother in law got this for me.  Ain't he a peach?

This gaffy stick (OED.  noun.  A stick onto which miniatures are suck for wot to get painty wiv.) also features some Rackham shooty bald men.  Because. 
Some Ral Partha classics may also catch your learned gaze- a 3 stage witch doctor set and Drizzzle pants Drizzt himself.  My wife staggered me by recognizing him and said she read all the books.

I called her a sad, sad nerd, then went back to playing with my little lead dollies.

Grenadier's flying carpet is front and centre.  I remember seeing this for the first time in 1991 at school friend Gareth Parry's big brother's epic warhammer table.  He also had the chaos ass cannon and naked torture chamber girls.  Sigh... teenage joy.  Plus... these where all being fielded- a unit of ninja where munching orcs whilst a hobgoblin rocket launcher laid into a balrog.  Fuck you game balance!

Slaanesh warband 2

Though very tired today I did manage to push some more figures further along the paint queue this evening.  I am mentally exhausted, but soldiering on with tasks will help recovery.  So...

I added chaos thugs to the mix, finally slapping paint on figures I have had under coated for years.  No real shading to speak of yet, but the little army is starting to appear in crude form.

I also finished two Ral Partha Golems... finally completing the set of four.  I have to dig out the clay and flesh ones for a family photo.  Sadly these two are on the endangered species list.  Ral Partha destroyed their molds during the Fasa takeover.  I have tried contacting wizards of the coast to get the rights to recast all these lost lines but to response.

Wippity do dah

A quickie wip to mark progress on my hobby fix- I had a few hours free tonight as my missus was out at work drinks.  I just pushed a few things on my pile further along without much focus- I am rather tired tonight.

Starring in this pic are works in progress of a classic winged cat from Ral Partha's golden ad&d era, and citadel lead aplenty:  a kniggit of dol amaroth, a chaos sorcerer, The orcish limited edition of the Brothers Grimm (Fraser Gray style) and a chaos centaur from slaves to darkness.  Oh and one of my new unreleased dwerg for Darkling Games!

In my last post I kicked off a kickstarter discussion- please pop back there and share your thoughts!

Touching some orcs up

Tonight I touched up some orcs whilst the varnish dried on the last batch of Cryx.  These lovely old school figures are from Ral Partha (iron wind metals these days).

I just spent an hour or two on them, and want to go back in for some ink washes to make them pop a bit more.  Excuse the shitty iphone snap.  Couldnt be bothered setting up the camera.  Still not 100% clearly.

Anyway, lovely old school minis.  Enjoy.

Ral Partha Orcs.  Fun to touch up.

A legion of eight!

A legion is, last time I checked, slightly more than eight... but as these are Greater Skeletons, maybe their like Chuck Norris, who is a delta force of one, after all.

This is a brilliant boxed set- very characterful, realistic take on skeletons that predated the Perry cackling whacky teeth skeletons that dominated my early years.  I really dislike citadels current plastic skeletons... I dunno, they look like chunky halloween decorations.  These Skeletal figures are beautifully sculpted and much more realistic in their proportions, but if I can put on my critical hood for a moment, come from the era in Guthries early work which was very stiff in its posing.  That said, all of Ral Partha releases at the time where stiff as hell, holding weapons in a weighless way like you see a king holding a sceptre in a medieval painting.

   By the way, I think Julie's modern minis are breathtakingly fluid in their posing- the summoning miniature with writhing nymphs is a masterpeice of figure work... so hey, hard to fault the lass!  My first sculpts make me cringe and I have only been doing it for a few years.  I am just saying that I realise these figures may look a bit flat and stiff to modern gamers.

  But, what they lack in depth and dynamics, they make up in old school charm, are a pleasure to paint and I do have a soft spot for them.  The Undead Balrog, hound handler are really strong designs and classics of their type.  Plus the assembly of the Balrog is genius... one of the easiest multipart models to assemble ever.  I gave his neck a gentle bend to give him more depth.  If you havent done this before, its actually quite easy.  Wrap the part in tissue to distribute the pressure of your pliers and make small, slow gentle bends.  A quick bend will shear the model at its weak spot.  I suspect heating the model would help, but rarely find a problem reposing.

WIP:  Julie Guthrie's Undead rising from the grave

It was a hot, dry day today, so I rushed through some 'nearly there' minis to get them to varnish stage... but ran out of time.  So, I guess I am about fifty percent of the way through this lot...  The further back, and more unfocused, the more unfinished.  I think they need 'shrooms on their bases.

Another reason I am hurrying these ahead of my Undead Assault Project is that the boxed set I received was sealed, but on opening I found them just starting to tarnish.  So the faster I get them well and truely sealed, the more likely they are to survive the next decade.  My priming didnt get into all the cracks, so I was eager to varnish them.  Fingers crossed for next week.

By the way, the great news is that Iron Wind Metals still produce all the figures in this range.

Yay!

The bad news is that (at the time of writing this blog entry) they are individually listed and scattered throughout the fantasy sections of their webstore.  Most are in fantasy armies/skeletons, but some are in roleplaying and supernaturals if I remember rightly.  Its no biggie, I suppose... whilst hunting through you will encounter lots of cool old school classics, so it is time well spent.

I must confess I am starting to burn out painting bone and zombie flesh.  Even the Splintered light stuff for Skulldred is undead.  I may hoff break and do something really out there next.  Maybe some Realm Of Chaos or Malifaux for a change... oh... no my Malifaux figures are all undead too.  Hmmm.

 

Female magic user

A parcel arrived today with a couple of minis- one of which was this Ral Partha 01-337 Female Magic User.  She turned out to be the mid level of one of the three stage figures ral partha put out for dnd gamers.  Sculpted by Tom Meier, it features his trademark 'too fine to paint' details.  Bloody impressive is our Tom's steady hand, as he proves here by sculpting a raised pentagram on her belt buckle using nothing but green stuff and inhuman patience.

Occasionally I get a mini that just needs a bit of sprucing up rather than stripping.  This one was neatly undercoated and base colored, but the pevious owner seemed to have stopped mid way (perhaps the low level version of her died and he no longer needed the mid level!) and heck, such a nice shade of pink too.

Ral Partha 01-337 Female Magic User.  Sculptor:  Tom Meier.

Whilst my wife was enjoying a double bill of 'my big fat gypsy wedding', I decided to see if I could knock out a figure on the same day it arrived.  I took some photos along the way.

First I needed to address the flash.  Almost all minis from the 80's have the remains of flash under their paint jobs.  Kids where not clued up on cleaning this off I guess... or too lazy.  This one was reasonably well cleaned on the outside, but a chased off some flash under her arm  and had to re shape her wand arm, which was poorly cast and had a thick nub of metal on it.

As she arrived, mounted on a 30mm x 2mm MDF base by 'Warbases'

 

Next I re-established the base colors, painting over the scuffs and bringing her to an even, matt finish.  If your trying to get good at mini painting, the first thing you should try and do is just base coat neatly and evenly.  It takes a bit of discipline, and it is not how your shown how to do it in white dwarf or painting guides these days, which focus on completely finishing a section before moving on to the other- but I suspect this is mainly due to making it easy to illustrate, rather than being the best method to actually paint.  John Blanche (who?) mentioned this in a Blanchitsu a while back... he still gets all his base colors down first before shading.

  By the way, I firmly believe you should paint your gaming miniatures with their base colors before playing with them.  Undercoated or raw minis are dreadful to play.  By at least getting all the colors in, your minis look good at a distance- at which, lets face it, most games are played.  Once colored in, your good to game.

My current base painting technique involves the brilliant, BRILLIANT Liquitex Burnt Umber- which provides deep rich soil colors when applied in varying thicknesses.

So I kept the shading and detailing very simple, as I wanted her finished in one sitting.  I used slightly thinned black ink to edge all her details- flow aid helps here.  I also used a few glazes, which as you probably know, I thin with matte medium and flow aid.  Here I used an old bottle of Titilating pink from the monster Citadel Boxed set.

Varnished and ready for Skulldred.  "A wizards staff has a knob on the end"

A rear view.

Good bye Megaminis, Hello skeletal legions

Yep, they are closing up shop and selling off the moulds.  Sad, but understandable.  The income you get from minis does nor justify the time put in moment.  At least we have kickstarter now to protect us from risky mould cost decisions and handle preorders- so its not a bad time entirely to be in the biz.

Do your hobby a favor.  Dont buy that next overpriced (but gorgous) GW box you where looking at getting... take that money, even if its just this month- go find some obscure little mini business and spend it there (horrible postage prices be damned- after all your getting screwed by the man either way).  Lets stop some more doors closing!
My money is aimed at Hasslefree- thems some fine assed barbarians Kev is making.

I am crestfallen it comes at a time where (thanks to the wonders of IVF financing) I wont be able to risk the moolah to pick up the Metal Magic dwarf rights for Darkling games.

I console myself that I got me a nice big order of megaminis recently, and I am sure some great companies will carry the torch.

On the hobby front I have only had time to restore, prime and base a box of Julie Guthrie Ral Partha undead that was dangerously close to decay on its arrival.  From the depth of grey spotting, I think I rescued them in the nick of time.  A good clean with a wire brush and a prime and I think they'll live.  Er.. unlive.
Its a great box set- mine was complete with instructions and dnd stats.  A couple of the figures appear in Undead Assault, most notably the double handed swordsman appears twice- he is knocking at the castle door.  Back then GW distributed RP, so John Blanche included many in the diorama- including the Yellow Wraith shooting the door.